Old Military Phone Transceiver Boards

[NobleMetalsRecovery]

Take a look at this board please. I'll have about 30 pounds of them when I finish taking apart these devices. Any opinions as to what the may contain? Value? The circuit board material is thin, like a hard drive board, which do bring a premium. These are small, like a cell phone. The board is double sided.

 

[patnor1011]

I would test those orange monolithic capacitors they may contain Pd and Ag

 

[Militoy]

Nice material. The gold-colored unpopulated chip site, and the isolated gold-plated solder pads are good signs - as I'm sure you are aware. The gold plating on solder pads / lands is designed to protect the surfaces from corrosion until the time they are soldered. At the time of soldering, the gold is dissolved into the solder alloy. Your challenge will mainly be to separate the alloyed gold from the solder joints.

When we test solder from wave-flow machines or solder pots, one of the main "contaminants" tested for in the alloy is gold. The solder bath invariably builds up gold content - if gold pins or plated pads are exposed to the solder. I'm always amazed at occasional online instructions I have read - that advise the recycler to snip off and discard chips before recycling - or to separate only the visible gold-colored lands for recycling.

 

[NobleMetalsRecovery]

Here's a couple more pics. Notice that the chip with the white paper on top is a gold top chip with a white ceramic base.

 

[Drewbie]

KVG - German RF manufacturer

Ceramic crystal unit of some sort?

http://www.kvg-gmbh.de/89.0.html?&L=3

 

[NobleMetalsRecovery]

Inside the chip there's a small piece of metal floating on some gold contacts. The metal can be removed from the gold tabs. It may be geranium.

 

[samuel-a]

Inside the chip there's a small piece of metal floating on some gold contacts. The metal can be removed from the gold tabs. It may be geranium.

There's a reason why they call it "quartz crystal" oscillator, this is what the resonator is made of...
there are a lot of materials that can make a resonator, though Germanium is not one of them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piezoelectricity#Materials

 

[NobleMetalsRecovery]

The crystal is a silver colored metallic substance. After reading the Wiki article you posted, I see that's a large number of choices as to what it may be. Thanks.