First Time with e-scrap

[kjavanb123]

Dear All,

I have learned the recovery and refining of PGMs from cats thank to great helps from awesome people in this forum. I like to start computer scrap refining. Here is my first test kits.



same board i think it's the front.


Also are these fingers?


Thanks
Kev

 

[jimdoc]

Those are pins, not fingers. Are those boards from a CD Drive? They are not a higher end item.
Fingers are on the flat ends of boards that plug into a connector like on a motherboard.
They will be on video and other add-on cards and memory.

Jim

 

[philddreamer]

Hi Kev!
Go here http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=60&t=11814#p115736 ,
another fellow member had a question on fingers.

Take care!

Phil

 

[joem]

I would sell those by the pound, you will make more money. As stated above get started on fingers first, it's not hard at all.

 

[kjavanb123]

Thanks for your quick respond. These items were only few I picked from a bag containing other parts. I will go ahead and take photos of each different types of e-scrap in that bag, and try to look for fingers in them. Also for maybe new commers it would be good to have a photo of different parts with highlighted parts that have values in them.

Also on these items in photos, anything valuable? Is there any link that show individual parts of board and its PM content?

Thnx
Kevin

 

[philddreamer]

Sound like a good idea! In "TUTORIALS", http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=11827,
Patnor has some information on how to recover the PM's by incineration & panning from other parts, like mobos, video, network, sound cards, top - black parts...

 

[kjavanb123]

I went through the entire bag that contained the e-scraps and most of them are CD-ROM drive I guess, but could find the following cards which seem to be audio and graphic cards, which seem to have the fingers you mentioned in your post here. Please advise



and the following items


and



Also these 2 main boards which the CPU seems like being taken apart, any valuble items?


and



Thanks in advance
Kj

 

[kjavanb123]

I went ahead and google-ed some of the items off the list provided by http://www.boardsort.com under their payout section and came up with pictures for these items. I noticed most of them have that golden color fingers. Any of the pro members like to take a shot and post the possible PMs inside each of these?

1. Connector Types (male/female)


2.memory RAM


3. RAMBUS RAM ( metallic cover )


4. ISA Card


5. IC Chips


Thanks
Kevin

 

[kuma]

I went ahead and google-ed some of the items off the list provided by http://www.boardsort.com under their payout section and came up with pictures for these items. I noticed most of them have that golden color fingers. Any of the pro members like to take a shot and post the possible PMs inside each of these?Thanks
Kevin

Hi Kevin , how are things ?
I hope all is well!
I'm a noob and as such I'm no pro in any way , but I feel that I can help you just a little here, :mrgreen:
In my experience , all of the connectors in your first image should contain gold plated pins. Some may only be partly plated , but it all adds up!
In your second image , apart from the obvious gold plating on the edge connector fingers , in my experience there will be microscopic gold wires running through the IC's.

Magnified IC gold wire image ; http://tinyurl.com/6f722q5

Your rambus ram sticks again have the obvious gold plated edge connectors , but have no IC's , only exposed silicon chips under the metal plate. I'm not too familiar with this kind of ram yet so someone else should be able to advise more on these.
Both types of ram should also have soldered onto them some monolithic capacitors. These can contain PGM's (platinum group metals).
Again , I'm not overly famimiar with the type of IC's in your last two images , although I can say that as hard as I've looked at this type through a microscope I have yet to find any gold wore running through them.
They could contain some silver , or even some PGM's , but I really don't know.
Again someone else with more experience with these should be able to advise.
I hope that this can give you an idea ,
All the best with it and kind regards ,
Chris

(Edited to include link to image)

 

[samuel-a]

Again , I'm not overly famimiar with the type of IC's in your last two images , although I can say that as hard as I've looked at this type through a microscope I have yet to find any gold wore running through them.
They could contain some silver , or even some PGM's , but I really don't know.

Iv'e looked at dozens of types and sizes of them... never found any gold wires.

 

[philddreamer]

I have some of these older type MC830P, they are gold plated. Are they IC's?

Phil

 

[Barren Realms 007]

I have some of these older type MC830P, they are gold plated. Are they IC's?

Phil

Yes they are and if you break them apart you should find that most of them have gold inside the chip's as well.

 

[philddreamer]

Thank you Frank!

 

[Palladium]

Has anybody heard from Chris at Boardsort? I have a client i have been trying to direct to him for two days now and can't get him to reply by email or pm. Somebody got his phone# ? I can't believe it's not listed on his website. :shock:

 

[Claudie]

Chris said that they had some problems awhile back with someone spamming their e-mail. Maybe that has happened again. Keep trying, I'm sure he will reply.

 

[Acid_Bath76]

I never heard from Chris last week, but Bruce sent the payment for my last shipment. Chris must be swamped, or on vacation.

 

[jmdlcar]

The pins on the back of floppy, CD-ROM and hard drive have much gold on them? If I would get about 1lbs of pins would I get much gold foil?

 

[philddreamer]

JM, check in this thread:
http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=9943&p=95944&hilit=pin+yield#p95944

Phil

 

[kjavanb123]

All,

Thanks for your informative responds. I found this interesting site that might be usefull determining the ICs or parts on any boards

here is the link
http://www.datasheetcatalog.com/

And for monolithic capacitors which are tiny and time-consuming to remove from the boards, would be practical to just shred the entire boards with resistors and capacitors, then remove the base metals, and proceed with dissolving the Pd/Ag alloy in the monolithic?

Thanks
Kevin

 

[patnor1011]

All,

Thanks for your informative responds. I found this interesting site that might be usefull determining the ICs or parts on any boards

here is the link
http://www.datasheetcatalog.com/

And for monolithic capacitors which are tiny and time-consuming to remove from the boards, would be practical to just shred the entire boards with resistors and capacitors, then remove the base metals, and proceed with dissolving the Pd/Ag alloy in the monolithic?

Thanks
Kevin

Kevin, this whole forum is mainly about recovering metals from electronics. All you need to do is take some time and read through. Most of what you asked and what you might ask was answered and is here already.
To your last question - it is possible but not practical. Not economical for backyard refining in any way. Pd/Ag in monolithic caps on one motherboard is tiny fraction of a weight of board - that small you probably cant measure that without some hi tech scales.