Gold/silver pins etc process question

[Captobvious]

I currently half over half a coffee can of pins and a few pounds of circuit board fingers and another half coffee can of cpus waiting to be processed. Now while I'm continuing to collect and process equipment for pins/fingers etc I was thinking about doing the HCL+CL method due to ease of getting a hold of supplies for it. My concern is however will I lose the silver? I keep trying to read Hokes, and I am muddling through it (even though it reads a lot like Charley Brown's mom talking at times) but haven't seen much mention of silver beyond dump it in nitric and cement it out with copper.

Put simply I don't want to do this if I'll just lose the silver or if the silver present will fubar the whole endeavor. If there's mention in Hokes on this scenario I'd appreciate knowing what page it's on as well.

Also yes, I know I can make nitric, but it's not in my comfort zone yet to do so (as I have yet to actually play with any chemicals until I'm more comfortable with the processes). Is there a poor man's nitric recipe that I can use to release the silver from the pins leaving the gold intact for further processing? (again references to where in Hokes it's mentioned would be appreciated if possible) or is there another way of processing the silver without using nitric at all? I've seen a dozen recipes for working with gold, but only really one for silver.... I guess I just don't want the silver to go to waste is all if that makes any sense.

Thoughts?

 

[patnor1011]

There is no silver in gold plated pins from computers.
If there is any at all it is negligible amount coming from solder.
Use cell - reverse electroplating as method for processing pins. No point in dissolving them and creating huge amounts of waste solution.

 

[Captobvious]

There is no silver in gold plated pins from computers.
If there is any at all it is negligible amount coming from solder.
Use cell - reverse electroplating as method for processing pins. No point in dissolving them and creating huge amounts of waste solution.

While electroplating and reverse electroplating are on my long term list of things to try I honestly know less to nothing about this process so I'd rather go with processes I'm familiar with even if it does leave me waste solution to deal with.

In this case would you suggest soaking the pins in HCL to release the gold foils? Would this work with the fingers as well? Or would that be just a dump it in AR or HCL+CL mixture and process procedure? Also if I do soak them in HCL and there is silver present, would it be safe to assume the HCL will not attack the silver?

 

[patnor1011]

What to say.
Half a can of pins is not worth to start with. Maybe it will be better to continue to stock on material and leave refining for later date. I do have kilograms of them ready and do not think about processing them. I will get easy gold from fingers or IC to fund another purchases and stock on more pins.
I certainly do not recommend using AR on pins. That will only complicate things. You can start with AP or hot HCl but both of these are long time consuming processes.
As I said before, you will not lose any silver from pins as there is none.
There may be up to 3% (that is just estimate) of silver in Tin solder - which is lets say less than 5% of total weight of your pin. There may not be silver in your solder, it may be lead. So even if you do have some silver in solder lets sat one kilogram of pins - 5% of that is 50g and 3% of that is 1,5g of silver in 1 kg of pins.
There is some silver in ceramic CPU which is worth to go after but only if you process large quantities of them.

 

[patnor1011]

One more thing worth to think about is that most of your pins will be just flash plated. The ones which are bright yellow instead of deep orange like yellow from older equipment.
That means that you will never see foil if you intend to use AP or HCl. Plating from those pins will fall off in form of dark powder and many people lost values collecting foils only.

 

[Geo]

hcl alone will not dissolve copper. there has to be some copper chloride in the solution. this is made by adding a portion of H2O2 to the hcl to dissolve a small amount of copper. if you have any old AP solution, add some of that to the hcl instead of H2O2 to jump start the process. adding an air supply (like an air pump out of a fish tank) will drive the reaction forward. pins in AP is tricky. PCI slot pins are made of bronze which contains Tin.if you overload the solution with too many pins, the Tin will saturate the solution and precipitate out and cement the pins together in an almost solid mass. place pins in the solution in an amount that will let the tin oxidize out over time. a pound to four gallons of solution until they are dissolved and then add another pound.

