Motherboard Stripping

[RajunCajun84]

I have about 5 crammed boxes of motherboards that I'm not sure what to do with. I was considering several options.

1. Sell them on ebay (no fun)
2. Burn and go from there (beyond my skill level,i think. But i like burning stuf)
3. Create a ball mill and (i don't know what next, but it's an excuse to build something cool)
4. I heard of a method of a hotplate,sand and using the hotplate to melt solder from the board and releasing all components (sounds really cool)

2 - 4 sound like a lot of fun, however once i have all of these components, I have no clue where to go from there. Can anyone offer some insight on any of these. And also, has anyone actually done #4? Once i recover the components, which are garbage,and which have values?

 

[glorycloud]

Another option is to find a local scrap yard or electronics recycler and sell the boards to them.
You should get $1.50 to $2.00 or so per pound for motherboards and network/video/modem cards.

Avoid burning them as that really releases very bad and hazardous stuff into the atmosphere.
Your neighbors and the local wildlife will appreciate you refraining from that activity! 8)

 

[butcher]

Glory clouds got the Idea, sell or trade them off, why waste your time and health, you could be doing something to get better returns easier.
heck a job at burger joint and buying scrap gold from wages processing that would be more profitable and rewarding.

 

[Anonymous]

I doubt you will get that price (2.00) other than on ebay, now that copper and other base metals have moved so low.

 

[RajunCajun84]

This will be for the sake of learning, and not so much for the profit. I want to get the palladium silver and gold all separated. I've been told that burning is bad, but then i hear so many talk about incineration. I'm confused about that. Would a sand covered hotplate be a good idea for removing all of the smaller components?components?

 

[Anonymous]

Mother boards, get a heat gun at lowes, turn the board upside down and use the heat gun to free all components. I started out by sanding the boards with my belt sander and 36 grit paper, but quickly built a thickness sander to do both sides at the same time and up to 16 inch wide board. I do not do this anymore because copper is so low in price now.

I should note, cut fingers off or sand them off seperately for refining. then I used a gravity seperations, first panning like gold, later a fan to blow away the light fiber stuff from the board leaving the copper fall into collecting bin. No burning needed.

Components were seperated by type, black plain IC's, quad pak (no gold tab) and quak pak with gold tab, any pins, switching component like relays, and dip swithces.

I was getting a pretty good system worked out until the prices of base metals collapsed and I could just not get enough volume in my small town to make it worth while.

I do have a different process for the chips now, I have a high speed grinder with a vacuum attachment, I grind the top half center 1/3 of the chips out this is where I have found the gold bonding wires to be as well as any precious metal plating on the legs etc.

I have been doing pretty good with this even though I still do not have the volume, the yield is nice since I am only running the highest concentration part of the chips etc.

If I where to do this larger scale I would get me a small cnc type mill and program it to recognize the chips and mill out the center portions.

Without recovering the solder and copper it would be pretty much impossible for me withough mechanization to make a dime on boards.

If I had the volume and storage I would still get the base metals and save them eventually the value will return.

 

[golddigger2]

Hi im new but accidently stumbled accross a way to remove all the green crudd off circuit boards for copper recycling. So here it is.
Get 500 grams sodium hydroxide powder, Place it in a large visionware bowl. Very slowly pour in just enough warm water to disolve the powder (be careful here as it does fizz and foam a bit). Add your boards and bring the pot up to the boil making sure to stir or rock the pot from time to time to prevent the surface tension from trapping gasses that could let go all at once. As soon as the mixture boils turn off the heat and let the boards cool in the solution. See the photo below for my results. This was after one application of this technique after a very light scrub and rinsing. (Make sure to observe all the normal safety precautions costic soda is dangerous stuff)

I hope this helps, the results are quite fantastic

 

[RajunCajun84]

Great pics golddigger. I will have to try that.

 

[Palladium]

http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/download/file.php?id=3007