Internet has too much info😥

[Pisca]

I have come to the conclusion that there is too much information on the internet. It sometimes makes it difficult to find basic and simple info.

I am looking for a basic chart or picture guide of which parts contain precious metals on a computer or other electronic boards. Everything I find is entirely too technical. I will do further research after I am able to determine what is what.

Since I do not know most components by their name, it's difficult to know exactly what is being discussed in most of the sites I have found.

So if someone could point me in the right direction it would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Christian333]

I have come to the conclusion that there is too much information on the internet. It sometimes makes it difficult to find basic and simple info.

I am looking for a basic chart or picture guide of which parts contain precious metals on a computer or other electronic boards. Everything I find is entirely too technical. I will do further research after I am able to determine what is what.

Since I do not know most components by their name, it's difficult to know exactly what is being discussed in most of the sites I have found.

So if someone could point me in the right direction it would be greatly appreciated.

Usally printed in white next to each component.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ref...biguously identifies,number, e.g. R13, C1002.Janie

 

[war_child]

Hello Pisca.

You're in the right place. There is a lot of pictures of components that contain precious metals here. Some pictures of circuit boards will even show a circle around the good bits and label their contents. The best advice I could give you is to use the search bar. Also, the 'where to find scrap' section has much information on this subject. You will see PM's are in so many items from ic chips & processors to electrical connectors & circuit breakers. Investigate more and you can get a better idea of which components contain what values. Several members have done comprehensive tests on precious metal content of specific components, and selflessly posted their findings here. I'm sure you can find what you are looking for.

Best of Luck & Happy New Year!
mike

 

[Pisca]

Hello Pisca.

You're in the right place. There is a lot of pictures of components that contain precious metals here. Some pictures of circuit boards will even show a circle around the good bits and label their contents. The best advice I could give you is to use the search bar. Also, the 'where to find scrap' section has much information on this subject. You will see PM's are in so many items from ic chips & processors to electrical connectors & circuit breakers. Investigate more and you can get a better idea of which components contain what values. Several members have done comprehensive tests on precious metal content of specific components, and selflessly posted their findings here. I'm sure you can find what you are looking for.

Best of Luck & Happy New Year!
mike

Thank you so much! I know the more common items such as PC chips and most of the gold and silver bearing components. Im just learning about the other PM's that are also there.

I am a visual learner so having a picture of some kind to relate to is a huge help in understanding something like this.

I have several older boards from computers, cell phones, vcrs, and more that are no longer needed and just taking up space. I see no reason to add more items to a landfill that could be recovered and refined for the future. I will most likely not be the one doing the refining but removing the components from the boards and properly separating them would be helpful I suppose.

 

[war_child]

Very well. Try searching for different types of capacitors. Tantalum capacitors and MLCC's to be specific. They are common in most types of electronic waste. Older types of MLCC's are known to contain palladium and silver. Honestly, there are so many different components that contain PM's, I am still learning of new/ different places to find them. I found some nearly pure Palladium wire inside an old Hammond organ a couple years ago. I hear Pd was quite commonly used in the old telephone switchboards too. Platinum and rhodium can also be found in some kinds of E-waste, but if I'm not mistaken, those may be found more often when refining old jewelry, which this forum covers extensively.

Also, if you are thinking of recovering and refining any precious metals, be sure to read Hoke's book first. It's a great starting point and it is easy to find on the forum in pdf forum.

 

[orvi]

I have come to the conclusion that there is too much information on the internet. It sometimes makes it difficult to find basic and simple info.

I am looking for a basic chart or picture guide of which parts contain precious metals on a computer or other electronic boards. Everything I find is entirely too technical. I will do further research after I am able to determine what is what.

Since I do not know most components by their name, it's difficult to know exactly what is being discussed in most of the sites I have found.

So if someone could point me in the right direction it would be greatly appreciated.

I will pick the strategy of getting familiar with first - typical electronic components. And then move step by step to more uncommon components. When you know how these components operate and what is inside them, you understand much easier what can and can´t be inside.

IC chips are pretty obvious things, hard to mistake them, easy to collect them... There could be gold and silver, I never encountered any ones which contain PGMs. Maybe some processors with attached capacitors could have some minor PGMs due to these capacitors. Simplified, everything that has silicon chip/die inside could possibly hold gold bonding wires - as this silicon need to be attached to the leads somehow. Also, some ceramic or plastic chips can have the silicon die brazed to the surface material with gold solder - it need to be fixed in the place somehow and gold happened to be ideal material for it, as it nicely solders silicone.