 

[Captobvious]

Thanks and yeah I know it's not much to process yet, but just trying to get my ducks in a row until I do. If the pins themselves are not composed of silver, what are they then? most of the pins I have been collecting are gold tipped... would the remainder be aluminum then?

 

[Geo]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphor_bronze

rades A, C and E – C51000, 52100, 50700 are commonly used nonferrous spring alloys. The combination of good physical properties, fair electrical conductivity and moderate cost make Phosphor Bronze round, square, flat and special shaped wire desirable for many springs and electrical contacts and a wide variety of wire forms where cost of properties does not prescribe Beryllium copper.

 

[AndyWilliams]

I currently half over half a coffee can of pins and a few pounds of circuit board fingers and another half coffee can of cpus waiting to be processed. Now while I'm continuing to collect and process equipment for pins/fingers etc I was thinking about doing the HCL+CL method due to ease of getting a hold of supplies for it. My concern is however will I lose the silver? I keep trying to read Hokes, and I am muddling through it (even though it reads a lot like Charley Brown's mom talking at times) but haven't seen much mention of silver beyond dump it in nitric and cement it out with copper.

Put simply I don't want to do this if I'll just lose the silver or if the silver present will fubar the whole endeavor. If there's mention in Hokes on this scenario I'd appreciate knowing what page it's on as well.

Also yes, I know I can make nitric, but it's not in my comfort zone yet to do so (as I have yet to actually play with any chemicals until I'm more comfortable with the processes). Is there a poor man's nitric recipe that I can use to release the silver from the pins leaving the gold intact for further processing? (again references to where in Hokes it's mentioned would be appreciated if possible) or is there another way of processing the silver without using nitric at all? I've seen a dozen recipes for working with gold, but only really one for silver.... I guess I just don't want the silver to go to waste is all if that makes any sense.

Thoughts?

I guess I'm just confused why you are so concerned with ensuring that the silver is well tended to, when, if you would just follow the processes in Hoke, regarding gold, you would not only tend well to your gold, but also to your silver.

On that note, I do suggest that you print out Hoke's book, or at least the index. It's a bit much to ask for page numbers of information when you haven't attempted to find the answer yourself. The index contains more than a few references for silver, including one on the electrolytic method already suggested. You should also read through the Table of Contents. Quite frankly, speaking as someone who has yet to make it through the entire book myself, I don't think you've read very much of Hoke. I think you've scanned twenty or so pages, but not much more. Reading the Table of Contents, you'd find that some of the concerns you mention, are answered within the first 50 pages.

As a fellow newbie, I'm concerned that you're going to the well too quickly. The knowledge we're looking to gain has been gathered by folks who didn't just ask questions and receive answers. They studied, read, and educated themselves. We should be doing the same thing. They've given you and I a great resource, Hoke, coupled with a much more recent tool, this forum, so that we can learn to process anything.

 

[tek4g63]

Here is a post I made some time ago. It was my first attempt at a large batch of pins in HCL/ Peroxide, also known as AP or more properly copper II chloride leach.

I hope it helps.

http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=14154

As many others explain, it creates a very large quantity of waste solution. Took something like 3 or 4 gallons of hydrochloric acid 31% to fully complete the base metal leach, then a bit more to refine the recovered gold. And keep in mind the pins I ran in that post would be considered of good quality with a reasonably thick plating.

 

[Captobvious]

Thanks for the link Tek!

Andy, Thanks for the advice but I think that you're thinking that I'm already working with chemicals, which I'm not. Currently all I'm doing is stripping computers and learning. Case in point, up to this point I thought that the pins were silver with gold plating not knowing they were brass-tin with gold plating (hence the title of the thread ). Yes I'm still reading Hokes, I haven't stopped actually... just trying to decide on which process to use is all and ask questions based on what I've read (which obviously isn't the entire book yet).