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Absolutsecurity

Well-known member
Joined
Jan 4, 2008
Messages
191
Location
Tehachapi, CALIFORNIA
is it just good for the fingers or is there stuff in the chips and board?

Im just wondering - do I just cut off the finger section and junk the rest or is there anything worth going after other than the fingers?

Glynn
 
Glynn,

The memory sticks contain tiny amounts of Palladium in the monolithic capacitors. Some of the very old 'monolithics' may even contain platium (very rare).

The black plastic chips on the memory cards have been reported to contain as much as 1 gram of gold per pound and as little as zero grams per pound. I don't have any real figure on the black ic's yet, but hope to soon.

The circuit baord is obviously copper plate and a few members here have reportedly sold the loftover cards at their local scrap yards for as much as 50 cents per pound.

Steve
 
Well I will get them together in like piles and cut off the fingers for gold and snap some photos of black chips and the other surface mount stuff for reference so I dont toss any stuff that may be valuable! Thanks Steve! This is all after I get done with my gold and silver balls! Any news on the stuff I sent you Steve??

G
 
Glynn,

I processed the silver and gold rice together. I haven't dropped the silver yet, but the gold from the rice and silver colored balls weighed 1.65 grams.

I've still got the gold balls left to process.

I used dilute nitric to strip the rice and silver balls. The silver balls and rice both had gold layers to them.

There may be a touch of gold and silver remaining on the balls and rice, but they are mostly rusted now.

I'll clean the rust off with some HCl soon and finish processing them.

Steve
 
I cant seem to get them down all the way - I use 50/50 nitric and disstilled and no matter what size batch I do even with heat they get down to gold and Im left with gold balls or rice. I did 200 grams of rice and got 1.5+ grams of flake from the rice and there is still more gold and only a few grains of rice have gone to base metal. 50/50 with 70% nitric Steve?

Maybe I'm doing something wrong here?

G
 
Glynn,

I diluted my 70% Technical Grade Nitric Acid with distilled water and swirled occasionally. No heat was ever applied.

The silver dissolved immediately followed shortly thereafter by the gold flakes appearing. After about 30 minutes the silver began precipitating due to the base metals dissolving.

After all activity ceased (overnight) I began swirling and rinsing the balls/rice with the nitric solution over and over again until 95% + of the powder (silver and gold mixed) was removed from the balls/rice. I added the minimum amount of water required during this process to rinse the vacuum filter as it pulled in the last of the solution and the vacuum vessel.

This filtered solution went back into the reaction vessel to assist with the removal of more powder. I repeated this process unitl the powder was all in the same filter in my vacuum funnel. I rinsed the powder/foils in the vacuum funnel with several washes of distilled water unitl no silver chloride appeared in the rinse water when a drop of HCl was added.

I gave the balls/rice one last rinse with distilled water and dumped them into a milk jug with the top cut out.

The jug of balls/rice has since dried and rusted out, but gold is still visible on a few of the balls.

I dissolved the silver off of the gold foils with a minimal fresh dose of 50/50 nitirc acid.

When all the silver was removed from the gold foils, I washed the foils three times with water, then with 31.45% HCl twice to remove any iron residue on the precious metals.

Finally, I dissolved the gold in HCl-Cl and precipitated as usual.

I'll post some photos soon.

Steve
 
Glynn,

Here's how the stripped balls look today.

[img:607:553]http://www.goldrecovery.us/images/rusty_balls.jpg[/img]

I think I can get another yield of gold and maybe even silver off of them if I'm lucky.

I'll start off with a nice hot HCl bath to remove all the rust. Depending on how that goes and how they look afterwards I'll choose the next treatment.

Steve
 
NICE!~

I did the same with 200 g of gold rice and I still have gold rice after straining out over 1,5g of gold flake from 200 g at start maybe its thicker gold on the plain gold rice.

I just put 2080 g of silver rice in 500ml dilute nitric and stripped the silver off, strained the rice out and rinsed, i reintroduced that nitric into another batch of silver balls and I am going to hit the silver rice now gold rice with fresh tech grade 70% diluted 50/50 with distilled and I will let you know how I fair! and maybe post some pics!

The other gold balls and rice dont want to do the same - has to be some thick copper nickle gold layers HUH!