Transistors and diodes - these could also contain gold bonding wires - as they also have silicon part, which need to be soldered to the base and also connected to the leads. But as there are only 3 needed leads, ammount of gold bonding wires is as expected much lower than in the case of chips. Diodes, mainly old Ge types could have bonding wire from germanium die made from relatively thick solid gold. But this is rare

Relays - anything that switch or made any kind of perpetual connection/disconnection have contact points made from some kind of PM - usually silver alloys, much less often palladium-silver alloys, contacts could also be plated with gold. Sadly, many neww ones have just plated contacts, not made of solid silver or other PM alloys. Switches, relays, contactors... Often older appliances tend to have bigger contacts. Also, with amperage needed to pass through, contact is obviously made bigger

Capacitors - there are mainly four kinds of caps usually encountered - ceramic, foil, electrolytic and tantalum. There are other sub-types and another not-so-often-seen ones, but these four you need to be familiar with. Foil capacitors have roll of aluminium foil with some plastic foil inside = worthless. Ceramic capacitors are obviously from the name made from ceramic spacer between electrodes. Tantalum capacitors are specific type of capacitor, that is luckily mostly easy to recognize - consisting of tantalum electrode with other electrode typically being thin silver foil. Electrolytic are also very obvious ones - inside only aluminium and foils = worthless.
Easiest way how to distinct between foil and ceramics is to snap one with snips/pliers - if it is easy and it snap and reveal solid ceramic inner body - yes, you have ceramic one If it is relatively hard to snap it to halves, and it has rolled foil inside, to the bin it goes Determining MLCCs apart of monolithic ceramic caps is also relatively easy - as monolithic ones are of course - monolythic. There is solid piece of ceramic between two electrodes. Like a sandwich. MLCC is on the other side made as sandwich from alternating layers of ceramic and very thin metal foils. It is easy to see the difference, as the electrodes does not cover whole area of ceramic, but usually only the side of the ceramic - where thin metal foils stick out of ceramic.

Pins and fingers - obvious ones, I think this does not need commentary

Resistors - typically worthless components, aside of some special variable resistors - potentiometers. These could contain some plated contact inside, which touch the coiled resistance wire inside. This contact could be plated with silver, gold or palladium - in order of probability.
These categories cover like 90-95% of the PMs contained in typical e-scrap. There are of course special components, like optocouplers, thermocouples, Pt-temperature variable resistors, special AgC sintered brushes in motors etc... But for the start I will go with ones listed above - use the search engine here, find threads with pictures and learn. There is very very big number of threads when somebody show off their boards and others try to help him identify components
Hopefully this helped a bit

 

[AndrewSuperD]

Great primer Orvi. Thank you for all the time you put into it.

@Pisca …. I believe my only contribution would be to look up “flip chips” and why they’re likely not worth your time. And also, maybe you could post a few pictures and let us identify a bit.

 

[lazersteve]

https://goldrefiningforum.com/threads/what-to-refine-in-a-computer.51/#post-1495
Click on the above image box for an old post of mine. I will look into replacing the missing images as my time permits.

Steve

 

[Yggdrasil]

https://goldrefiningforum.com/threads/what-to-refine-in-a-computer.51/#post-1495
Click on the above image box for an old post of mine. I will look into replacing the missing images as my time permits.

Steve

Really nice to have you back Sir.

 

[Pisca]

I will pick the strategy of getting familiar with first - typical electronic components. And then move step by step to more uncommon components. When you know how these components operate and what is inside them, you understand much easier what can and can´t be inside.

IC chips are pretty obvious things, hard to mistake them, easy to collect them... There could be gold and silver, I never encountered any ones which contain PGMs. Maybe some processors with attached capacitors could have some minor PGMs due to these capacitors. Simplified, everything that has silicon chip/die inside could possibly hold gold bonding wires - as this silicon need to be attached to the leads somehow. Also, some ceramic or plastic chips can have the silicon die brazed to the surface material with gold solder - it need to be fixed in the place somehow and gold happened to be ideal material for it, as it nicely solders silicone.

