Let's start at the beginning

[aferland66]

Hello all, this is my first try at E Waste and I guess step one is Depopulating and sorting.

I'm doing this as a hobby so will be taking more time than most pros on this. I'm not looking for only Gold either, so I'm not looking at selling the boards. I hope you will bear with me with my questions.

This is my current process, please let me know of anything I'm doing wrong or not doing. I'm working mostly with computer scrap. I'm taking everything apart as much as I can.

1- Removing gold fingers
2- removing all cables and sorting flat ones
3- Getting as much clean Aluminum as possible from HDDs and Heat sinks
4- Removing all Copper, even the little Copper coils and removing Ferrous Oxide cores.
5- Removing all Capacitors, Resistors, Blue ceramics, and any brass fittings.
6- Depopulating the rest of the boards with heat in an old pan (no smoke is generated)
7- Sorting flat packs and chips
8- Sorting all gold plated pins
9- Removing all white metal not gold plated
10- gathering up all small chips and other board parts that are tiny.

 

[Martijn]

Hello all, this is my first try at E Waste and I guess step one is Depopulating and sorting.

I'm doing this as a hobby so will be taking more time than most pros on this. I'm not looking for only Gold either, so I'm not looking at selling the boards. I hope you will bear with me with my questions.

This is my current process, please let me know of anything I'm doing wrong or not doing. I'm working mostly with computer scrap. I'm taking everything apart as much as I can.

1- Removing gold fingers
2- removing all cables and sorting flat ones
3- Getting as much clean Aluminum as possible from HDDs and Heat sinks
4- Removing all Copper, even the little Copper coils and removing Ferrous Oxide cores.
5- Removing all Capacitors, Resistors, Blue ceramics, and any brass fittings.
6- Depopulating the rest of the boards with heat in an old pan (no smoke is generated)
7- Sorting flat packs and chips
8- Sorting all gold plated pins
9- Removing all white metal not gold plated
10- gathering up all small chips and other board parts that are tiny.
View attachment 60861

View attachment 60862

You have successfully completed level 1!!
Many don't even consider it and make a mess.
Sorting components is the most important thing to do when starting recovery.
Because you need to learn how to treat each metal and component.
Trimming the gold fingers without any solder and components is important as it makes recovery that much easier.
Nothing wrong, excellent work!
Start with the fingers in AP.
Forget the peroxide part of it and use only HCL and air. The starter is a bit of oxidized copper in HCl and you're off.
Ask before you start.

 

[eaglekeeper]

This is my current process, please let me know of anything I'm doing wrong or not doing. I'm working mostly with computer scrap. I'm taking everything apart as much as I can.

Careful with some older laptop hard drive platers......I've found some that are some type of tempered glass. They don't always just break, they will sometimes explode and the flakes of glass go everywhere.

Some scrapyards will classify the hard drive bodies as cast Aluminum and the heat sinks as clean Al.

Some hard drive lids are stainless steel or Al.

 

[aferland66]

Thank you for that info. Yes I know about the HDD platters, I dropped one and it shattered in a million pieces lol. From what I saw up to now, the Platinum recovery is not worth it on the Al platters, they are worth more for just the Al itself. I am wondering about the smaller glass platters, since it's just dissolving the platinum off of the glass?

 

[Bobby1MGRN]

Excellent, love the organisation, mine looked like that when I first started, highly recommend you keep up that habit, when it starts to come in fast having a good sorting system and organised storage will pay dividends.

Unless you plan on getting thousands of platters each month don't bother for platinum, I get a few hundred every 3-4 months and haven't bothered. I believe a few of the guys on here have had success for platinum but I think you need around a thousand platters for 1 gram (that's scrapping out approximately 5-600 drives) and that's if you got your process nailed down. If you don't care about the data and you are careful with the teardown you could sell them on Ebay for about the same as their platinum value if they are pristeen, some hobbyists use them for various projects and will pay reasonable prices for them if they are flawless, I initially tried to separate them out carefully not touching the faces but after about 100 drives the process becomes so tedious you give up and look for the hammer. I have shifted a good few lots on ebay and got way more than the ally price selling the perfect ones in small lots of 25-40 for around the £15-£18 mark plus pnp obviously. For the scratched/damaged ones I score the platter with wet/dry sandpaper so they're unreadable then throw them in with the casings, spindle spacers ally tops and read/write armitures. So far the scrappy hasn't said anything to me about it.

I haven't got enough of the glass ones yet to make it worthwhile but I have saved a fair few. If you have any luck with them let me know

 

[aferland66]

Do I need to process any of these separately/together?

 

[muserfish]

Allow my 2 cents, number 10 looks like some version of a Single Port Magnetics Module.


Its circuitry does not need any precious metal for effeciency. Datasheet provided below.
I come from an electronics engineering background, however I'm a newbie in recycling and refining like you. So I cannot give you any decent and tangible pointer on how to process all of them.
Although, number 10 I would place with the Copper processing pile and 13 with Aluminium (it has nothing else of value, not even the aluminium itself is significantly valuable).

Also, I have recently acquired an XRF gun and am planning to eventually analyze all the components I can this year.
The plan is to collect piles small piles of at least a kg of each component, crush and seperate by density all metals of some value from the waste.
Then smelt them and analyze them. Its a laborious and tedious part but I think it would be beneficial to me and also all users of this forum. So I hope to be giving something back to the community soon.

 

[henrikconielsen]

Allow my 2 cents, number 10 looks like some version of a Single Port Magnetics Module.

View attachment 61316
Its circuitry does not need any precious metal for effeciency. Datasheet provided below.
I come from an electronics engineering background, however I'm a newbie in recycling and refining like you. So I cannot give you any decent and tangible pointer on how to process all of them.
Although, number 10 I would place with the Copper processing pile and 13 with Aluminium (it has nothing else of value, not even the aluminium itself is significantly valuable).

Also, I have recently acquired an XRF gun and am planning to eventually analyze all the components I can this year.
The plan is to collect piles small piles of at least a kg of each component, crush and seperate by density all metals of some value from the waste.
Then smelt them and analyze them. Its a laborious and tedious part but I think it would be beneficial to me and also all users of this forum. So I hope to be giving something back to the community soon.

I would very much like to see an xrf scan off the diffrent materials after crushing. Please tell me when u do.

Mvh, Henrik.

 

[Yggdrasil]

I would very much like to see an xrf scan off the diffrent materials after crushing. Please tell me when u do.

Mvh, Henrik.

Welcome to us.
The item in the picture is just Ferrous rings with Copper coils.
Inductors, nothing of much value other than a tiny amount of Copper.

If you plan to process anything we like you to study these links:

We ask our new members to do 3 things.
1. Read C.M. Hokes book on refining jewelers scrap, it gives an easy introduction to the most important chemistry regarding refining.
It is free here on the forum: Screen Readable Copy of Hoke's Book
2. Then read the safety section of the forum: Safety
3. And then read about "Dealing with waste" in the forum: Dealing with Waste

Suggested reading: The Library

https://goldrefiningforum.com/threads/gold-refining-forum-rules.31182/

 

[aferland66]

It is not worth processing any of this small stuff for copper or aluminum I'm pretty sure of that, I will be spending more on gas or acids than anything I get back is worth. Aluminum and copper I can get in much bigger quantities and much easier from HDDs and Heat sinks.

Even Silver may be off the table because of the need for Nitric and the cost attached to it.