question about different gold plating

[EpicSilver]

i have a few fingers from pci cards, and a piece from a laptop touch pad why is the gold on the pci finger more yellow colored then the gold plating on the touch pad? (the gold on this i found after taking the masking off and its a pale yellow color) is there a chance its not 24k or would it be the base metal used that would change the color

sorry no pics, will post i needed though

 

[NobleMetalWorks]

I cannot remember who it was, but there was a post on the touch pads recently, you might want to use the search function and read about it.

I have processed the touch pads before, there isn't much gold on them and the ones I processed came from a military surplus lot of laptops that had been ruggedized and hardened, so they had a lot more gold involved in their manufacture than what you would find in a normal laptop. I haven't tried to process any other touchpads since, but I did run a lot of the ones I had. Even on these there was not much gold.

Have you tried doing a scratch test on them, or clipping a small amount off and dissolving in AR, then testing with Stannous? It would be much easier to do one of those to test for gold, than asking on the forum. We can all speculate, and if you provided pictures, someone might actually know exactly what you have. But nobody is going to know anything for sure until you test what you have yourself.

Scott

 

[Geo]

without a picture, it will be a guess. if you can post a picture of each, it will help us help you.

 

[EpicSilver]

mmk ill do that tomorrow thanks guys

 

[goldsilverpro]

If it appears very pale, it is likely very thin, usually around 5 microinches or less.

 

[EpicSilver]

Wow you learn something new all the time, so the thinner the plating the more pale?

 

[goldsilverpro]

Wow you learn something new all the time, so the thinner the plating the more pale?

With very pale gold plating, it is so thin that part of what you are seeing is the white bright nickel underneath the gold. On some connector pins, you will see both. The actual contact area will be a rich gold color and the rest of the pin (or, a portion of the rest of the pin) will be a pale yellow color with just enough gold to protect the pin from oxidation.

The purity of any gold plating on electronic material is most always very close to 24K (actually, from 99.0% to 99.99% pure). Therefore, the pale gold is not a lower karat, as some people think. It's just very thin plating of ~24K gold.