Platinum on Circuit Boards and within Processors.

[Cali408]

Hello all. I have been to this site from time to time, getting useful knowledge as far as refining goes. None of which I have done by the way. I will likely need years of more research before I decide (if) to use chemicals to refine the scraps of gold which I have collected, as the cost both financially and physically can carry great risk. So thank you for all your subject matter expertise.

My questions are:

1. Is see may circuit boards from the 1980's with gold plating across the whole board. Is it worthwhile to save the whole circuit board, or just take the gold fingers and contacts and toss the rest?

2. I know that processors have gold in them, but do they also have platinum? I have come across similiar like processors which are not the removable type, but are stationary, that when cracked open are a shiny silver in color with some copper as well. It doesnt seem to be actual silver.. I see this a lot in Cisco like items.

3. I also have seen the same material (shiny silver) connected to it seems like ceramic rectangles. These are around the size of 1/32th of a penny. Any Idea

4. On circuit boards, I also see what appears to be 1/64th sized type of shiny black metal that is soldered in the board. Any idea as well? I dont believe it is a magnent.

5. I have heard that gold plated with cooper can be seperated safely with cooper etching solution. Is this beneficial as far as cost wise, and if so, is there a way to recover the dissolved cooper from the solution, so as to use the solution again and again?

6. I have run across Memory Sticks from time to time which dont have gold contacts but shiny silver ones. What is this metal?

7. I have Memory sticks which are around 15 years old that are still brand new.. I have around 150 of them, being the 256MB type. Should I sell them or just get the gold contact from them and scrap the rest?

Much Regards,
David

 

[patnor1011]

1. You can save fingers and pins and still be able to sell the board. IMHO it is not very profitable to try to get plating off board but it all depend on type and amount involved and mainly on you - if you have a lot of time and cheap chemicals why not.

2. Hardly. Maybe some do but most of that shiny colored metal is just alluminum or tin plated. However I am not familliar with Cisco and I never scraped any space shuttle I can think that you may encounter platinum and palladium in higher amounts and occurences in old russian electronics as they had heaps of them and they were more available than gold for them.

3. Picture will help

4. Picture will help

5. Yes - it is recommended to use on fingers which are gold plated on copper and process is called here as AP. Solution can be used a lot of times over and over.

6. Answered here hundreds of times - it is tin

7. You can try to sell them. You may get several times more than any gold you pull of them. 256MB is not much but I think you may get buyer with no problems. I vote for Ebay.


If I answered something wrong somebody will correct me but that is pretty much what I think
Hope it helps.
Read forum, read Hoke, stay safe.

 

[Cali408]

Thank you for your quick reply. i had dreams of Gold last night. im pretty sure most of us have...lol... and for some reason, I was under impression that you said AR not AP for the cooper etching, so i was dreaming about how the cooper etching could be AR or Aqua Regia. Are there any tips when using the etching solution? Safeguards? please let me know, and thanks for the reply again. ill try to provide pictures as soon as possible. Thank you!

 

[patnor1011]

I was probably too fast. I meant that AP is used on fingers. I have no experience with copper etching solution so I cant say if it is economical or good or ....
I am using AP as that is cheap. AP is HCl with small addition of peroxide.

 

[patnor1011]

I have access to more than 4 tons of old computer circuit boards. I wonder if anyone knows of a way that gold can be extracted from these. I heard there is a solution, you can soak the planks and the gold will just lift off but I do not know what this is called, and I'm not sure if it actually works. Any information would be greatly appreciated.

I dont think there is universal solution to lift gold from boards without any preparation or pre-process first. It can be done maybe, but first you need to depopulete them, get rid of as much tin as possible and get rid of that green or yellow board coating/colour to expose any traces of gold plating from them. None of this is easy and profitable. High amounts of boards can be processed by large refiners using more efficient methods. If your boards are one off business I would sell them to buyer with highest price or cherry pick some of the best looking and sell them on ebay. You can always post them to for sale section here. If you have access to them on continuous basis you may have wait to accumulate more and have them toll refined.