Processor Chips, whats the best way to go?

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MidasMilligan

Member
Joined
Apr 28, 2008
Messages
17
Location
USA
Hello everyone. I have an assortment of processor chips mostly intel celeron p3 and p2 (see link to pictures below). Some are ceramic and some seem to be made of a green circuit board type material. I have a few questions. Should I process these all at the same time? What is the best acid mix to use? The only AR I have is the shor stuff because nitric is hard to come by here. Would bleach and HCI do the trick? Also do I need to crush these up at all or throw them in whole? I have at least 50lbs of this stuff, how much should I do at once? Any tips and suggestion from people who have successfully processed these will be much appreciated.



http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y241/otrew/chips003.jpg

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y241/otrew/chips005.jpg

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y241/otrew/chips006.jpg
 
The best thing to do from what I've read here is to separate them into types or classes.

For some, AR would work, for the others you'll need Acid Peroxide.

Instead of doing them all at once too, make certain you do test batches so that you know which method will be most effective.

You don't want to do all 50 Lbs. to find out that you should have done it another way!


I'm sure Steve will chime in at some point to steer you in the perfect direction. Just hang tight and I'm almost positive he'll be around today to help with your questions. I'm not speaking for him so don't count on it, but he's pretty good at replying to these things.


Good luck in your quest.
 
Midas,

NHF is right in line with what I would do.

Separate the various types of cpus: ceramics, fiber cpus, and slotted cpus.

The ceramics with aluminum tops will need the tops removed with a little heat. Also remove all the gold plated tops/and or bottoms. The tops and bottoms come off easily with a MAPP gas torch and a little tapping on a heat resistant surface.

AP won't work for the cpus with kovar legs (all fiber types), but works fine for the ceramic types.

Process the finger edges form the slotted cpus separately.

If you wanted to process all the types of cpu cores together, Nitric would be the best choice to remove the base metals.

Steve
 
Awesome guys thanks for the tips. I am going to try to do a batch of the circuit board type p3 and celeron together because they look the same. I'll do two pounds and see how that goes. Would AP be the way to go for these? It looks to me like the only real values are to be found on the pins and a few other tiny spots on the corner of the chips. I managed to split one open with a razor knife and didn't really see any metals inside. See links to pics of the split celeron chip below.

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y241/otrew/chips007.jpg

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y241/otrew/chips008.jpg
 
I sell everything except ceramic chips with gold tops or plates. Anything else just seems like more of a headache than it's worth. Ap to strip, then HCl-Clorox on the foils. I've got 50 Pentium Pros in the AP bucket now and 50 more on deck. Nothing like seeing those big foils float off intact.

Any rare cpu's get kept for the collection or sold to collectors.
 
Does the AP strip the gold from the tiny pins on the chip? How do you deal w/ that? Also I have some 27% HP. What would you recommend I dilute that to and how long does it normally take to strip the foils?
 
Yes. AP will strip the pins along with any other exposed gold plating. The will be foils at the bottom of the bucket when finished.

I filter the foils and rinse in several hot HCl rinses. The first HCl rinses will be green as base metals are removed from the foils. The final HCl rinse should be clear. Now you have relatively clean gold that will dissolve and precipitate much easier than dirty gold. Proceed to dissolving the foils in AR or HCl-Clorox.

The time it takes to strip varies quite a bit. Agitation helps greatly. An aerateor helps. Follow Steve's guidlines on keeping the solution active. I'm agitating my current batch of Pentium Pros twice a day. They are almost completely stripped and it's been about 5 days.

I was once an advocate of concentrated H2O2 until I started dissolving too much gold. I would recommend using standard H2O2 (3% ???). Or just dillute the concentrated stuff with water to get it to 3%.
 
Does AP strip all of the Au/Sn solder holding the gold plated lids on? On these parts, does it strip all of the very faintly yellow Au/Si solder underneath the chip - can you slide the loose chip (or pieces of the chip) around the pad with some sort of a a rod? In other words, is the chip no longer attached to the pad after the AP treatment? If not, you're possibly leaving the bulk of the gold on the part. I'm asking because I don't know the answers to these questions.

Has anyone ever tried to add one of the common (Google) HCl inhibitors to the AP? It might prevent attack on the base metals and just attack the gold. I once added large quantities of NaOH (12-15 oz/gal) to an electrolytic cyanide stripper to prevent attack on the copper - it still ate the gold or silver plating.
 
GSP,

AP will get under the cpu cores just fine. Here's a photo of a stripped ceramic CPU using AP:

[img:951:1186]http://www.goldrecovery.us/images/cpu_core.jpg[/img]


and a shot of the undissolved solder.

[img:897:755]http://www.goldrecovery.us/images/cpu_solder.jpg[/img]

The solder will come loose from the ceramic with AP, but doesn't dissolve well in it. I dissolve these in HCl-Cl or AR.

Steve
 
Hello, I was just wondering why not just melt the gold foils? Does dissolving, precipatating etc. purify the gold that much better than melting?

By the way I just ordered my copy of Hoke's book. So if this is a stupid question hopefully it will be my last.

Thanks,
JOhn
 

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