Gold inside chips (black, flatpacks - not CPU)

[xALmoN]

Yeah i understand. but does the heat gun cause the chips to deform in anyway?

and about the N/S bridge chips, do you just pry them off when hot? i can't seem to figure out a way without them flying all over the place or the silicon glass like thing chipping off and flying all over.

 

[patnor1011]

They do not deform. You have to use heatgun say 10 seconds, only enough to solder start being soft, melt.

 

[xALmoN]

Not a problem.

I will try to do that when i start processing the minuscule amount of ram and pci cards i've collected

EDIT: So, I've tried pointing the heat gun directly on the chips and in a few seconds, they just slide off. Amazing! Even the flat packs that were quite stubbornly stuck on the board would come off without complaint. And now i've got around 200g of mixed chips, flatpacks and black I/Cs in a box from my motherboards. When I cut off the fingers on the ram I've collected so far, i'll also heatgun those chips. Was surprisingly efficient. Though I'm not sure how expensive my electricity bill for this month will be.

 

[acpeacemaker]

Cheers
-Andrew

 

[patnor1011]

Not a problem.

I will try to do that when i start processing the minuscule amount of ram and pci cards i've collected

EDIT: So, I've tried pointing the heat gun directly on the chips and in a few seconds, they just slide off. Amazing! Even the flat packs that were quite stubbornly stuck on the board would come off without complaint. And now i've got around 200g of mixed chips, flatpacks and black I/Cs in a box from my motherboards. When I cut off the fingers on the ram I've collected so far, i'll also heatgun those chips. Was surprisingly efficient. Though I'm not sure how expensive my electricity bill for this month will be.

I try not to mix them, or separate to 4 types at least.
This is just my sorting from my experience:
1. low yield black rectangular eprom like type with thick legs on two sides /usually older boards/
2. middle yield - all other square or rectangular type with legs on 2 or 4 sides
3. middle to good - ram stick chips /older thick or new thin with legs on 2 sides/
4. holy grail - s/n bridge BGA IC chips /only those with black plastic square part on top of green fibre part, NOT whole green type with small silicon chip nad capacitors on top/

 

[Laitinen Marco]

Hello! Im new and from Sweden.
Thanks all for a great forum!
And thanks Patnor for this tread, very inspiring.

How do you take away the last non magnetic parts in goldpan? Do you pan it out?

I did burn the chips then crush them then washed with water then used magnet, then i tried to pan...
Have never pan before and the thing i use is not realy a gold pan, so now iam stuck with a small pile
With small copper parts and hopefully some gold in but not shore How to get concentrate like in your
pictures whitout losing my gold.

Thanks again / Marco.L

Sorry for my bad inglish

 

[xALmoN]

Not a problem.

I will try to do that when i start processing the minuscule amount of ram and pci cards i've collected

EDIT: So, I've tried pointing the heat gun directly on the chips and in a few seconds, they just slide off. Amazing! Even the flat packs that were quite stubbornly stuck on the board would come off without complaint. And now i've got around 200g of mixed chips, flatpacks and black I/Cs in a box from my motherboards. When I cut off the fingers on the ram I've collected so far, i'll also heatgun those chips. Was surprisingly efficient. Though I'm not sure how expensive my electricity bill for this month will be.

I try not to mix them, or separate to 4 types at least.
This is just my sorting from my experience:
1. low yield black rectangular eprom like type with thick legs on two sides /usually older boards/
2. middle yield - all other square or rectangular type with legs on 2 or 4 sides
3. middle to good - ram stick chips /older thick or new thin with legs on 2 sides/
4. holy grail - s/n bridge BGA IC chips /only those with black plastic square part on top of green fibre part, NOT whole green type with small silicon chip nad capacitors on top/

So where do those with the small silicon chip go? I'll do a quick sorting when i pull off more chips tomorrow. I havent depopulated any ram so far, so ram chips should go in another corner too?

 

[patnor1011]

Hello! Im new and from Sweden.
Thanks all for a great forum!
And thanks Patnor for this tread, very inspiring.

How do you take away the last non magnetic parts in goldpan? Do you pan it out?

I did burn the chips then crush them then washed with water then used magnet, then i tried to pan...
Have never pan before and the thing i use is not realy a gold pan, so now iam stuck with a small pile
With small copper parts and hopefully some gold in but not shore How to get concentrate like in your
pictures whitout losing my gold.

Thanks again / Marco.L

Sorry for my bad inglish

Marco,
Nitric acid will sort them out in no time. When panning be very careful fome wires are very very small and can be carried away with mud. I use Acid when I do have say about 5% of concentrate still in pan. That will dissolve small non magnetic pins and then panning is again easier. If you do have a lot of broken silicone dies (centre pieces) in your concentrate - they look like broken glass this is again hard to pan out without losing values just proceed to AR (after you did dissolve pins in Nitric).

 

[patnor1011]

So where do those with the small silicon chip go? I'll do a quick sorting when i pull off more chips tomorrow. I havent depopulated any ram so far, so ram chips should go in another corner too?

