Gold inside chips (black, flatpacks - not CPU)

[patnor1011]

Download my first ebook and you will see.
From one kilogram of chips I incinerate, sieve and separate pins and silicone dies from I get ashes which are then washed with water to obtain concentrate. Only this concentrate is treated with acid first to remove any small metallic contaminants, then it can be incinerated, crushed and water washed again. From one kilogram I will get about half a cup of concentrate which is good to go to AR.
It certainly is profitable for me to recover gold from this. I incinerate in fireplace which heat mu water along with incinerating chips, water is very cheap here, in fact we do have water free as for now. When they will start charging for water I will utilize rainwater which we have more than we need here.
It is certainly more profitable to process IC chips than plated pins from common computer scrap.

 

[patnor1011]

No point to spend acid on incinerated chips until they look like on picture which I posted several post up here.
http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=11827&start=320#p188596

 

[some888]

is the light material,that has to be washed away and it is useless

yes it's pretty much what I mean by saying ashes

funny enough I could not see any solid gold bondings in the whole bunch of processed chips what consisted mainly from different IC chips
the very most of bonding material was copper with some gold plating, (alliminium - disolved already using sodium hydroxide)

where do I find chips with solid gold bonding ? it looks they has to be rare these days :roll:

 

[Geo]

there are no copper bonding wires. bonding wires are either aluminum or gold. have you searched for bonding wires. try this, http://lmgtfy.com/?q=gold+bonding+wires

 

[some888]

hi!
Surely they do not look like a gold to me unless gold could oxidise so much due to burning with oxygen, besides just to have a look how that metal may look without heating I took a pliers and crushed one chips manually - it is absolutely same material in it (looks like plated copper)

So far I had from chips Aluminium or / and Nickel (pins and wires)

And plated copper lookalike metal (wires)

including quite big square plates with at least 4 flat wires on the edges

I will process it all anyway, but honestly I seen no solid gold bonding wires so far
if anybody will tell me that something I think is copper, but actually solid gold I will jump in joy 8)


thanks

 

[some888]

there are no copper bonding wires. bonding wires are either aluminum or gold. have you searched for bonding wires. try this, http://lmgtfy.com/?q=gold+bonding+wires

hi!
I just followed your advice and found out that copper is perfectly used for bonding as well

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wire_bonding

another number that does not look good

Typical manufacturers make gold wire in diameters from 0.0005 inch (12.5 micrometres) and larger

this number is a bit close to quite many gold plated materials

 

[Geo]

thats all good, but if you read the whole article, it states that copper is difficult to work with due to oxidation and has a shelf life. i have looked at many bonding wires magnified many times and have yet to find any copper bonding wires. must be fairly new. leave it to the crafty Chinese to make inferior products. like i said previously, some are better and some are worse. for all of our practical purposes, for now, it is safe to assume that the chips to date contain gold or aluminum bonding wires.

by the way, from your descriptions, you may not be looking for the right objects. a single bonding wire is very hard to see with the naked eye. i need a jewelers Loupe to determine whether they are copper or aluminum. the only real way to determine gold content is to follow steps set down by Pat. when you deviate from his steps, you will be disappointed every time.

if i were you, i would stop posting commentary until i knew what i was talking about and start reading this post from start to finish along with relevant links.

 

[some888]

if i were you, i would stop posting commentary

do you want me to stop posting?
I was just looking for some advices and I think I did not offended anybody in any way

anyway I get a bit tired of looking at the miserable remains of chips - I put all ash+metal+silicone into one bunch and treating for now with HCI
I hope I will manage today to treat it with AR and to recover some gold (if there is anything :lol: )

I will let you know results

 

[Geo]

no, of course not. i did not mean for you not to post, i just meant commentary about chips. questions asking for advice is great, how else would we learn AFTER we have searched for the answer and could not find it otherwise.

 

[solar_plasma]

I will let you know results

I know the results already.

 

[some888]

hi!
ok as promised here are results.
I successfully recovered some gold :lol:
but I can not weight it up - I simply do not have such a weights.

