Pictoral Tour of Various Electronic Scrap Types (Part 1)

[Chumbawamba]

This is for you wide-eyed Newbies coming here for the first time. I am going to let you in on some not-so-secrets. This will save you time in locating and identifying lower-grade electronic scraps that nonetheless contain gold, and every little bit counts (especially in volume).

Enjoy! (Or else!)

Part I

Many inkjet printers that use plug-in carthridges that have a mylar strip with contacts (sometimes gold plated) that are designed to mate with the following piece:



This is a mylar piece embedded in the carthridge carriage where the connector on the carthridges connects up with the brains of the printer. The connector ribbons for these particular strips were aluminum wire. Below is an example of the type of ribbon connector you'll find in older HP inkjet printers.



This is the end that plugs into the controller board. Each connector is a small strip, about 1/8" high and about 1 1/4" wide. Not much, but like I said, it adds up in quantity.

Here's a board that comes out of some models of Apple's LaserWriter II. Again, not much, but it's nice gold.



Here are scanner elements that come out of higher end scanners that contain a system of lenses and mirrors to get a higher resolution scan. The elements are contained within the scanner carriage assembly. In it you'll also find a small fluorescent lamp (the backlight) with a power supply, a bunch of thin mirrors (haven't done any testing yet to see if they have silver backing), and a nice little lens. All of this can be used for fun projects.



Here's a close-up of one of the elements. You can see the gold plating and, better yet, the gold bonding wires between the external connector contacts and the CCD itself.



More in Part II

 

[Chumbawamba]

Here are various scanning elements from cheaper scanners or fax machines. There is a plating of gold all across the strip. And if you look closely, gold bonding wires as well!



Here's a close-up of the bottom unit. You can see the gold bonding wires coming off of the IC in the center, and if you look carefully you can see the gold bonding wires along the CCD.



Here's a SCSI channel selector switch. You generally find these on the back of old SCSI drives, used for selecting the data channel that the device occupies on the SCSI bus. Bust them open and inside you find some gold plating. Not much, but again, in (gargantuan) quantity, you get your gold.



Here are the two boards that come out of a typical late 1990s era Nokia mobile phone. Lots of pretty gold, yes, but when you think about it, there's only about as much as a couple edge connectors from a 16-bit ISA card have, and you have to go through about 100 times the work to get at it.

Top side:



And bottom:



Keep this in mind: the gold is just a start. The surface mount components likely have some amount of platinum group metals, so keep those for processing when you are more competent.

Continue reading for Part III...

 

[bigjohn]

Awsome post! Every little bit counts.

 

[Chumbawamba]

Part 3: TV Land!

Here's some stuff I've found in televisions. Whoulda thunk!?

This is a mylar ribbon connector found in the inside of a flat-panel LCD TV. It connects between the signal PCBs that surround the LCD screen and the screen itself. Gold plating on either end, much like the end of the inkjet printer mylar ribbon cable.



Now for some real fun. This is the processor board from a DLP (Digital Light Projection) TV, which were amongst the first hi-def HDTV units that came out in the early 2000s, but are now basically obsolete.



And here's the backside: more gold!



And now, the Crown Jewel:



Yep, that's the DLP processor chip. Lots of gold plating, brazing, and bonding wires inside. BTW, that silvery looking rectangle inside? That's where the image originates. Yep. If you could look at the chip while it was working, you could watch TV right from the top of it! The image is then piped and magnified through an incredibly elaborate set of lenses, mirrors, prisms, a beam splitter, a color wheel, and then eventually to the mirror backing the TV set and then the front screen. Technology is simply amazing.

And here's the bottom of the chip: gold contacts!



On to Part IV...

 

[gold4mike]

Kewl! I'm processing 12 of those DLP chips in my lab right now but didn't know what, exactly, they were. I used thermal shock to get rid of the glass then tried my mapp gas torch to get the gold rim off the ceramic. I was unsuccessful and didn't want to alloy the gold with the underlying metal so I put them in nitric. The gold coating is consistent enough that the nitric had no effect.

I'm going to file through the gold in a few places to allow the nitric a path to work and take it from there. I considered A/R but will have much more base metal in solution than gold if I go that route. I'll finish up with A/R to get the gold from the ceramic.

Thanks for telling me what they are.

 

[Chumbawamba]

Part 4

And now for something completely different.

I found these in a specific model of VCR. Unfortunately, I never recorded what VCR's from whence they came.



You would probably need many, many pounds of these to get any appreciable amount of gold, as gold found in cheap consumer goods are often just a light flashing. Just here to show the weird places where gold shows up.

