roddenberry
Member
- Joined
- Sep 18, 2009
- Messages
- 18
Great forum! I stumbled upon this site as I was tring to find resources for salvaging gold and other metals from the cases ans cases of old electronic junk slowly piling up in my garage.
From what i've read so far, it's pretty hard to reclaim gold from junk, so i'll do a lot of reading in the FAQs before attempting anything myself. My first task will be to "refine" the sources of various metal i want to salvage... a few coffee cans where i'll throw the specific parts that are rich in gold, while getting rid of the useless plastic and cleaned PCB junk at my local e-junk recycler (which happens to be one street away from me!)
Thank god CRTs have practically disappeared from desktops, there was som much toxic stuff in these. But as I was looking at a handful of gold plated components (photodiodes and CPUs), I thought... heck, it would be silly to throw GOLD away, even if it's in minute amounts... I'm one of those people who can't resist stopping in the street to pick-up an old discarded computer. Afew weeks ago, I stopped to pick-up an old DELL P3 and found an ATI Rage Pro 64 video card in perfect working order, as well as a fully functional DVD burner... people throw away the craziest things!
Anyway, my "gold reclaiming" will only be limited to a simple hobby. I do not intend to try to make money out of that, and if I do, that'll be the cherry on top. Having worked for Xerox a few years ago, I do know that "corotron" wires are nearly all the time made out of pure tungsten or platinum osmium alloy... so that's an interesting source for these metals!
So thanks in advance for the wealth of info i've seen so far, and i have barely scratched the surface of this forum yet!
Robert, in Montreal
From what i've read so far, it's pretty hard to reclaim gold from junk, so i'll do a lot of reading in the FAQs before attempting anything myself. My first task will be to "refine" the sources of various metal i want to salvage... a few coffee cans where i'll throw the specific parts that are rich in gold, while getting rid of the useless plastic and cleaned PCB junk at my local e-junk recycler (which happens to be one street away from me!)
Thank god CRTs have practically disappeared from desktops, there was som much toxic stuff in these. But as I was looking at a handful of gold plated components (photodiodes and CPUs), I thought... heck, it would be silly to throw GOLD away, even if it's in minute amounts... I'm one of those people who can't resist stopping in the street to pick-up an old discarded computer. Afew weeks ago, I stopped to pick-up an old DELL P3 and found an ATI Rage Pro 64 video card in perfect working order, as well as a fully functional DVD burner... people throw away the craziest things!
Anyway, my "gold reclaiming" will only be limited to a simple hobby. I do not intend to try to make money out of that, and if I do, that'll be the cherry on top. Having worked for Xerox a few years ago, I do know that "corotron" wires are nearly all the time made out of pure tungsten or platinum osmium alloy... so that's an interesting source for these metals!
So thanks in advance for the wealth of info i've seen so far, and i have barely scratched the surface of this forum yet!
Robert, in Montreal
