Quick question about Pentiums

[roddenberry]

Hi all,

For my first attempt at gold recovery, I prepared a bunch of Pentium and 486 processors according to the recommendation of breaking them up a bit to expose as much gold as possible. When I broke them, I noticed a fair amount of gold plated on the ceramic substrate.

I noticed the very fine wires leading from the ceramic substrate to the silicon chip. The are silvery instead of golden. What metal are they made from? Platinum? Anyway, they are so fine that I don't think they would amount to much contaminant in the solution.

I don't know if I should break them up more than that (and if it will be worth my effort to do so). I have a total of about 30 Pentiums and 20 486's, so the quantity is worth the effort recover all that PM. But a few weeks ago, I was given a box filled with over 100 old ISA cards (parallel ports, 14K modems, token ring cards, connector pins), there is much gold on the edge connectors so I think i'll have more gold coming from these than from the processors.

After reading the recommendations on scrap recovery, I attempted to isolate as much gold parts while removing as much other metals that would contaminate the process. I am just a hobbyist who has no intention of doing this professionally, but I do intend to follow all safety measures and i'm not about to throw away all this gold if I can recover it without using too many noxious chemicals and having a visit from people with hazmat suits... LOL :lol:

Robert in Montreal

 

[butcher]

Robert, gold alway's looks like alot on plated coponents, I would get as much gold off from just broken as I can, then powder them for second leach, seems fine wires inside are hard for acid to get to,the powder is more challenging, in acids this is why I would not powder them the first leach,

if you are woried about noxious chemical's you can use acid peroxide for base metals, then HCL/bleach for gold, the chlorine gas is strong and noxious, so outdoors if you have no fume hood.

 

[roddenberry]

Thanks for your reply! I'll take your advice and keep the cleaned chip shards for further gold collection. My first experiment (already underway) will be with the usage of iodine. It's pretty slow but i'm in no rush and it seems to produce no noxious gases so tht will be my prefered process.

Robert

 

[butcher]

Have not tried iodine, so no help here, keep us updated, maybe you can get me to try it, and teach us all more about it,