IC powders

[madelyn]

I have about 10kg mixed ic that I'm busy incinerating with my homemade induction heater and was wondering if there is another way to get the gold from the crushed powders exept AR?
The carbon powder is difficult to leach with AR becuase it needs to be stirred or agitated while heating the ar and then there would be filtering the huge pile of powders.
I have excess to a lot of boards but don't know how to get past this one.
I'm also not a panning expert so I think I will loose a lot of value when panning.

 

[nickvc]

If you still have carbon in the mix it will absorb some of the gold so you need to go past the heat that gives the carbon and burn it off.

 

[madelyn]

I'm just waiting for my Carbon cruicible to arrive as the mild steel has a lot of heat loss and does not conduct the heat very well.
But that is of very little concern at the moment as the ic can still be milled to a fine grain without burning it completely.
My biggest problem is getting the gold from the powders, becuase I have over 200kg of boards with ic and stil counting which I will need to process.

 

[Justincase]

I have come up against a similar problem with Ceramic I.C.'s and high yield board's.
But think the simplest way to get a workable concentrate is gravitational separation.
A pan is great for testing samples as it give's you a good hand's on feel of the material.
For a practical solution I am looking a designee's of shaker table's.
yet an other project I need to finish.

 

[madelyn]

I was also thinking of a shakers table as a good option since I would be processing a lot of meterial. The other option I had in mind was melting the powders with soda ash in my induction heater,but I'm not sure about it. Maybe some of the experienced guys in melting can help me out or if someone also using a induction heater? I think the melting would be very efficient.

 

[Justincase]

Smelting is always a good option.
but it would work better after you clean your material up a bit first,this will give your flux less work to do..
Why dirty your crucible with matter that should float off easily.
Forgive me for asking as I have never had access to an induction furnace. But is not one of the advantages of an induction furnace that it automatically mixes your molten metal as a side effect of the magnetic field's?
Might that not interfere with it being used to smelt your material?
even in a conventional gas furnace it take's quite a prolonged period for the target alloy's to fall out of the flux and gather enough to allow poring.

 

[Palladium]

Sorry to jump your thread, but my question is about the induction heater. Did you make that yourself? Got some more pics?
I love ingenuity!

 

[madelyn]

Smelting is always a good option.
but it would work better after you clean your material up a bit first,this will give your flux less work to do..
Why dirty your crucible with matter that should float off easily.
Forgive me for asking as I have never had access to an induction furnace. But is not one of the advantages of an induction furnace that it automatically mixes your molten metal as a side effect of the magnetic field's?
Might that not interfere with it being used to smelt your material?

Yes, I will clean the meterial first with magnets and fine mash to get rid of all the large pins and base metal pieces.
If I use a carbon cruicible the eddy current are only strong on the cruicible itself and won't stirr or affect the metal inside the cruicible.
When melting with a ceramic cruicible, your metal inside the cruicible becomes your magnet and thus it will have a great affect on your metal mix.
Hopefully when I get my cruicible and test it out I can add more pics and bring some light to other members on the forum unless this has already been discussed.

Palladium, I did built this machine myself and its not finished yet after 3 years and a lot of money.Its like gold refining ,super interesting and always something new to learn.
Wil post more pics later of the whole system.

 

[Anonymous]

The induction heater looks amazing! Would love to learn more about it.

On a different note how are you venting that?

 

[madelyn]

On a different note how are you venting that?

Very little smoke is emitted becuase everything gets trapped in the asbestos on the top of the cruicible, but still using a fan to extract the tiny amount of smoke for now.

 

[Justincase]

Can you scan your wiring diagram Please?

 

[madelyn]

http://inductionheatertutorial.com

Follow this link. My work is based on this but just ten times bigger on everything. I Don't have a schematic of my precise work .

 

[francis32]

http://inductionheatertutorial.com

Follow this link. My work is based on this but just ten times bigger on everything. I Don't have a schematic of my precise work .

Madelyn,

this is very neat! My work is at a oil free, twin turbine magnetic bearing HVAC compressor manufacturer, we have a shaft spinning at 40k RPM in mid-air!

We use PWM(pulse with modulation) technology to keep the shaft levitated in the center of its calibration and a 250hp motor spinning it.

we use many types of different industrial induction heaters during manufacture!

I don't use a fancy device like you have to roast my IC's, rather a steel container with a hair blower from the side and scrap pallets(free) for fuel! I use that same setup to melt my aluminum also. IC's need to reach a temperature higher than 650c to incinerate the carbon and aluminum melts at 660.3.