G
 
What is silver and gold rice?
It looks like steel polishing compound from a tumbler or vibrating polisher. I used it for years and never had it coated with gold or silver(?) If it isthe tumbling shot, how about putting it back in the polisher with some ceramic embedded plastic media to scour it, and then refine the filtrate after magnetic separation?
 
Gee,

Welcome to the forum.

According to GSP the rice and balls are used in plating baths. Glynn sent me some samples that are shown above after processing. He told me he bought them from an electroplating shop that closed down. I still have a pound or so that have not been processed if you are interested in seeing a photo of them before they are processed.

Steve
 
I still have some, I havent finished up either if you want to see! They are conductive media used in plating operations so that the itty bitty small conectors stay conductive and dont stick together at the same time. So they go copper, nickel, gold and sometimes silver to. I got quite good yeilds and ended up with about a half pound of gold and well over a pound of silver closer to 2 pounds if I remember right. I still have a bunch of stuff I left LAST YEAR i have to get back to - I got side tracked by my Pinzgauer and Hummer H1 as well as a Suzuki LJ10 project. I will get back to the gold especially since its going up now in value!

How have you been Steve????

Glynn
 
I have seen the balls, for electroplatiing. Never any rice. LOL Very interesting. I thought the balls were used for polishing as well. Cool Idea for the Types of PM scrap. Keep up the good work Steve.

Nick
 
Guys,
I could swear (from your pictures) that this is what we jewelers call "tumbling shot""

http://www.ottofrei.com/store/product.php?productid=5769&cat=1064&page=1#DetImage

If so, the most economical way to process it would be to use a vibratory polisher with a coarse cutting compound:

http://www.shorinternational.com/TumblingMedia.htm

The heavy cut plastic should work fairly quickly. They last a really long time . The PMs will be removed as fine powder, along with the sanding grit. Filter the wash water and dissolve the metals in the filtrate. The rice can be rinsed in a strainer and tossed, or be run again with itself (alone) to burnish it for reuse in the plating process.

You can make a vibrating polisher pretty simply. It's a barrel, bucket or tub, set on 4 or more springs. An electric motor with a mis-balanced fan (put a bolt in one blade) provides the vibration. Go to a jewelers supply shop, look at one and study it. You will be amazed at how simple the construction is.

Glad I found this post. I have been a refiner and jeweler since 1977, and didn't know this use even existed. I love new sources of PMs!
-G
 
It was called conductive media by my friend and my friend used it in his companies connector plating operation - it tumbles with the connector pieces while in the plating bath to allow conductivity and stop clumping!


It looks identical to the posted link

http://www.ottofrei.com/store/.....1#DetImage

and very well may be the same stuff used in his plating operation - I first hand witnessed the connectors being placed in the teflon baskets with the conductive tumbling media and going from a copper plate solution for a certain amount of time then to a nickel then to a gold bath! Over and over and over again - then the connectors where removed and the media was used again for the next batch untill it grew too big to be used any more.

The easiest way was the way Steve taught me - I processed 75+ pounds of the stuff and have a few pounds left that I havent touched

- I have 5 to 10 pounds in a extra large rock tumbler (SEVERAL GALLONS) that tumbled for about a week non stop with coarse grit oxide grit and it didnt do as the previous poster suggests. I left it soaking in water for the last year now and I am hoping when I get back out to it in this month that it has rusted nicely and the PM's have fallen away from the steel balls.

I will keep this post updated with my future ball recovery as well as a mercury amalgamation project I was trying as well!

Glynn
 
Absolutsecurity said:
I have 5 to 10 pounds in a extra large rock tumbler (SEVERAL GALLONS) that tumbled for about a week non stop with coarse grit oxide grit and it didnt do as the previous poster suggests.

Did you tumble with the plastic media embedded with the grit (like in the second link), or just loose grit?
From my experience you won't get any sanding action with plain grit, it will just polish the grit. Seems the stuff you are sanding AKA de-burring needs to slide along the media as if it were small pieces of sandpaper.
 
So the plastic media holds the grit and helps its abrasive action on the object you are trying to cut?


I ran grit with the media and after half a week I added some sharp ceramic processor cracked chips to see if that would help cut (it didnt seem to help)\

Glynn
 
Absolutsecurity said:
So the plastic media holds the grit and helps its abrasive action on the object you are trying to cut?Glynn
Yep, it's like thousands of little sanding blocks being rubbed against the other objects (and also themselves; that's why they wear down and give you sediment).
 

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