jocelynholmes192
Member
- Joined
- May 4, 2015
- Messages
- 7
This is really an informative post but the chemicals used are very dangerous and should not be performed without proper knowledge and equipment.
Jocelyn, 95% of our member are well aware of that. Some have even written the book on chemical safety. That is why I do not recycle at that level (I live in an apartment) I am a middleman. I track down old electronics and sell to the melters. The worst toxic fumes I have to put up with are 500 cellphones sitting in my car on a hot day. :lol: (just imagine these phones old and someone talked and spit into the phone for years and then multiply that by 500 and multiply that by 100* heat. it was worse last month, I had 1500 phones)jocelynholmes192 said:This is really an informative post but the chemicals used are very dangerous and should not be performed without proper knowledge and equipment.
rawtuff said:Thank you, appreciate your advise!
You might re-read my post. I added some things.
goldsilverpro said:The 10.18 is just a factor that is always the same. Actually, for math people, it's the number of troy ounces of gold in one cubic inch.
goldsilverpro said:Grelko,
If you look up the specific gravity in a variety of sources. you'll find a variety of different numbers. To get 10.18, I used 19.32 for the S.G. I also used 2.543 as the number of cm3 in a in3 and 31.1 as the number of grams in a troy oz. Whatever, 10.18 is close enough. Considering significant figures, I probably should have rounded it off to 10.2 to be more correct.
ChemGeek said:Interesting thread but largerly theoretical one.
Much is said about assays etc to determine value of stock.
For small time guy it is of little relevance though.
Lets say I am buying motherboards or cell phone bords etc. In December last year I have sourced substantial quantity of very cheap motherboards ($0.3 each) and sold to scrap at ~$6/kg after a little cherrypicking (it seems that this particular scrap yard is not too mean about it, as long as it is done within reason - perhaps they have decided to suffer some nuisance in exchange of steady flow of slightly downgraded boards from different goldbugs. Then these are mixed with full value ones and resold as finest cut. Alternatively employees responsible of purchases are morons). So I have made a very nice fast buck.
However this low hanging fruit is gone and won't come back.
Now I have to buy over mail smaller lots (say 20kg or so), pay about 70-80% of scrap yard price, cherrypick a bit and resell the rest to scrap with hope that they wont downgrade and if so, then only a little bit.
Any assays of such small lots are plain waste of money as the assay would often cost more than purchased lot is worth. It is also impossible to run assay if you buy online/via mail (no, I do not buy on eBay due to an unreasonable pricing but there are other outlets as well).
Neither scrap yard runs any assays wile buying few hundred lbs lots.
So from where these assays stories are coming?
It seems that with e-scrap they may become relevant when refinery is buying few tons and more or if one is dealing with carat stock.
Now lets say, we have few tons of motherboards in a pile. How to take an representative sample out of such a mixed mess only gods of refining know and peoples who are actually doing it most likely don't.
So my question is:
Is there any smalltimer here dealing in e-scrap who usually relies on assays while buying 20-200kg lots or all what is done is a guesswork based on average content data, regardless, how inaccurate or contested these might be?
ChemGeek said:Btw, another smalltimer whom I know have purchased one lot of BGA chips over internet auction. Came from France, I think. Tops of these BGA were peeling off in a different manner than other lots. Soon enough he have realized that worthless pieces of shaped black plastic were glued to base of chip with superglue.
ChemGeek said:Scrap man probably purchases it with full consciousness, secured in knowledge that final Asian refiner (or Umicore) will foot the bill.
ChemGeek said:you can do absolutely nothing about it.
niks neims said:I`d guess 99.99% of traders don't assay each small lot, just relying on somewhat universal categories of different boards (small socket motherboards, gold-edge RAM, etc.), that is why I'd say it is dishonest to remove anything (other than batteries and waste materials (plastic, Fe, Al)) from the board - that is not cherry-picking - if you remove IC or BGA or any other value bearing material and then sell the boards as "untouched" from the same category - that is cheating. You should not do that! Heck, I've heard horror stories from Russia about pre-leached boards being sold as untouched, that is very, very not cool...
ChemGeek said:Somehow I feel no remorse in selling downgraded boards to *the faceless*, and anyway I am indicating that an odd part may be missing. It is job of their employees to assess what they buy but if these are judged base on monthly purchases in tons and competition is fierce... you know the rest.
Faceless is just that - faceless. Not more and not less.
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