Dissecting computers for gold

[cpt_squish]

I just pulled apart some old 3.5 inch floppy drives to get the male conector pins
I happened across what looked like a large gold plated worm screw for the drive head. Any ideas?
Also is the drive head - magnetic header/reader thing a silver based sheet on which the heads are placed.
I'm just doing this as a hobby really to get a bit of PM - not that easy and lots of time involved!
hopefully I can get some keyboards a bit later, can you get e scrap from the computer stores?

 

[qst42know]

There is no reason what so ever to gold plate a worm gear screw.

It's likely only brass.

 

[lazersteve]

The worm gear is brass. The metal guard is tin, steel, or aluminum.

As a general rule, precious metals are not used in electronics without a specific reason for them to be used in the application. If a cheaper metal will perform the same function, it will be used instead of a precious metal.

Steve

 

[cpt_squish]

Thanks for the quick reply, I thought it was a bit funny to use gold for a worm gear - I thought if it was brass it might have more corrosion on it though!

 

[qst42know]

Worm gears are subjected to sliding wear. Gold plate would quickly wear away. Worm screws are always lubricated in some way even if the gear is plastic.

 

[Anonymous]

Hi, my background was always in the telecommunications field. I have as you can imagine after 20 years many many contacts on how to get my hands on several thousands of lbs of telecom boards and pbx boards of a variety of manufacturers. Since I just got laid off and have some cash left to buy some of these lots, My question is this:

Once I buy these boards cheap as I am reading here: $1-3 per pound/ A crazy calculation as this stuff is super heavy. I want to know where in the US or abroad do I send/sell this stuff to. Who is trustworthy, as it seems trust is huge in this field. Every time I call a refiner or a broker they say " well send it in and depends on the boards and what we pull off" well that doesn't help me in figuring out my buying costs.

2) Are older business telephone sets with IC boards in them worth anything?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

K.C.

 

[kssurplus]

2 CENTS WORTH

Besides gold there are many other goodies in an old computer.
If you are a dabbler in electronics then there are small torroids,capacitors,parts inside the power supply ,power transistors etc.

So I have also been looking at some of my motherbaords and see many,many gold connector pins on them.
Are we saying here there is not enough value to pursue removing them either buy cutting off or chemical removal.
I have not attemted any of these yet.

Also where can a guy buy a 3 gallon bucket?

 

[lazersteve]

Also where can a guy buy a 3 gallon bucket?

I get mine at Lowes on the Bucket (cleaning) isle.

They are right next to the five gallon buckets.

Steve

 

[glorycloud]

So I have also been looking at some of my motherbaords and see many,many gold connector pins on them.
Are we saying here there is not enough value to pursue removing them either buy cutting off or chemical removal.
I have not attemted any of these yet.

I have a suggestion for you. See how long it takes you to collect
enough e-scrap items to be able to remove and come up with
a pound of gold plated pins. Try and quantify how many boards
were required to get that pound of pins and how much labor was involved
in "harvesting" them before the first pin finds its way into an acid
of any sort to free the gold from the base metals that it is attached to.

Now calculate the cost of the materials required to build an electrolytic
cell or to make nitric acid or the cost of muriatic acid and the crockpot
to put it in should you choose that method for getting the gold free.
Again, be sure to keep track of the labor involved in this part as well.
Now see how much gold you are able to get from that one pound
of pins and report back to us in a month or so what you find.

You may find out what we all found out the hard way: I would rather
leave the gold pins on the boards and sell them at $2.50+ per
pound while you concentrate on collecting the escrap items that
have the most value per man hour like gold plated fingers, some
CPU's and the other stream of materials that can be sold like
aluminum, copper wire, steel, etc. as you scrap the PC's.

I look forward to your report, should you choose to accept
this assignment. 8)

 

[Richard TJ]

Pt yield on platter is zip, nada, forget it. We melt the drives down into ingots (we're paid to destroy the data and use waste wood to fuel our furnace- so it's just my overheads). Recover 10 kilos per hour of Ally (40-50 HDD's per hour)- just a small scale test at the moment. As for the Gold side that I'm exploring, you can laugh, jest and think of me as a fool, but we already sell the boards and get £3000 per ton- 2200 lbs (1000 kilos to the rest of the world) and £50 per kilo CPUs. What I'm trying to do is get to grips with the real high yield stuff and see if I can make something on the side from this. Also looking to see whether the buyers are paying a decent price for the boards etc, by carrying out my own assesment. Again, you can laugh, but the business was built out of nothing, has expanded with no capital investment (7 full time staff, net profit year on year since inception) and basically, my job is to explore every new avenue possible. I get to get my hands dirty and then figure out whether it can be made into something financially viable. If you knew what really went on in this industry (exporting waste, child labour and of course selling out your own country for a quick profit), you'd probably be applauding me for trying to be different. This isn't some silly little game I'm playing here, I'm dealy serious about this business- You think SIMMS cares about the PMs it's binning each time it shreds a couple of tons of computers for ferrous scrap?

 

[ridgerunner]

I like to chime in and say there is plenty $ to be made from computer scrap. I just started last year and in my first year I maid little more than 4,000.00 and that when I was still green behind the ears. This year looks alot better. i take them apart and sell all the boards and drives to a facility who buys them and alot of stuff goes on ebay. So there are just some things you just need to try yourself and learn the rest from others.

Hi CARRJAM1981-Would you mind sharing your "Sell To Source" as I'm having trouble finding one that's reliable? Thanks