Did I say weird? THIS is weird:



Ok, not so much weird, but why would they expend gold on the PCB of a cheap wall clock? This is from the clock module of one of those analog wall clocks you buy for a couple bucks at Walmart or whatever. Once again, hardy anything, but it's GOLD.

Everyone's seen these: cellular phone SIM chips. About 1mg of gold per...collect 1000 and get a gram



Along the same lines, here are cable TV converter access cards. Basically the same thing as a cell phone SIM, but with 20 times the useless surface area.



And finally, this is what dreams are made of:



A Sun SPARC processor from a SPARCStation 10 (or something like that). Probably more gold inside...but that's for a different tour.

Enjoy!

 

[Chumbawamba]

Kewl! I'm processing 12 of those DLP chips in my lab right now but didn't know what, exactly, they were. I used thermal shock to get rid of the glass then tried my mapp gas torch to get the gold rim off the ceramic. I was unsuccessful and didn't want to alloy the gold with the underlying metal so I put them in nitric. The gold coating is consistent enough that the nitric had no effect.

I'm going to file through the gold in a few places to allow the nitric a path to work and take it from there. I considered A/R but will have much more base metal in solution than gold if I go that route. I'll finish up with A/R to get the gold from the ceramic.

Thanks for telling me what they are.

Quite welcome. I would suggest you review Lazer Steve's process for Pentium Pros:

http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=60&t=62&p=52836#p52836

With the exception of the gold pads instead of pins, and the glass lid, they should process similarly.

 

[gold4mike]

Thanks for the pointer - I forgot about that post. I'm doubtful that the H2O2 will make it past the gold to the substrate since the nitric didn't, but I have a quart of 30% H2O2 and a quart of 40% H2O2 so I'll sure give it a try. Sally Beauty Supply is a great source for the stronger peroxide.

 

[Chumbawamba]

Thanks for the pointer - I forgot about that post. I'm doubtful that the H2O2 will make it past the gold to the substrate since the nitric didn't, but I have a quart of 30% H2O2 and a quart of 40% H2O2 so I'll sure give it a try. Sally Beauty Supply is a great source for the stronger peroxide.

Please do let us know what you yield from these chips. I figure there's got to be at least a quarter gram with all that surface plating and bonding wires.

I'm surprised you were able to find H2O2 at Sally. I tried my local outlets and they only had the lame peroxide substitute that they started carrying when various states outlawed H2O2 because some yahoos purportedly tried to use it to make a bomb or some such idiotic nonsense. Maybe I'll check again. What brand name did you find it under?

 

[Barren Realms 007]

Part 4

And finally, this is what dreams are made of:



A Sun SPARC processor from a SPARCStation 10 (or something like that). Probably more gold inside...but that's for a different tour.

Enjoy!

You are looking at the majority of the gold in that chip.

 

[gold4mike]

I'll check my H2O2 bottles when I get home and let you know. I'm currently at work, though it's hard to tell from my time spent on the forum. I keep a Firefox tab open all day and check in regularly.

 

[goldenchild]

Every little bit counts.

Yes.

 

[philddreamer]

gold4mike wrote:
"Sally Beauty Supply is a great source for the stronger peroxide."

Very true, I got mine there a few weeks ago, SALON CARE /40. I paid $5.00 for a quart.There's lower & higher numbers, up to 60 @ Sally's. Other suppliers up to 80, but It doesn't mean % of peroxide. That's just a number that tells you different levels of strength, & for sure, its more then 3% peroxide. At least, that's what I was told when we posted on peroxide subject a couple of months ago.

Mind you, they call it developer.

 

[hemicuda]

Chumbawumba, can others add to your thread? Just thought I would ask....
And by the way that should really get 'em off to a great start of what to look for.As it spreads like wild fire from this point!..LOL.

Regards,Keith.

 

[Chumbawamba]

Chumbawumba, can others add to your thread?

Sure! Please post away!

 

[gotthebug2]

Chumbawamba;
Look under the little black dot (Cheap clock photo) you will probably find a gift. I have found tiny gold circuits under those in the past.

 

[dodge.tom3]

Old 1951 Rca's have any gold or do pre 60 Tv's in general have any gold

 

[joem]

Not sure where to post this but. As I get more flat screen tv's I do sell them by the pound to my recycler but now I pull the bases from them and most times contain a couple of big chunks of aluminum.

 

[goldsilverpro]

I know that some of the old RCA tuners had a lot of gold on them. Pull one apart. If it's one of the ones I'm thinking of, it's obvious.

 

[Shaul]

I've often found with those TV access-type cards (and similar), that you can bend back a corner where the plastic meets the chip, insert a thin knife blade underneath and pop off the chip intact. The card can then be thrown away. The same might well work for sim cards.

Shaul