Merged Topics on Ceramic CPU Recovery with Yields

[Harold_V]

I'm not even a "newbie" yet (I haven't started). Just after reading your input; it would seem a bit more beneficial to recover the gold and make jewelry, trinkets, etc. and sell them for more. What do you think?

Is it safe to assume you already have the skills and knowledge to make jewelry? If not, you're in for a surprise. It requires skill, talent and equipment. Further, the idea of having such tools in the presence of a refining lab isn't a good one. Don't even think about doing it if you don't have separate quarters. Rust is death on tools, and it's a common problem for refiners, thanks to the acids that are required.

For the record, of the more than 60 customers I had when I was refining, only one of them has gone on to do his own refining. Rarely can a bench man justify the time it takes unless a large volume of waste can be accumulated to warrant the time involved in refining.

Harold

 

[1968pontiac]

Regarding trimming those 132 pin computer memory sticks I use the following method which took me several hours to figure out. I was first trying to use clippers, then heavy duty pliers to bend and break off the gold tipped memory edges. This was slow and labor intensive.

Now I just use a big heavy vise that I got at harbor freight for $30. It's jaws are 6" across (match the length of these memory sticks). I place the gold tipped edges into the vise and tighten the vise. I then take a heavy rubber hammer and with 3 or 4 swings these sticks separately nicely right where the clamp is located. I found this method to be just as good as trimming (o.k. 95% as accurate) but it's much faster and easier..

I use a dust mask for this technique as I can see junk coming off these memory sticks when I hit them with a hammer.

A better technique would be to use a tabletop metal shear but these cost $400+. And it may not be that much faster or accurate than my technique using a $5 hammer and $30 vise.

Does anyone else have some good feedback on techniques they are using to quickly separate the gold parts from the boards?

I picked up a small desktop metal shear from harbor freight http://www.harborfreight.com/throatless-shear-38413.html

I mounted it to a bench and away I went. It works very well for just over $125 bucks. You will use it on everthing from slot 1 chips to isa/pci boards and ram...Work smarter not harder.....

 

[Dude4ever]

Darn, I processed 2 ceramic CPU's very similar to those in your videos Sam.

I followed the procedure as best as I could, I used nitric and that is a challenge I must say

But I finished the dissolution of all metals in the beaker, the colour were bright yellowish orange, but when I poured it in the beaker that held the ice-cubes, this happened instantly:




Hoke doesn't say anything about this, here is where experience comes to play. What to do next people? ^^
Stannous test were positive for gold.

Thanks

 

[Geo]

that is silver chloride. you can let it settle and then filter it through a few coffee filters. after filtering, let it set for awhile longer to see if any more will drop. your gold will have a slight amount of silver in it when you drop the gold so follow Harolds instructions on the rinses and washes to remove the final bit of silver chloride from your gold powder.

 

[Jamessnipes505]

I have had this happen to me a few times. Usually when urea was introduced to the solution. I have let the silver chloride settle and filtered many times into a seperate beaker. My last attempt to get all of the gold bearing solution off of the crystals which would desolve with water ( I still don't fully understand the silver cementing and washing process ) in another beaker I ended up with a very dilute yellow solution with silver chloride and gold present I precipitated the gold with zinc. After washing the gold powder very well it melted down very nicely and appeared to be pure. Did I drop any silver with the gold and just washed the silver out? I have not tested to see if any traces of silver stayed in the solution. Mainly because I don't know how to wash and melt so I am storing the crystals until I understand a little more. Was this a reasonable thing to do or just be more patient if it ever happens again?
Thanks
James

 

[Geo]

first, reclaiming gold through this process is just that,reclaiming or recovery,and is not considered refining.to refine it, you would have to dissolve it a second time following the rinses and washes to remove the silver chloride.

second, you have to follow the rinsing and washing processes to remove impurities to really clean your gold powder.after separating the power, follow with a hard boil in hcl to remove any copper in the powder due to drag down.decant and repeat until the hcl stays clear at 15 minutes of boiling.follow this with a boil in water.decant and repeat.follow with a boil in ammonium hydroxide for 15 minutes.decant and boil in water for 15 minutes.decant and force dry.

this should leave you with a light tan gold powder of high quality.the ammonium hydroxide wash is to remove any traces of silver chloride.

