Laser Ribbon for PM Recovery?

[goldfinger3]

Has anyone had any experience with working these types of cables ? Before anyone has a stroke I am not going out of my way to find these. I have just been collecting them as I take different electronics apart, but not sure of the composition of the materials inside?

 

[UncleBenBen]

not sure of the composition of the materials inside?

You can check by burning a small section with a lighter then when it cools wipe any the ash. It's generally just copper in the amber colored Mylars. Sometimes aluminum in the white ribbons.

I've only found one short amber colored ribbon so far that had gold plate inside, but it came from a broken medical monitoring device I found in the trash.

 

[ettran]

Has anyone had any experience with working these types of cables ? Before anyone has a stroke I am not going out of my way to find these. I have just been collecting them as I take different electronics apart, but not sure of the composition of the materials inside?

hi,thfirst pic is only tin,ed.

 

[Smack]

Copper and tin there. Gold will be visible on the contact points at the ends if it's used.

 

[Grelko]

not sure of the composition of the materials inside?

You can check by burning a small section with a lighter then when it cools wipe any the ash. It's generally just copper in the amber colored Mylars. Sometimes aluminum in the white ribbons.

I've only found one short amber colored ribbon so far that had gold plate inside, but it came from a broken medical monitoring device I found in the trash.

I've found gold plated ends on all sorts of ribbons. There's long black ones too. Plus short green or bluish ones on TVs that attach the screen to a circuit board. The short green/blue ones sometimes have a small black "ceramic/glass?" strip on them, which might have gold plated wires around it.

I get most of mine from TVs, printers, scanners etc. Once in a while, you'll get a ribbon that looks like tin on the ends, but theres a very thin strip of gold plating running down the middle of each finger.

I'm starting to think there's other types of plating also. Besides the gold and "shiny" tin plated ones, there's dull grey ones and what looks like just copper. (I haven't tested any of them yet)

Some more info for you.
http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=34&t=8174&p=242213#p242213
http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=197&p=240586#p240586

 

[UncleBenBen]

Plus short green or bluish ones on TVs that attach the screen to a circuit board. The short green/blue ones sometimes have a small black "ceramic/glass?" strip on them, which might have gold plated wires around it.

Grelko, have you checked into these yet?
I've tried to cut away some of the silicone like material around the rectangular glass and look. Then broke it into several pieces, and even crushed some with a hammer. I can't tell if I'm seeing any bond wires, or just reflections in the tiny shards of glass. ( I really need to invest in a better loupe!)

If I think about it this weekend I may just crush a few and get the test tubes out and see what our friend stannous thinks about it.

 

[alexxx]

When it comes to white thin ribbons, most of them are garbage.
You can mix them with the other ribbon wires you have snd sell anywhere from 0.65 to 0.85 a Lb.
The white, grey, white with a slight blue tint are useless..

But, a good way to spot the good ones with gold plated connectors is with the color of the ribbon.
They are white with a slight pink tint. Some exception applies like always, but the pink color is a very good trick to spot them fast.

They can be found everywhere. From recent lcd tvs to connect logic boards, from cdroms, printers.
If they are pink, remove them... If they are any other color dont even bother to touch them.

They should yield a fair return per lb, but good luck finding the patience to accumulate 1 lb.
We mix them with regular fingers or cell phone sim cards. to be processed with your favorite method...

Alex

 

[Grelko]

Plus short green or bluish ones on TVs that attach the screen to a circuit board. The short green/blue ones sometimes have a small black "ceramic/glass?" strip on them, which might have gold plated wires around it.

Grelko, have you checked into these yet?
I've tried to cut away some of the silicone like material around the rectangular glass and look. Then broke it into several pieces, and even crushed some with a hammer. I can't tell if I'm seeing any bond wires, or just reflections in the tiny shards of glass. ( I really need to invest in a better loupe!)

If I think about it this weekend I may just crush a few and get the test tubes out and see what our friend stannous thinks about it.

It doesn't look like theres any wires inside the glass, unless just barely. It looks more like they're completely surrounding it, inside of the silicone/rubber material. Maybe on top or underneath it also.

I haven't dissolved any to test with stannous, but you can see what they actually look like a bit better.

I don't think there's any actual bonding wires, but there's so many different types out there.

Regular, jeweler's loupe, microscope 75x.

No gold fingers on this one, but under the silicone surrounding the glass looked like gold plated wire ends. (It's harder to tell because I'm doing this under a flood light and table lamp.)





I cut the gold fingers off of this one already. This style has two chips "glass pieces"



Couple more pictures on the way.

 

[Grelko]

This third style I've cut off the gold fingers also. There looks to be a small section beside the chip that definately looks plated, besides the wire ends.





So far, it actually looks like every type has gold plated wire ends all around the chips (possibly top/bottom also). So when I finally process them, I was going to cut around each chip so I don't miss any wire ends, incinerate, crush, then go with HCl+Cl just incase there's any gold inside the glass after it's been crushed.

 

[UncleBenBen]

Thanks for the pictures Grelko. Looks like I will hold off on testing then, since there appears to be at least 'some' gold there.

So far, it actually looks like every type has gold plated wire ends all around the chips (possibly top/bottom also). So when I finally process them, I was going to cut around each chip so I don't miss any wire ends, incinerate, crush, then go with HCl+Cl just incase there's any gold inside the glass after it's been crushed.

My thoughts as well. Just keep saving up until I get enough weight to warrant processing.

Only I've been leaving the fingers on instead of mixing with the ribbon fingers that 'plug in'. Thinking that the adhesive on them would interfere with recovery and would need to be incinerated first.

Thanks again Grelko,
Ben