Designing a DIY silver cell

[FrugalRefiner]

4metals hasn't had much time to spend here recently. His wife had a knee replacement and he has been spending a lot of his time taking care of her.

He will be back again, and perhaps we can revive this thread.

Dave

 

[4metals]

I just followed another thread to this link and realized I just dropped it for family health reasons and I apologize.

I was very excited about the design idea from snoman about using an expanded stainless steel mesh as I suggested in a sketch on post # 72 on page 4 of this thread. I did a lot of work with a plastic fabricator who owed me a chunk of money and he made me a cell as per that sketch to pay his tab. Bottom line, I set it up and started it running, the lift and drop shaker made to loosen the crystals worked...... kind of. Once the Silver accumulated on the expanded mesh past a certain point it stopped passing crystals through to the slope and clogged. The fix was to take out the mesh screen and soak it in nitric to dissolve off the Silver and start over. It made about 500 ounces and worked about 6 or 7 days before it clogged. So the idea wasn't viable in a production environment and the cell made it to the scrap heap. No regrets, it seemed viable and different mesh grades all ended with the same clogged scenario.

Would have been nice. Woulda, coulda, shoulda, oh well that's life. sometimes you get a hit and sometimes you miss. This wasn't a complete miss, more like a foul ball.

If anyone is still interested in continuation of this thread, start posting. A bit busy between now and the holidays but I'll keep an eye on this thread.