My Plan - New to Refining. I would love a review please.

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This thread is not for guys who want to chop up the boards and run them on a table or pyrolyze them and smelt them for a copper cell, this is a thread to provide a step by step plan to follow for the hobby refiner or small scale operation that comes across bucket sized lots of circuit boards. This thread is exclusively for using the AP process to release gold foils which can be processed once enough are collected. That will be discussed in another thread so as not to make this thread too confusing.
That said, the starting point is a pile of circuits that have been removed from the computers or phones or whatever and lend themselves to this process.

I guess a listing of what types of material will lend themselves nicely to the AP process will be a good starting point.

One of the problems with reading these things on a forum is we, the moderators, cannot change a position of a post in a thread, at least I don't know how to do it. So a comment made about aqua regia in the middle of a thread about AP is really out of place and leads to confusion. I am proposing here to solicit comments only about the question being posed. When we get enough discussion I will pose the second question on the list so we can move forward on the same thread and in the end have a complete thread involving everything anyone needed to know about processing with AP.

So let's start with a list of scrap types that lend themselves to the AP process. Just list scrap types first, no processing steps, that will come next.
I currently have but did NOT process anything yet (through manual desoldering)

1. IC chips (i just generalize anything square/rectagle, black and flat, is IC chips - i know there are processors etc but i feel they can be processed similarly)
2. Gold Pins
3. Ram fingers /fingers in general
4. A crap ton of wires (look flat but have either silver or gold fingers at the end)
5. A POOP LOAD of gold ribbons
6. MlCCs
7. Weird square/rectangular cubes that are yellow black or blue uniform color.
8. Weird things that are circular bulbs but covered in something (heard silver or palladium for some brown,blue, etc etc)
9. Ton of cleaned boards after lye definitely have gold in them.
 
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This thread is not for guys who want to chop up the boards and run them on a table or pyrolyze them and smelt them for a copper cell, this is a thread to provide a step by step plan to follow for the hobby refiner or small scale operation that comes across bucket sized lots of circuit boards. This thread is exclusively for using the AP process to release gold foils which can be processed once enough are collected. That will be discussed in another thread so as not to make this thread too confusing.
That said, the starting point is a pile of circuits that have been removed from the computers or phones or whatever and lend themselves to this process.

I guess a listing of what types of material will lend themselves nicely to the AP process will be a good starting point.

One of the problems with reading these things on a forum is we, the moderators, cannot change a position of a post in a thread, at least I don't know how to do it. So a comment made about aqua regia in the middle of a thread about AP is really out of place and leads to confusion. I am proposing here to solicit comments only about the question being posed. When we get enough discussion I will pose the second question on the list so we can move forward on the same thread and in the end have a complete thread involving everything anyone needed to know about processing with AP.

So let's start with a list of scrap types that lend themselves to the AP process. Just list scrap types first, no processing steps, that will come next.
Because im so new to this, is it okay if i post pictures of what i have? Im not sure what exactly is good to be honest. thank you for starting this forum, i am learning a lot!
 
Materials that may practicably be processed using AP are:

Finger edges.
Pins (older.)
Top hats.
Gold plated telecoms connectors.
Processor legs/lids.
Older gold plated boards.

From a practicable perspective AP's uses for ewaste are in reality limited by yields, which shortens the list. For much of the visible gold in ewaste surface leaching of some kind is far better therefore it's very much a cherry picking exercise.
May i ask what top hats are?
 
Ellias, I have moved your posts to this thread.
The thread you posted in was made as an attempt to make informative info for new users of the AP process.
Please read the first post in a thread before you post new questions.
Ideally we want the members to read the whole thread before posting new questions as some threads contain much information on varied topics.
 
And again, I'm truly amazed by each of you. How yall know the exact process of materials...whole computer boards. I sit and pull off every gold pin, bga, and and other component that contains gold. But for me, to try to remove gold and other metals from an entire computer board, whether it be one or ten, I wouldn't even try. I've got the boards and alot of other items. I just don't have the knowledge. I will keep reading. Be safe
 
And again, I'm truly amazed by each of you. How yall know the exact process of materials...whole computer boards. I sit and pull off every gold pin, bga, and and other component that contains gold. But for me, to try to remove gold and other metals from an entire computer board, whether it be one or ten, I wouldn't even try. I've got the boards and alot of other items. I just don't have the knowledge. I will keep reading. Be safe
We do not recommend processing whole boards, unless in commercial scale.
 
There are many ways to remove components from boards, search the forum for several different methods. With a few simple tools cherry picking can be speeded up by quite a lot. There are also ways to strip entire boards then sort the components by hand, or even screen them by size. It is all dependent on the imagination and maybe some mechanical skills to build what you need.
 

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