To the skip they go... :lol:
No, really I was joking. I do not think they do contain much of value apart of some dots of gold plating on top and something in capacitors. I do not know about anyone who processed sizeable load in some way and report any values in them. I do have about a pound of them which I may try to process or I am willing to donate to some skilled member to try to perform some recovery in order to know if there is anything inside. I will see if I will have time to try to do something with them but at this moment I just put them aside.

 

[Laitinen Marco]

Hello! Im new and from Sweden.
Thanks all for a great forum!
And thanks Patnor for this tread, very inspiring.

How do you take away the last non magnetic parts in goldpan? Do you pan it out?

I did burn the chips then crush them then washed with water then used magnet, then i tried to pan...
Have never pan before and the thing i use is not realy a gold pan, so now iam stuck with a small pile
With small copper parts and hopefully some gold in but not shore How to get concentrate like in your
pictures whitout losing my gold.

Thanks again / Marco.L

Sorry for my bad inglish

Marco,
Nitric acid will sort them out in no time. When panning be very careful fome wires are very very small and can be carried away with mud. I use Acid when I do have say about 5% of concentrate still in pan. That will dissolve small non magnetic pins and then panning is again easier. If you do have a lot of broken silicone dies (centre pieces) in your concentrate - they look like broken glass this is again hard to pan out without losing values just proceed to AR (after you did dissolve pins in Nitric).

Ok,i will use nitric, i found the broken silicone dies a little bit easier to pan becourse they was not as heavy as the rest
of the material, but i probably lost some gold, i should have used nitric a bit earlier i think, the gold wires is much
smaller then one can belive, hard for me to see what is gold and what is not due to the lack of experience,

Thank you very much Patnor / Marco

 

[xALmoN]

So where do those with the small silicon chip go? I'll do a quick sorting when i pull off more chips tomorrow. I havent depopulated any ram so far, so ram chips should go in another corner too?

To the skip they go... :lol:
No, really I was joking. I do not think they do contain much of value apart of some dots of gold plating on top and something in capacitors. I do not know about anyone who processed sizeable load in some way and report any values in them. I do have about a pound of them which I may try to process or I am willing to donate to some skilled member to try to perform some recovery in order to know if there is anything inside. I will see if I will have time to try to do something with them but at this moment I just put them aside.

Would probably need to figure a way to shred it along with the silicon chip and see how things go from there.

 

[acpeacemaker]

I use a very durable plastic container. Putting the silicon chips in a handful at a time. Then cover with water. Then I use the butt end of a 12 steel punch or "all" as mortar and pestle. The water keeps all the pieces from going everywhere. Then pan the remaining wires that were still attached to the chips. From the rest of the remains I have found ag and pd.

 

[patnor1011]

I agree, plenty of Ag and Pd in chips. I once got them packed where it was written on package Ag/Pd plating.

 

[xALmoN]

But by silicon chips, did you mean just that square piece, or the whole chip itself along with the fibre part?

 

[acpeacemaker]

Silicon chips, as in the wafer inside the actual chip, flatpack etc.

 

[patnor1011]

Correct. It is just that small part which looks like mirror on one side. Like broken glass when crushed.

 

[xALmoN]

Correct. It is just that small part which looks like mirror on one side. Like broken glass when crushed.

And fiber base thrown away? Does it separate easily from the fibre base?

 

[patnor1011]

That green bottom base do have some plating so that goes to AP.
We talk about BGA IC chip package which is green bottom ans slightly smaller black plastic top. Bulk of gold, well over 95% is in black plastic top part.
The whole green BGA IC chip package which has very small silicone square top part comparing to bottom part and some monolythic capacitors - there I do not have any data on this one yet and never heard about anybody who processed them, I keep them but I do not expect anything from them so far.
I will try to do some experiments with them, I must have over pound by now.

 

[srlaulis]

I wonder if we could take the green wafer, after it is separated from the black top, and soak in ap or acid with a bubble stone, to remove excess metals. Then could we just soak the batch in hcl/clorox? I'm sorry if my posts seems novice. I have been silently reading on this forum for months now, and this is my first post, lol. I am sure I am missing something with my proposed idea. I was just thinking that if you can dip gold plated dishware into hcl/clorox to remove gold plate, why couldn't we do the same with the green wafers once the junk metal is removed? Please be easy on me. :|

 

[Geo]

I wonder if we could take the green wafer, after it is separated from the black top, and soak in ap or acid with a bubble stone, to remove excess metals. Then could we just soak the batch in hcl/clorox? I'm sorry if my posts seems novice. I have been silently reading on this forum for months now, and this is my first post, lol. I am sure I am missing something with my proposed idea. I was just thinking that if you can dip gold plated dishware into hcl/clorox to remove gold plate, why couldn't we do the same with the green wafers once the junk metal is removed? Please be easy on me. :|

thats exactly what you do with the green bases from north-south bridge chips.AP and then hcl/Cl for the loose gold foils.