 

[Dude4ever]

What baffeled me was the instant colour change from yellow to green when introdused to Ice and water.

Thank you Geo, always nice answers to get from you I now have gold at the bottom of beaker, and soon enough going to wash it and do the process again to refine.
But my first batch that I washed was actually so small that most of the brown powder dissappeared during the process, and that who was left dried into the bottom of the beaker, so I had to dissolve it
again with HCl-Cl to clean it

I have made an arrangement for obtaining computer parts at a regular basis for free, so I can get a hold of more processors at a time.
For pins I'm starting to have great success with the H2SO4 stripping cell.

 

[samuel-a]

I have finally completed the written tutorial accompanied to the two YT videos.

Part 1
Part 2

 

[maynman1751]

Very nice Sam! Well done. John.

 

[BAMGOLD]

X2 - Very nice, Your site is coming along nicely

the nest addition

So far found in part 1 End of 4th paragraph after Safety Note: Remember this process should be done outdoors or in a fume hood.

 

[samuel-a]

Thanks BAMGOLD

I have fixed it.

 

[BAMGOLD]

Excellent Videos and Reading, they go hand in hand very well, best on YouTube for sure! Oh did I menction, one of your videos on YouTube brought me to this forum, and I wasn't even looking up Gold Recovery... weird..

 

[Marcel]

I agree with you Butcher, but is it a requirement that the electrical connection is made with gold wire?
Steve

Absolutely not. In fact you may get a batch that does have gold bond wires, but there may also consist of aluminum. That is even very likely.
I have crushed a lot of large IC flatpacks and notebook CPUs in the last weeks and examined them. I was very disappointed to see, how few really contained gold bond wires.
Now why do we have such great variation concerning the yields of complex IC such as CPUs and flatpacks?
My assumption and observation is that a few of the chips do really have golden bondwires and some even have golden or goldplated leadframes (I think it is even karat gold). So if you only have a handful of them in a large batch, that will give you the yield.
But most large ICs/CPUs do not have any gold inside.
I may make sense to crack them into 2 pieces and investigate the gold content first with bare eye and then process them. That would eliminate a lot of waste and work...

 

[lazersteve]

For the record, the question quoted above was more of a rehtorical comment than a true question to Butcher. The question was posed to make readers think.

Marcel your observations are spot on with mine. Too many members assume they have high gold bearing material only to find little or no gold in there solutions after many hours of hard work. Research is paramount in obtaining good yields from escrap.

Steve

 

[jmharris]

Hey everyone. I will start off by saying that I am a green horn when it comes to all of this. I've been watching videos on youtube done by "indeeditdoes", which i must say, he does it justice. I'm hopefully going to attach a picture of 22K gold plated pins. There 2" long and my question on this would be, would paying $4 for 50 of them be worth the investment. Im a corrosion guy for a pipeline company, so getting some of the chemicals wont be a problem. If this is a good investment how much gold dust should i roughly expect. I've tried googling calculators for this but havn't had much luck. any answers you pro's have for me would be awesome. If anyone has any first time tips for me please reply on here or the best way would be through my e-mail, [email protected], Again thank you to everyone who has spent the time to make a website like this and not hogging all of the valued info.

 

[Geo]

Hey everyone. I will start off by saying that I am a green horn when it comes to all of this. I've been watching videos on youtube done by "indeeditdoes", which i must say, he does it justice. I'm hopefully going to attach a picture of 22K gold plated pins. There 2" long and my question on this would be, would paying $4 for 50 of them be worth the investment. Im a corrosion guy for a pipeline company, so getting some of the chemicals wont be a problem. If this is a good investment how much gold dust should i roughly expect. I've tried googling calculators for this but havn't had much luck. any answers you pro's have for me would be awesome. If anyone has any first time tips for me please reply on here or the best way would be through my e-mail, [email protected], Again thank you to everyone who has spent the time to make a website like this and not hogging all of the valued info.

some more information about the pins would help. what are they made to do, what is their purpose. do you know the plating thickness. have you had a sample tested for content. what would 50 of them weigh. what does one weigh.

