recovering silver from plastic wire

[recov]

I have a small amount - maybe a pound - of plastic covered silver wire. It was from the back of a backplane - fairly high quality telecom stuff. I chiseled off the kzillions of gold pins which were all interwoven with a rats nest of this wire. So I have this bundle of silver wire with the tight coils wrapped around the gold pins - all now separated from the PCB. How do I remove the plastic from the wire? The wire is quite thin and I think it must be solid silver. The pins are heavy gold plated.

I have been reading the forum for quite a while now and am very grateful for the info available. Also the moderators do a great job. Thanks. Maybe at some point I will have something useful to contribute but for now I am too much of a newbie. I do have Hoke's book and some of the DVD's from the forum - but don't recall seeing dealing with the plastic? And how would you deal with the resulting waste containing plastic? Thanks for any help.

Debbie

 

[niteliteone]

Incenerate. :shock:

It is just a pound of material and I can't think of a faster way.
Use the same type of process patnor used to incenerate the flatpacks and it should pretty much take care of the smoke.

Tom C.

 

[Smack]

If you can't incinerate, you can soak them in Acetone for a couple hours and the wires should pull out easily, if they don't, let them soak longer.

 

[goldsilverpro]

Some of the insulation on the thin silver plated wire on boards is Teflon. This is toxic when burned.

 

[manorman]

You can boil them in plain water, they should pull right out of the plastic after that.
Mike

 

[recov]

Thank you all for your suggestions. Has anyone encountered solid silver wire in a telecom type backplane? It is very very thin wire. I suppose the hard plastic connectors on the other side of the backplane could likewise be incinerated like the flatpacks, then pan the gold pins?