So far from about one pound of Chips I recovered gold far less then 1g - probably about 0.1 maybe less.
they were different IC chips with production dated probably early 2000 on different expansion boards
just to compare when processing gold plating like "gold fingers" or gold plated contacts from the same expansion boards I recovered about 1.5g of gold

I did not processed any chips like north bridge , south bridge or ram. but when googling a bit more about chips found out that even CPU like Celeron contain no gold content at all, so what do you really expect from regular IC which is times cheaper
when thinking a bit more you could buy even mobo starting from 20 quid or so. That is including:
* production cost
* profit
* shipping cost
* profit for reseller (wholesale + retail)
* VAT
So I do not know how much gold really should be in it
I do not think I will process any chips again, because even the chips I used are quite old, looks a bit unrealistic to get more ancient chips with more gold content
In my case Very most of chips used Copper bonding wires (80-90%) and aluminium. Very very few were using gold unless on plated copper.

 

[patnor1011]

You can not look at it this way. While motherboard may cost 20$ not all of weight represent IC. Also IC bonding wires are so small I can guarantee you that you will have hard time to see it with naked eye. You need a lot of them to accumulate visible pile.

I have to disagree with you.
IC chips are the most valuable part from electronic boards. Try to take off s/n bridge and your buyer will downgrade price for at least a half of what he pay for motherboard.
Try to take out all IC and he will offer you even less if anything.

Processing IC take some time to master. I know what I talk about I was working with them for a few months before I started this thread. Many times I washed too fast and then I was wondering why I do not have gold in my pan. Since then I processed IC, hundreds of pounds of them and I can assure you that if you will master process, and do it with maximum concentration and slow, you will be amazed at results.
Every shortcut or rushing things will cost you dearly.
If you do not get at least 0.3-0.5 g from pound of mixed IC you do something wrong. (maybe you just had a lot of eprom type, bigger IC in your lot, from those I would estimate very small yield)

 

[some888]

Hi.
No disrespect but how did you managed to get them using simple panning if they not visible. So they were visible enough for you.
But as I said in my case I ended up with pretty much nothing. Quite likely after some time I will have some amount of this chips again I have no problems to sell it for next to nothing if anybody could recover more gold from them. But trust me In my case gold bonding wires were almost not present

P.S Eprom was clearly present among my chips, but difficult to say percentage

P.P.S 0.3 g your yield from pound of chips is not really far from my estimated 0.1 ( as said earlier I have no means to weight it up) . But even then I will not process them anymore, unless having for free 100 pounds of chips even then I doubt I will make any profit out of it. I rather recover gold from otheir materials

 

[patnor1011]

Easy peasy.
Even that they are very hard to be seen they are way much heavier than ash. Besides, ash is being dissolved in water and go out as dirty water. Simple panning done carefully ensure that those wires will get accumulated in the middle of your pan.
I can once again point you to pictures I posted few posts up. There you will see how wires look when they are accumulated. 0.3 g is not my yield, I simply said that if you do not get at least this you do something wrong. You stated that you got less than 0.1 g which is three times less than bottom number of my suggestion. I said .3-.5 g
Eprom type will lower yield significantly.
Look, I cant convince you there is more gold in IC as processing them is clearly not working for you.
It is your experience and your decision.
This is clear example of yield controversy. Every time when somebody ask what is yield of this and that, correct answer is: as much as you can recover, or - it all depend on your process, your experience and your efficiency.
I will process them all day long without hesitation as I know what to expect and what to look for.
Now please note that I do not mean it in bad way or do not want to be disrespectful.
You may be world famous piano player but if they will give you guitar first time, you wont be able to entertain people.

 

[g_axelsson]

The wires are really thin, I use microscope to check my concentrates as I can't see the single wires without help.

For an idea of how much gold there could be, check in the pictures in this thread.... I just say WOW!!! Nice pictures!
http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=13667

Göran

 

[Geo]

The wires are really thin, I use microscope to check my concentrates as I can't see the single wires without help.

For an idea of how much gold there could be, check in the pictures in this thread.... I just say WOW!!! Nice pictures!
http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=13667

Göran

thanks Goran. when i try to refine a new material, i jump into the effort with both feet and try to gain as much information as i can even if it means i have to deconstruct a few things. 8)

 

[some888]

Via KT133 - stopped production in 2003, used for AMD Socket A (that is when they still had some ceramic CPU's).
So what are the realistic changes of getting even few kilos of these?
first at all to consider AMD sales where always shadow of Intel sales so this via chip depended on it
I do not have all stats but majority of "branded" PC where not using (and still are using very small amount of AMD compare to intel)
So AMD was left in those days (and still is) for relatively small amount of PC enthusiast (including overclockers), but even myself to be considered quite IT qeek never ever had AMD

Secondly most of them should go to rubbish bin or to be recycled about 5-7 years ago, Because these days Pentium 4 and duos are recycled

I'm not questioning gold content in this particular chip
but it looks like a bit inappropriate example of " Look mate here it is so much gold - how did you manage to miss it?"