 

[lazersteve]

I ran a batch of those pins (from an eBay seller in Australia if memory serves me correctly) several years back. They are only flash plated.

Steve

 

[jmharris]

I ran a batch of those pins (from an eBay seller in Australia if memory serves me correctly) several years back. They are only flash plated.

Steve

steve, im not familiar with flash plated. I take that as a bad thing. The weight I am not sure of, i have only seen the pics. I'll probably just stick to destroying older computers.

Also i have another question. as the videos posted by samual for breaking down the gold plating from pins, could you use the same principle for getting rid of the impurities in gold jewelry. Because when you just get a crucible and melt jewelry, it still has the other metals in with it aswell. so maybe the real question I am trying to get at is, is there a way to get 14k and 18K gold jewelry melted without having the other metals end up in your ingot? I have heard that you could put glass in with your jewelry and the nickle and other metals will end up in the glass once it hardens, then you just break the glass off and all that is left is the gold only. sorry that im not familiar with some of the lingo that goes along with these processes. Thanks for understanding.

Jeremiah

 

[jimdoc]

is there a way to get 14k and 18K gold jewelry melted without having the other metals end up in your ingot?
Jeremiah

Then why would we need refiners? It isn't that easy.
Here is a book you should study;
http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/download/file.php?id=2480

Jim

 

[butcher]

Jeremiah,

The glass you’re talking about in the melt is called slag, what you’re thinking about is done mostly with ore, or in an assay, a flux is used to give properties to the melt to make chemical changes at the high temperature, oxidizers like potassium nitrate are sometimes used to oxidize base metals so they will report in the slag (glass), sometimes the opposite is added a reducer like sugar, charcoal, flour, these will reduce the metals from being an oxide back into metal, like when lead oxide is used in the flux, and if the ore has oxidizing properties they would add a reducing flux to convert lead oxide to lead (so the lead would pick up the fine particles of gold or other valuable metals in the melt, the glass can come from silica sand, quartz or crushed glass, borax will also assist in forming the slag, this melt is a chemical reaction, and the flux formula changes the chemistry in the melt, so flux is chosen to give the desired result with different types of ore (which are of differing chemical compositions), so not just any flux recipe would work, the recipe is chosen after determining what type of ore you have.

This process would be useless to try and mix a flux to oxidize base metals with karat gold where there is a very high percentage of base metals, and your chances of loosing valuable metal in the melt, the process would cause more harm than good.

There is a better way to separate the base metals from jewelry like 14k, melt with three parts silver(in-quarter the gold with silver), pour this low karat melt into shot, and then dissolve the silver and other base metals in nitric acid (gold will not dissolve in this acid), we lower the karat with silver because the 14K is a mix of two metals that dissolve in different acids, nitric for silver (the gold which does not dissolve in nitric can keep you from dissolving the silver if you did not in-quarter the gold), once we remove silver and the other base metals from the gold we can then dissolve the gold, (and the little bit of metals we have not removed), this is usually done in aqua regia (HCl with nitric added), if we tried to dissolve the 14K gold the silver in it will not dissolve in this acid and forms an insoluble crust keeping our acid from attacking the gold in the karat jewelry, here again is why we in-quartered our gold to remove silver above, once we get gold dissolved we use a chemical to selectively precipitate the gold as pure as we can, leaving other metals in solution, the gold would then most likely be dissolved again to refine it further.


The book that Jimdoc, directed you to study, will discuss how to refine your gold, reading the book and learning from it will give you an education worth more than some of the gold you will melt. Hoke's book a must read for anyone wishing to learn refining.