Gold & Platinum plated tweezers

[Anonymous]

Hey everyone,

I have about 3 5gl. buckets full of used tweezers that were plated with gold & platinum. Three quarters of the tweezer is plated with 50microinches of gold and the rest is coated with 80 microinches of platinum. What would be the best thing for me to do with this in order to get as much out of this as possible?

 

[Scott2357]

I would suggest first testing to verify these are indeed plated with PMs. I don't know much about the medical industry but I can't think of any good reason to plate gold and platinum on tweezers. Stainless steel is usually the standard. I'm not saying they're not as you say, but testing will show the best coarse of action.

 

[goldsilverpro]

I assume the numbers are as you say. There seems to be knowledge in the way you stated them. Also, I can see medical equipment being plated in this manner and the thicknesses seem logical.

As stated, the gold is worth about $.44/sq.in. of plated area and the Pt is about $1.80/sq.in. Very valuable buckets, or so it seems.

The gold is easily stripped in the sulfuric cell. Pt is another problem. I know of no selective stripper. I doubt if Pt will strip in the sulfuric cell. I don't think that it was in the original patent. Might be worth a try, though. It will strip palladium.

I assume the base metal is stainless. If so, you may be able to undermine the Pt plating, so that it separates from the SS, with some sort of hot acid. I have heard of 10% sulfuric, by volume, being used in this way, on gold filled watch bands. I have never tried it.

If these numbers are real, I personally wouldn't trust a refiner with them. This is just the sort of material that they could really prey upon. I would play around with them, 1 tweezer at a time, and eventually figure out how to do it. I'm sure other people can give other suggestions. There's always a way to do anything. I can think of few other ways, but most involve a lot of fumes.

Here's some other possible, but very fumey, approaches.
(1) Dissolve everything with aqua regia and drop the Pt
(2) Dissolve with aqua regia until just to the point before the solution tests for the presence of Pt. At this point, about 5%, or so, of the stainless and 100% of the Pt will be undissolved. The presence of a certain amount of stainless will prevent the Pt from dissolving. Then, what is left is dissolved in AR and the Pt is dropped.
(3) Dissolve the stainless only with, maybe, hot HCl

A refiner would melt everything and ship the bars to a copper smelter for refining. He would do this by adding at least twice the weight of copper to the melt. This would lower the melting point so he could do it in a gas furnace.

I would try the hot 10% sulfuric first. It is the least dangerous and least fumey of the bunch. If it works, it will also work on the gold, if you haven't already stripped it.

If the tweezers are made of something besides stainless, some of these methods may not work. Find out what they are made of.

Keep talking to us.

 

[OMG]

Send me a pair of platinum plated tweezers and I'll try stripping them.
I've been looking for some metal that will withstand my electrolysis cell setup. All the anodes keep degrading. I just got in some titanium and it also gets dissolved. Platinum is one of my last chances. I have a feeling it won't hold up either.
But seriously. I'd buy a pair off you or something just to give it a try.