You may be world famous piano player but if they will give you guitar first time, you wont be able to entertain people.

Agree 100% but you still did not convince me that I left some gold out of recovery..... Well even if I knew I did I will not admit it easily even to myself :roll: :roll: :roll:
But so far you convinced me to give it another go
Very soon I will have another bunch of IT related scrap ( I asked my friends to give me it scrap instead of putting to rubbish bin)
Next time I will be more specific and include pics as well

The wires are really thin, I use microscope to check my concentrates as I can't see the single wires without help.

Göran

Just from curiosity why do you check them in microscope?

A bit time consuming - if using conventional microscope you will need to check it drop by drop between two glasses.......adjust the illuminator and diaphragm......focus the image ......readjust the mirror, or diaphragm......needles to say microscope has to be covered every time when not in use

 

[g_axelsson]

Via KT133 - stopped production in 2003, used for AMD Socket A (that is when they still had some ceramic CPU's).
So what are the realistic changes of getting even few kilos of these?
first at all to consider AMD sales where always shadow of Intel sales so this via chip depended on it
I do not have all stats but majority of "branded" PC where not using (and still are using very small amount of AMD compare to intel)
So AMD was left in those days (and still is) for relatively small amount of PC enthusiast (including overclockers), but even myself to be considered quite IT qeek never ever had AMD

Secondly most of them should go to rubbish bin or to be recycled about 5-7 years ago, Because these days Pentium 4 and duos are recycled

I'm not questioning gold content in this particular chip
but it looks like a bit inappropriate example of " Look mate here it is so much gold - how did you manage to miss it?"

It's not the model it's the type of package... I give up. :roll:

I have to admit, you are unique. Normally any new member here sees only the gold and we have to tell them it's just a small amount and not as much as they think. But this is the first time we failed to convinve someone that "Therrre's gold in them chips!"
Okay, I put my money where my mouth is, I'll buy them from you dirt cheap any day.

My first batch that I have collected during the winter concists of 200 grams of the top plastics, somewhere between 100 and 200 chips totally, so I would say that it's a good probability to find this type of chip.

The wires are really thin, I use microscope to check my concentrates as I can't see the single wires without help.

Göran

Just from curiosity why do you check them in microscope?

A bit time consuming - if using conventional microscope you will need to check it drop by drop between two glasses.......adjust the illuminator and diaphragm......focus the image ......readjust the mirror, or diaphragm......needles to say microscope has to be covered every time when not in use

Not my microscope, it's a focusing microscope from an electron microscope that I have mounted on the end of a movable arm (part of an old monitor arm) so I can adjust the height. I use it daily so I never cover it up. It gives only 10-20 times magnification but in stereo and it has a working distance of around 30 centimeters. It takes me seconds to swing it up and look down in a jar or on the fracture of a broken IC to check for golden wires.

For higher resolutions I have an electron microscope, a SEM that goes to 100.000 times magnification and a TEM that goes to 800.000 times, but those takes longer time to run.

Göran

 

[solar_plasma]

I have to admit, you are unique. Normally any new member here sees only the gold and we have to tell them it's just a small amount and not as much as they think. But this is the first time we failed to convinve someone that "Therrre's gold in them chips!"

I think we even don't want to convince anyone. His ignorance is his very right. 'What makes me wonder about the constitution of his personality is, that I feel, he wants to convince us. This entire behaviour has a missionary touch. In fact, I do not only wonder, I feel disturbed, since this one is a more important forum thread to me, so I can't just stop reading those posts.

888
Yes, you are right, there is no gold at all. You are very skilled, smart and intelligent, thank you for enlighting us by your wisdom.

 

[some888]

888
Yes, you are right, there is no gold at all.

no mate it's not what I'm saying. Gold is everywhere: in Gold plating, in Chips 8), even in ocean water and human body (actually quite a lot from dental point of view :evil: ) - but what is more important quantities

888
You are very skilled, smart and intelligent, thank you for enlighting us by your wisdom.

You are welcome m8, I know I am good :lol:

Despite my attitude ( looks like quite few people think I'm arrogant) I still hope to find some new friends here. Trust me I have no intention to offend anybody and all my post purely "scientific discussion"

thanks

P.S did anybody came up with idea of using a centrifuge for extracting bonding wires?

I simply can not imagine myself doing this in my garden 8)