Transistors and diodes - these could also contain gold bonding wires - as they also have silicon part, which need to be soldered to the base and also connected to the leads. But as there are only 3 needed leads, ammount of gold bonding wires is as expected much lower than in the case of chips. Diodes, mainly old Ge types could have bonding wire from germanium die made from relatively thick solid gold. But this is rare

Relays - anything that switch or made any kind of perpetual connection/disconnection have contact points made from some kind of PM - usually silver alloys, much less often palladium-silver alloys, contacts could also be plated with gold. Sadly, many neww ones have just plated contacts, not made of solid silver or other PM alloys. Switches, relays, contactors... Often older appliances tend to have bigger contacts. Also, with amperage needed to pass through, contact is obviously made bigger

Capacitors - there are mainly four kinds of caps usually encountered - ceramic, foil, electrolytic and tantalum. There are other sub-types and another not-so-often-seen ones, but these four you need to be familiar with. Foil capacitors have roll of aluminium foil with some plastic foil inside = worthless. Ceramic capacitors are obviously from the name made from ceramic spacer between electrodes. Tantalum capacitors are specific type of capacitor, that is luckily mostly easy to recognize - consisting of tantalum electrode with other electrode typically being thin silver foil. Electrolytic are also very obvious ones - inside only aluminium and foils = worthless.
Easiest way how to distinct between foil and ceramics is to snap one with snips/pliers - if it is easy and it snap and reveal solid ceramic inner body - yes, you have ceramic one If it is relatively hard to snap it to halves, and it has rolled foil inside, to the bin it goes Determining MLCCs apart of monolithic ceramic caps is also relatively easy - as monolithic ones are of course - monolythic. There is solid piece of ceramic between two electrodes. Like a sandwich. MLCC is on the other side made as sandwich from alternating layers of ceramic and very thin metal foils. It is easy to see the difference, as the electrodes does not cover whole area of ceramic, but usually only the side of the ceramic - where thin metal foils stick out of ceramic.

Pins and fingers - obvious ones, I think this does not need commentary

Resistors - typically worthless components, aside of some special variable resistors - potentiometers. These could contain some plated contact inside, which touch the coiled resistance wire inside. This contact could be plated with silver, gold or palladium - in order of probability.
These categories cover like 90-95% of the PMs contained in typical e-scrap. There are of course special components, like optocouplers, thermocouples, Pt-temperature variable resistors, special AgC sintered brushes in motors etc... But for the start I will go with ones listed above - use the search engine here, find threads with pictures and learn. There is very very big number of threads when somebody show off their boards and others try to help him identify components
Hopefully this helped a bit

This is very helpful! Thank you!

 

[Pisca]

Great primer Orvi. Thank you for all the time you put into it.

@Pisca …. I believe my only contribution would be to look up “flip chips” and why they’re likely not worth your time. And also, maybe you could post a few pictures and let us identify a bit.

I will get some pics uploaded today. Sorry for the late reply, been busy with the holidays and work.

 

[Pisca]

Sorry for the delay. It has been a difficult few weeks. We lost a very good friend and also a cousin.

Here are some of the boards I am curious about. All of these boards came from old cell phones with the exception of the one that has the 2 white tower looking things on it. They appear to be ceramic.

There is a pic of a group and then a close up of the individual boards from the group pic.

Thank you for any advice and help identifying which components contain precious metals. I will get pics of the computer boards uploaded very soon.

 

[stella polaris]

The phones is good. Store them and leave them alone til you have learned what to do with them. The board with the white "towers" is effect resistors. You can see the marking R2 and R3 on the board. meaning resistor 2 and resistor 3. This type is worth nothing.

Check up what a MLCC is and how to test them if valuable. All info here on the site.

 

[Pisca]

The phones is good. Store them and leave them alone til you have learned what to do with them. The board with the white "towers" is effect resistors. You can see the marking R2 and R3 on the board. meaning resistor 2 and resistor 3. This type is worth nothing.

Check up what a MLCC is and how to test them if valuable. All info here on the site.

I'm trying to learn... I know the chips themselves have PMs... But there are all kinds of tiny things I don't know what they are.

 

[stella polaris]

Types of Precious Metal Scrap.​

This is the thread you should read. There you find all kind of stuff. A lot of reading but fun and worth it

 

[Pisca]

Types of Precious Metal Scrap.​

This is the thread you should read. There you find all kind of stuff. A lot of reading but fun and worth it

I have read through some of it. I'm a visual learner. I also don't know the names of each component so a lot of things I don't fully understand. Basically once I know what the components are, I will be able to understand the reading material better.
I am definitely trying to learn. I downloaded a few diagrams of boards and such to study over that has things labeled.