Input on best practice to remove gold from heat sink

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Dbaschiera

Member
Joined
Mar 2, 2020
Messages
19
Location
Wisconsin
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Hello all, i have been following, reading and researching for sometime here on the site. I haven’t posted much because I’m still studying here & with Hokes book. I completely appreciate/ respect all of you for dedicating yourselves and time to this site for those of us who are just beginning to love and learn this hobby.

I have a question….what would be the best way to attempt to remove the gold foil from the the underside of this heat sink?

I have approximately 50 -75 pieces (and more that I haven’t disassembled yet). I believe, based on filing and testing, that the material is nickel over copper. What I believe to be nickel is a rather thick coating on the copper.

I am hoping Butcher, Frugal, Harold and others can help me navigate the best route for success in hopes of recovering the gold foil.

Thank you very much in advance for the help and your expertise. (BTW totally love this site y’all are amazing). Thanks again for the help.

Sincerely Dino B.
 
Hello Dino, I did some experiments on them with CuCl2 / AP and sulphuric cell. They works but , if you have time, I think the cheapest method is putting them in spent AP solutions so that you can cement PM and recover the gold foils. First you have to remove and collect the indium from them
Regards M.M.
 
Hello Dino, I did some experiments on them with CuCl2 / AP and sulphuric cell. They works but , if you have time, I think the cheapest method is putting them in spent AP solutions so that you can cement PM and recover the gold foils.
Regards M.M.
Thanks MM…much appreciated I will try AP….I do not have any type of sulphuric cell setup yet…and sorry everyone for the double post my bad.
 
First off, that i-5 650 would have sold on ebay for around $10.00. And that's a whole lot more than it will ever scrap out for. Second, I will follow this post as well as I have 1000's of those gold content lids as well. Might not even be worth messing with, but I just hate tossing gold........
 
Dbasch,
It comes down to economics. If you're buying chemical to extract PMs, you need the volume of scrap to justify the cost. The amount of heat sinks needed to extract gold would be , like silversaddle says, in the 1000s unless you don't mind sunk costs and just want a tiny little button for your efforts. That's a personal choice. I'd wait and collect enough to make the effort worth your while. Having said all that, you need to remove the Nickel before you remove the Copper. Otherwise, you'll just end up with a mess...Keep reading the Library.
 

Dbaschiera,​

I have tried to process those heat sinks just for the sake of finding the best method (both economically and time wise). I have concluded that the best method (which i use every time) is the mechanical separation of the foil and then chemical approach of the refining. First you need to remove as much solder as you can ( i use a flat chisel and a small hammer, allthough the hammer is not needed but helps to control and keep the surface as flat as it can be) after that i use a handheld micromotor (the type that beauty salons use when repairing or building nails for women) to scrape off only the area where the gold foil is (surface scraping) it takes 1-2 mins tops at 20000rpm. When scraping off i use a suction collector made from an old glass jar and an old vacuum cleaner connected to it to collect the dust in the jar. After that the chemical process is straight forward for recovering and refining.
Note that it is not worth your time to process 10-20 of those heat sinks. You`ll need literally 1000`s of those things to make considerable amount of gold, however if you are patient and sacrifice 10-15 minutes when you have a few of these, you can collect on the long run and process it when you have a large amount of scrape offs.
Sorry for my english, not my firs language.
I use a micromotor just as in the picture. (I bought it for approx. 50 USD) The chisel i use is a a flat 1.5cm type used for wood chipping.

Good luck.
 

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Dbasch,
It comes down to economics. If you're buying chemical to extract PMs, you need the volume of scrap to justify the cost. The amount of heat sinks needed to extract gold would be , like silversaddle says, in the 1000s unless you don't mind sunk costs and just want a tiny little button for your efforts. That's a personal choice. I'd wait and collect enough to make the effort worth your while. Having said all that, you need to remove the Nickel before you remove the Copper. Otherwise, you'll just end up with a mess...Keep reading the Library.
Jade, thank you very much for the insight it is greatly appreciated…and I will continue to search the library.
 
First off, that i-5 650 would have sold on ebay for around $10.00. And that's a whole lot more than it will ever scrap out for. Second, I will follow this post as well as I have 1000's of those gold content lids as well. Might not even be worth messing with, but I just hate tossing gold........
Silver saddle, thank you for the information…didn’t think about eBay…I will be reading up on the others input too. Have a good day and thanks for commenting.
 

