Home made blue bowl

Gold Refining Forum

Help Support Gold Refining Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

samuel-a

Well-known member
Joined
Oct 7, 2009
Messages
2,190
Hi all...

I finally had some time today to play with an idea i had for ages... - running ashed chips through a blue bowl. The chips that i ran here were ashed chemically, not incinirated. But believe it will be similar.
The sample was very small - 15g of thin square IC's.

It took me about an hour to scavange all the equipment i needed and improvise it to a fully functioning Macgyver style BB. Took an old 10 liter chemicals bottle i had, cut it to size and cut a hole in the middle. Then, i cut with a box cutter the neck of a root beer bottle, aligned it and glued it to the bottom to form the inveted funnel.

Inspite of it not being perfectly tuned, It worked wonderfully in removing the the crap off the gold bond wires and silicon cores.

Took a 5 gal bucket, placed a small wood frame to hold the BB, throw in a large aquarium pump and placed the outlet in the BB:
BB1.png
BB2.png

And here's the result..

BB3.png
BB4.png

Took a little video (it is private on youtube, so only you can see it):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uD877wqJz2k

Next step is to attach the in water hose to the wall of the bowl so it will run the water horizontally (180 degrees), Cahnge to a better valve to control the flow of water and placing it in the middle of the hose unlike now whare it is the outlet.

Your thoughts...? :mrgreen:
 
locked out, + i don't have a youtube account, can you embed it in this thread ?

as for the idea its great, not only is it made from mostly scraps but its practical & works well.

using gravity flow, brilliant & you can use the same water over and over again. just dont let the mosquito's bread in it LOL

you may get more ideas from taking a look at the growing beds at a hydroponics shop.

i say 8 free points for you samuel-a
 
Sorry, it should work now.

For some reason, the embedding option does not work.
 
i see these at thrift shops all the time

food_safe_tin_metal_mini_bundt_cake_pan_size_478_x_178.jpg


bunt cake bowl


EDIT: added description.
 
I like it. Necromancer had the same idea I did, except I thought of the angel food cake pan. Some are flat on top with ridges in them also.
 
Good work Sam
Here are 2 pics of my Blue Bowl so you can see where they bring in the water and the slope of the cone to help fine tune what goes out the top.
Maybe use a tall funnel and cut the spout off to get the sloped cone, it might work.

PS. pardon the dust. I haven't used it yet this year.
 

Attachments

  • Blue Bowl.JPG
    Blue Bowl.JPG
    1.1 MB · Views: 861
  • Blue Bowl_1.JPG
    Blue Bowl_1.JPG
    1.4 MB · Views: 861
All,

I built a bowl trying to mimic what Sam had done here, I ran the left over ash from panning, here are result, the bowl is cake funnel.

The BB,
image.jpg

My blue well gray bowl in action,
image.jpg

Almost finished cleaning the junk from the heavy metals,
image.jpg

I learned the angel and location of the water hose is very critical also water pressure, so valve is a must in this system, plus eventhough I had used mortat pestel to grind the ash, and filter, still I could see poder size along bigger sizes mixed, so a homogenius sizing will improve the performance and control the loss.
Addition of liquid soap is a must.

Will try more experiments tommorow.

Regards
Krvin
 
Sam,

If the forum had a MacGyver award you would definitely be a front runner for it. You take common household materials and apply them to the task at hand very effectively. I just got done processing about 2 pounds of IC ash using the stir and pour method. It's very wasteful and not fun to say the least. I will definitely have to make one of these in the future if I am to continue processing ICs. Good job 8)
 
Mario,

Thanks bud.

IMHO, to run crushed ash from incineration would need alot of fine tuning. I found that i'm losing a lot of gold in the form of very small lengths of broken bond wire.

p.s - here's a glimpse to the next project... :twisted:
incinerator.png
 
One of the critical things about blue bowls is that the input feed must be sieved to tight limits. You cannot run big and little particles together. The operation of the thing is based on resistance to water flows, and big and little pieces resist flow differently. If they are essentially the same size, then the density difference allows the water to sort the two and not and the sorting is not affected by any size difference. The guy who makes these things sells them with a 30 mesh screen.
 
Hi,

I did screen them prior to using BB, but I decided to leach the ash and all the ferrous parts using sodium cyanide and peroxide roll on my ball mill in a bucket for at least 10-15 minutes to make sure cyanide can reach all the PMs in the ash, the filter press it, run the ferrous part in the same cyanide solution to get any gold plating, I am thinking with the agitation it gets in cyanide, the recovery rate would be higher than gravity separation.

Thanks for the tip though,
Regards
Kevin
 
Dissolving gold in cyanide with no oxidizer beyond the oxygen in the air is a slow process. Most mines give 24 to 48 hours to dissolve particles of gold 50 microns in size and smaller. Most mines that have coarser gold have a gravity circuit to catch the coarser stuff and cyanide to catch the tiny fragments.
I don't know your system, but I am not sure that 10 to 15 minutes will be enough time to fully take the gold into a cyanide solution.
 
Reno,

I meant sodium cyanide/ hydrogen peroxide leaching the ashes, since most of copper is removed not worried about gold plating on copper.

Thanks
Kevin
 
samuel-a said:
Mario,

Thanks bud.

IMHO, to run crushed ash from incineration would need alot of fine tuning. I found that i'm losing a lot of gold in the form of very small lengths of broken bond wire.

p.s - here's a glimpse to the next project... :twisted:

sam how did the incinerator projet ended up
 
i see these at thrift shops all the time

food_safe_tin_metal_mini_bundt_cake_pan_size_478_x_178.jpg


bunt cake bowl


EDIT: added description.
Yes those can work, but i beleive a smooth bottom is desireable so there isnt additional catches *(of the wrong kind)? the dream mat guy makes a silcon mat insert for blue bowl which lays on a flat surface ..
 
Back
Top