Thanks for sharing!

Francis

 

[madelyn]

http://inductionheatertutorial.com

Follow this link. My work is based on this but just ten times bigger on everything. I Don't have a schematic of my precise work .

Madelyn,

this is very neat! My work is at a oil free, twin turbine magnetic bearing HVAC compressor manufacturer, we have a shaft spinning at 40k RPM in mid-air!

We use PWM(pulse with modulation) technology to keep the shaft levitated in the center of its calibration and a 250hp motor spinning it.

we use many types of different industrial induction heaters during manufacture!

I don't use a fancy device like you have to roast my IC's, rather a steel container with a hair blower from the side and scrap pallets(free) for fuel! I use that same setup to melt my aluminum also. IC's need to reach a temperature higher than 650c to incinerate the carbon and aluminum melts at 660.3.

Thanks for sharing!

Francis

Wow! this sounds great and I would love to see it.
I still need to do a lot of up grades. I stil need to add my arduino board to keep a tight lock on the resonance and put everything on a circuit board instead of a breadboard. But in Namibia it is almost impossible because nothing is at my disposal.
Hopefully I wil start turning profit on my ics soon to take everything to the next level

 

[Research135]

Induction furnaces are very interesting, and addictive. I believe you don't need one for your work.

To process your stuff:
1-I'd grind the source material to about 200 mesh using 2 mills, first a bar mill, then a ball mill.
2-a-Bag it and sell it.
Or
2-b-1-Incinerate it in a steel drum with a porous glass fiber cover. (Maybe you need an afterburner too, if you care about the fumes).
2-b-2-Smelt the residue with lead added as a collector, litharge, borax, and soda ash, well mixed.
2-b-3-Assay and sell the lead ingots.

 

[madelyn]

Research 135
I think I will have to do option 2 as it is to expensive for me to ship anywhere.
Can I also use silver as a collector when smelting, and secondly do I even need a collector? Do the metals not move down to
The bottom on there own of my cruicble when smelting?

 

[Research135]

Research 135
I think I will have to do option 2 as it is to expensive for me to ship anywhere.
Can I also use silver as a collector when smelting, and secondly do I even need a collector? Do the metals not move down to
The bottom on there own of my cruicble when smelting?

I also like to add silver or silver oxide when smelting.
Lead is nearly always used in smelting mining concentrates. The reason is that litharge is a potent oxidizer at those temperatures, and will oxidize nearly all the base metals present, becoming lead and collecting all precious metals in a virtual lead rain of micro droplets.
Those base metal oxides will dissolve in the borax/flux slag, that will cleanly separate from the lead/silver/Gold/PGMs ingot (or button), after cooling.

 

[madelyn]

So I got my graphite cruicible and successfully melted the PM out of my powder with a silver collector. I used 11gram of silver and at the end of the melt I had a 31gram bar containing PM. Refined it and got gold and platinum out of the bar which I stil need to melt. There is still some gray precipitate left that does not want to dissolve in the AR?
I had 225gram of ic powder and added 100gram borax and 225gram soda ash which maid the melt nice and thin. It was almost not necessarily to use a collector.

My question is, since I'm using a graphite cruicible. Doesn't the graphite attack the platinum and palladium?
What about the borax and palladium, wouldn't it dissolve the pd completely ?

 

[Research135]

Try putting the powdered metals inside a small magnesia cupel, put the cupel inside the graphite crucible. Let's see if your furnace can do it.

edit: Do not use fluxes when melting platinum or its sisters.
edit2: try glazing the inner surface of the magnesia cupel with an oxyacetylene torch, before attempting to melt the powders with your induction furnace. I don't think you can melt platinum with your coil setup.

 

[Research135]

I was thinking a little more about this, and I believe you need a bigger diameter coil, and much more insulation between the coil and the heater element (the graphite crucible in your case). You must also insulate the top and bottom. At the required temperature (white hot near 1,900-2,000 degC) your crucible will likely start burning too, so you want to make air very inaccessible or put I all inside a container that will retain the carbon dioxide emitted, and prevent the air from reaching the crucible anymore. You could also paint the crucible, inside and out, with refractory cement.

What heat you put in with the coil, must be insulated, to allow the crucible and cupel and powders to reach melting temperatures. In your current setup, I believe you have a lot of heat leaks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdDX48OUjGI