Need some advice

[philddreamer]

Abid, I believe is sulphuric & aluminum, not HCl & aluminum.

If a remember correctly, at Lazersteve's website there's a video showing the process.

Take care!

Phil

P.S.
I couldn't find it at Lazersteve's website, maybe a saw it somewhere else. Sorry!

But check here:
http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=4209&p=35953&hilit=metallic+silver+with+sulphuric#p35953

 

[Geo]

diluted sulfuric and soft steel. its best to do this before the silver chloride dries. add dilute sulfuric to cover the material well, then place a piece of steel in that is large enough to retrieve after the reaction is complete.

another process that works with either dry or wet silver chloride is (if dry, add water to cover material) add caustic soda (potassium hydroxide or sodium hydroxide) until all the material has turned grey then let it set for a few minutes. add sugar water (as much as will dissolve in a cup of warm water) slowly and stir well.this process builds heat so add a little and stir to expose the material to the sugar and let the heat dissipate before adding more until all the grey has been converted to metal. the appearance will change and its not hard to see.

 

[butcher]

Silver chloride can be converted to silver metal using aluminum and HCl.

The aluminum chloride I do not like to deal with as a waste. So I usually use the sodium hydroxide and Karo syrup method, or the iron and dilute sulfuric acid method. You can find more about these methods by using the search tool, also reading about this in the silver section of the forum, so much has been written on this subject, that reading these older post will give you much more information, than a person answering your question now, also reading these older posts you will learn many other things while this one question is getting an answer.

Here is some to get you started on conversion of silver chloride, asking the question in the search tool using different terms can also give you much more.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&as_q ... s_occt=any

viewtopic.php?f=52&t=2373

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&as_o ... s_occt=any

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&as_q ... s_occt=any

Use this search it can help to answer many questions.

http://goldrecovery.us/forum_search.asp

 

[ZHillyard]

So I have a question. I'm not sure if this is even possible. Did some searches on the forum and found nothing.

I am going to remove the solder masking on my gold-plated boards, however I just figured I'd resell them since I don't have an efficient way of processing them and it would make them more aesthetic for resell-- then I got to thinking archaic.

After I clean the boards off and de-mask them, I know general incineration is a no-no so the small guy has a hard time with them. Would it be possible to take the finely ground
board material and run it through a layered sleuth box (repeatedly if need be) to remove the cloth and epoxies (or at least a good majority of it) and recover the metal material and
go about the normal recovery process from there? Granted, I reckon I'd still have a bit of a mudball, but I figured that might be easier to work with and be less pollution if I had to melt it that way or
I could just collect what I have and try it with a batch of AP. Then I could just get rid of the excess wastes through a local center.

 

[butcher]

ZHillyard
I do not know for sure, but I believe the entire fiberglass, epoxies and finely ground metals would be very hard to separate by gravity methods.

But this is just my guess, you could try it and see how good my guess is or is not.

 

[Geo]

i have incinerated enough PCB's to know that there are different layers of copper foils than just the both outsides. if you want to dissolve the copper using AP, then the only copper to deal with is the copper under the gold. if you grind the boards or incinerate them you will release the copper layers inside the board leaving more base metal to deal with. you should find a method of removing the gold from the front and back as is or sell them that way.

 

[lazersteve]

I have several videos of the silver chloride conversions. They are in the silver section of the main site.

I used sulfuric acid and iron, but you can use HCl and iron, zinc, or aluminum if you like.

Zinc and 5% HCl works very fast compared to iron and 5% sulfuric acid. Zinc is also much easier than iron to clean out of the resulting silver.

Steve

 

[ZHillyard]

i have incinerated enough PCB's to know that there are different layers of copper foils than just the both outsides. if you want to dissolve the copper using AP, then the only copper to deal with is the copper under the gold. if you grind the boards or incinerate them you will release the copper layers inside the board leaving more base metal to deal with. you should find a method of removing the gold from the front and back as is or sell them that way.

Noted Geo. I decided to cherry pick the boards with surface gold using a dremmel; that has worked really good but takes a little time. After I have hand-picked
my pins and other goodies off of the boards I am pre-prepping them for solder mask removal by depopulating the boards in an electric skillet with about a half inch
of silica in the bottom. This has worked really well so far. Little bit of a pain dragging the boards back and forth from the apartment to the shop, but I am liking the results.

As far as stripping the surface gold goes, would it be possible to try experimenting the the electrolytic system? Say I cut my cleaned, surface-plated boards into my
electro dish and using the copper mesh anode. If I layed a bed of my cheap pins on the anode and then sandwiched my boards in small squares on top of those pins
with another layer of pins on top of the boards, would I be able to see any results? Or does this even sound feasible? I say this because the pieces I am picking off of my boards
are typically plated foundations on the board for IC chips. Most of them are 2x2/3x3 inch squares after I cut them loose.

 

[Geo]

yes, it can be done. each circuit must be charged. after you cut a component off the circuit is broken. boards with finger connectors can be rigged with a bridge to contact all the fingers at once out of two flat pieces of copper or stainless steel. i havent done so myself, but ive seen slot connectors processed the same way with a flat piece of copper plate without removing the pins from the plastic.it may take some trial and error, but if you have the patience and determination you should be able to make it work.