gold recovery / question for the experts

[donald236]

hey steve or any body who might be able to answer . how about that original question how would a man go about processing those mylars?
thanks again you guys every body here is very helpfull . you guys rock.
donald

 

[lazersteve]

Don,

Read this thread and let me know if you have any more questions. Please post your questions at the end of that thread instead of this one.

Keyboard Mylars

Thanks,

Steve

 

[donald236]

thanks steve that helps a lot

 

[Anonymous]

Calgoldrecycler wrote contrary to popular belief hard drives contain no platinum.
Maybe you should tell that to the company that buys my platters for platinum recovery.

 

[starzfan0211]

What company buys your platters? Can you give out that info for the rest of us?

 

[istari9]

Another aspect not mentioned in this thread is the Mylar in a hard drive. Several I have taken apart Not sure of the brand. But I have noticed many of the several hundred have gold on and I would think in the Mylar on the drives. I am surprised no one mentioned this before.

Ray

 

[skyline27]

mariannalice

Can you sell the platter whole or do you need to strip it down to the foil?

 

[meng2k7]

these platters was from fujitsu, seagate,maxtor and ibm, all of these was manufactured from 2002-2007.

i would like to sell it,can i know the buyer of your platters?
i dont know how to process pt.

thanks!

 

[calgoldrecyclers]

meng2k7,
are you speaking of laptop hard drives, or desk top hard drives?
i have broken apart both for research, and found no mylar of any kind.
there are AU traces on the PCB's and in the reader heads, but that was about all i found. as far as refineries buying platters, johnson mathey claims to buy platters, though i dont know the minimum quantity. try johnsonmathey.com

 

[lazersteve]

Cal,

I think he's talking about the ribbon connection that sends the control/data signals to the motor and head assemblies. They are usually located inside the drive housing or at the spindle motor contact points.

STeve

 

[calgoldrecyclers]

Steve,
ahhh. now that makes sense. i was thinking of actual mylar, like what you might find under a key board or number pad. i thought i was missing something! i reckon if you collected a number of them, it might be profitable to render the material, but you would want alot of them, otherwise you are just wasting good material. ( wasting expensive materials for five cents worth of return)
steve, on an unrelated ( somewhat) note,
have you ever looked into one of those old compaq 386 portable computers? i wonder what is inside, but would rather sell to a collector, as it seems to be a collectors item.
Thanks,
Cal

 

[lazersteve]

Cal,

I've got several boxes full of old laptop boards and parts.

I've disassembled several of the really old laptops and they look good for gold inside. I found several of the boards to be plated all the way across the copper cladding (even under the solder mask) with thick gold in several of the power supply modules.

Like you said in another post, the older the better. :wink:

Steve

 

[starzfan0211]

Steve,

Since you brought that up, I have a quick question for you. We have a lot of mobos that at first looked to have a lot of gold plating. They are older boards, late 90's. My son and I saw a "how Is It Made" episode where they were showing amp boards being made and showed them with copper plating across most of the board. After looking more closely, I am thinking they may be copper and not gold. I do not have the model here, but I can get it this evening.

What have you found? More copper plating or gold?

 

[Gotrek]

Even newer(early pentiums) laptops are gold heavy. I took apart some old compaq laptops and the entire ground plane on the CPU card was gold plated and thick too because it took me a while to file through it. I didn't look at the rest of the boards (I was going after parts at the time) But I recall putting the CPU aside it had a large 1" ground place all the way around the edge and really shined

 

[starzfan0211]

Sorry. I should have specified. These are from towers, not laptops. I did pull a newer Dell laptop apart and it is definitely heavy with gold. But I probably have 50-100 of the tower boards that I am trying to decide. I did look up the make and model on google search and found some info, but no specs to see what it is.

 

[Gotrek]

A lot of old boards had gold coloured solder mask. Scrape it off. Gold and copper are easy to tell apart once you remove the solder mask

 

[lazersteve]

Starz,

Following this link:

Solder Mask

Steve

 

[starzfan0211]

Thanks Steve. That is exactly what it is. You are definitely the man of many answers!

 

[meng2k7]

Cal,

I think he's talking about the ribbon connection that sends the control/data signals to the motor and head assemblies. They are usually located inside the drive housing or at the spindle motor contact points.

STeve

steve

That was so called Actuator assembly part.
thanks.