Dbaschiera,​

I have tried to process those heat sinks just for the sake of finding the best method (both economically and time wise). I have concluded that the best method (which i use every time) is the mechanical separation of the foil and then chemical approach of the refining. First you need to remove as much solder as you can ( i use a flat chisel and a small hammer, allthough the hammer is not needed but helps to control and keep the surface as flat as it can be) after that i use a handheld micromotor (the type that beauty salons use when repairing or building nails for women) to scrape off only the area where the gold foil is (surface scraping) it takes 1-2 mins tops at 20000rpm. When scraping off i use a suction collector made from an old glass jar and an old vacuum cleaner connected to it to collect the dust in the jar. After that the chemical process is straight forward for recovering and refining.
Note that it is not worth your time to process 10-20 of those heat sinks. You`ll need literally 1000`s of those things to make considerable amount of gold, however if you are patient and sacrifice 10-15 minutes when you have a few of these, you can collect on the long run and process it when you have a large amount of scrape offs.
Sorry for my english, not my firs language.
I use a micromotor just as in the picture. (I bought it for approx. 50 USD) The chisel i use is a a flat 1.5cm type used for wood chipping.

Good luck.
Hi Goldman, thank you for the insight and help. I will be collecting them as I go through the material I collected and eventually try your suggestions.

Do you think a dremel tool with the right head will help me descale the surface to collect the filings?

also, when the time comes to eventually process, would AP or just HCL be the correct solution to process the filing material? I’m not sure what the best route would be….thanks again for the help.
 
Yes, a Dremel will do the same thing, and you can probably use one of the basic stone burs that came with it, though you'll want a way to get the gold off the bur. To keep it from clogging with metal, and to minimize how much substrate (Ni, Cu, etc.) you'll also have to process, I'd use the finest grit that still does the job fairly quickly. If the gold is only a fraction of a mm thick, there's no point in scraping off the top 2mm at once. And don't forget to process that bur some day!
 
Hi Goldman, thank you for the insight and help. I will be collecting them as I go through the material I collected and eventually try your suggestions.

Do you think a dremel tool with the right head will help me descale the surface to collect the filings?

also, when the time comes to eventually process, would AP or just HCL be the correct solution to process the filing material? I’m not sure what the best route would be….thanks again for the help.
I did not try with dremel tool, it could probably work as well, the goal is to collect only the metallic "dust" for a clean process.
If you can use a setup like in the picture it should work just fine.
Very important!!! Safety first, since you can get hurt real bad real quick, when working with acids, I hope you know that.
To process it, i have tried first with dillute (32%) H2SO4 to remove the Ni and Cu, gradually adding on the way. After that Hcl(20%) for further process, after that either AR or HCl+bleach.
Don`t waste your time with small amounts of filings, because you just waste your acids and your time, the amount of gold will be very small. Start refining only after you have collected at least 100-200gr of fine filings.

Stay safe and good luck.

Pete
 

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Yes, a Dremel will do the same thing, and you can probably use one of the basic stone burs that came with it, though you'll want a way to get the gold off the bur. To keep it from clogging with metal, and to minimize how much substrate (Ni, Cu, etc.) you'll also have to process, I'd use the finest grit that still does the job fairly quickly. If the gold is only a fraction of a mm thick, there's no point in scraping off the top 2mm at once. And don't forget to process that bur some day!
Thank you for the help and I won’t forget 🙂
 
I did not try with dremel tool, it could probably work as well, the goal is to collect only the metallic "dust" for a clean process.
If you can use a setup like in the picture it should work just fine.
Very important!!! Safety first, since you can get hurt real bad real quick, when working with acids, I hope you know that.
To process it, i have tried first with dillute (32%) H2SO4 to remove the Ni and Cu, gradually adding on the way. After that Hcl(20%) for further process, after that either AR or HCl+bleach.
Don`t waste your time with small amounts of filings, because you just waste your acids and your time, the amount of gold will be very small. Start refining only after you have collected at least 100-200gr of fine filings.

Stay safe and good luck.

Pete
Thanks Pete…and yes I understand about being safe with the acids…much appreciated 👍
 
Someone on a FB group I was on at one time said he had a micro-milling machine that he had set up a jig in and used a endmill to take .0002 off the lids to get the gold. seems like the power used would outvalue the gold recovered. Maybe there is gold that just can't be home recovered.
 
Someone on a FB group I was on at one time said he had a micro-milling machine that he had set up a jig in and used a endmill to take .0002 off the lids to get the gold. seems like the power used would outvalue the gold recovered. Maybe there is gold that just can't be home recovered.
I guess…maybe…I’m still researching
 
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