Reverse electroplating

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teenscrapper16

Well-known member
Joined
Apr 18, 2013
Messages
62
Alright guys I've decided to get the supplies from lazersteve's website. And set up a dish to reverse electroplate using 6 amps at 6 volts and concentrated sulfuric set up just like his. I have about 3 ounces of pins and a couple of rings and other plated jewelry. Im trying to scrounge up money from copper, aluminum, and steel to pay for some chemicals, labware, and melting dishes. Lazersteve is gonna definitely be my way for melting dishes. Does anyone have any suggestions for torches to heat with. Anything i'm doing wrong with the process would be much obliged to hear from yall.
 
teenscrapper16,
How have you been doing, I bet you have been studying everything you can about recovery and refining.

A good Mapp gas torch will get you started on the torch, (but eventually as a scrapper you will want to get an oxygen/acetylene torch where you can also cut and weld steel).

3 ounces of plated pins and a hand full of gold plated rings and things, will really not give much gold, with small lots it is easier to lose some gold in the process, it is funny how a little bit gold plating will always look like a lot more gold than there is actually there, with all of that bright metal spread out so thin on the surface area, it looks like a lot, until you extract it and get it into a melted button, I do not know I would go to the trouble of setting up a stripping cell for such a small batch, I would consider it a good start on a pound or two of material and keep collecting.


Scrapping metals will be a good way to make the money get a lab together, use second hand stores, they are also a good source for many things you can use, most of my lab-ware consists of canning jars, plastic buckets, hot plate, corning ceramic casserole dishes, glass jars for precipitating, old Mr. coffee pots, suction tools, coffee mug warmer, I do have some real store bought lab glass, but I still haven/t used it, except for a glass stir rod and a 50ml beaker to do the final washes and dry gold in (on the coffee mug warmer)...

I guess what I am trying to say is you do not have to spend that much money to get your lab set up, Laser Steve does sell his supplies at a very reasonable price, and he is a good source to get some of the things you will need, one mistake I made when I first started is buying things before I really had a need (thinking I would need them), another mistake was to try and work with to small of batches, every time I collected a small batch I would try and process it, loosening a little each time, where I should have saved up more of the material, another mistake was a good batch of high grade pins, it was a good size batch, and had a fair value of gold in them, but I was using them to learn the process with, where I should have saved them and used some lower grade scrap to Learn the process on.

Actually at times I believe a guy could make just about as much money scrapping the base metals from junk as he can with refining, If you know how to identify and separate the scrap metals, and can find them, while scrapping keeping your eye out for the more precious metals in the different places found within a lot of the machines you are scrapping out, saving up those more valuable metals for refining, the refining is like adding gravy to the real potatoes.
 
I have been on here very frequently and I watch and read nonstop. This is honestly the most touching response I have gotten. I have scrapped base metals since i was 3. I have probably helped my grandpa scrap over 40,000 iin steel and he always gets lucky and finds a source of copper that he keeps to himself. Im the boss when it comes to aluminum and other materials I always find the best prices and even haggle the scrapyards because we do parts of their process for them. We always get top dollar because we sell clean metal never mixed. You might get 4 grams of iron out of a 100lbs of aluminum we sell. We seperate by type of aluminum and application. We have sold about 12,000 of scrap steel/iron this year. We just recently lost a family member to drowning. http://thecabin.net/latest-news/2013-05-09/search-continues-conway-man
 
butcher,

I know you said 1 or 2 pounds of pins. What about other thing like (finger, CPU and anything else). I'm going to wait tell I get enough stuff but I need to know how much on the low end to start. I keep adding to my stuff when I can. Right now I'm not going to do ring or gold like that to mess up or loss the gold cause I don't know how. Any input will help me or from any other member.

Thanks
Jack
 
teenscrapper16, I am so sorry to hear about Mark and the boat accident, He was young, I know it is hard for you and your family.
I am sure you are already collecting switches and circuit breakers and things like that that you find in your scrap which can have silver contacts,


Jim, I cannot tell you how much material to save up before you try and process it, it is kind of a personal decision, But I can say we leave traces of gold behind in most any process, (which can be recovered from stock pot or filter scrap...), and it is easier to work one larger batch than many small batches, it is also a bit more rewarding, also I see it this way, I can make a whole lot of mistakes with a whole lot of small batches, a lot of mistakes to get out of, with one large batch I may only have one mistake to fix :lol:
 
teenscrapper16, I am sorry to hear of your loss.

Jack, the best place to start would probably be to collect enough fingers & other Gold plated pieces from boards and use the acid/Peroxide method. There are videos on Steves site to show you the process. The site is located here: http://www.goldrecovery.us/site.asp
 
1 pound of fingers and similar pieces would probably be enough to learn with. Be sure to watch those videos, the will help you a lot.
Here is a link to the videos again: http://www.goldrecovery.us/site.asp
 
I already got the DVD when I first join but I never get enough to do so they are small batch that's why I trying something new.

Jack
 
Anybody feel free to give your knowledge/and or opinions. If (yall) havent noticed i am a southern boy so i do have a southerners dialect and way of speaking.
 
Since nobody answers, I guess that means, that there is written much about it already. I did not answer, because I only used the sulfuric cell two or three times. But I will answer the best I can. I just played a little with the voltage to find out, what worked best in my setting (like size, electrode material etc.). If there was too much gas or vapor I screwed it down. If it seemed to be to slow, I scewed up. The lower the resistance of the whole cell is, the more ampere can flow,the faster it works. If both ampere and volt are high, it will have too much watts and get hot. Be aware not to let it get too hot, since there will be a point, where you will not be able to control it anymore! In my opinion a fumehood is a MUST for this process and a face protection and long thick gloves, too! Use a thermometer and don't let it get much over 50 deg celsius to be on the safe side. And don't leave this process alone, not a minute! Remember: Never put water into conc sulfuric, it will splatter like if you put water into hot oil. If I remember right, you are a youngster? If so, then tell your chem teacher about your experiment, show him a well documented experiment description and ask, if you could do this as a voluntary school project, if possible.

Think about every worst case scenario and think about how you can counteract this.
 
Patience is key and that is my idea. Overwork an old horse and you will kill it before you get 20 percent of the work done. Take it slow with many breaks and you will get all of it done. It's the same principle as operating a buzzbox(welder) without any safety features, it has to have a certain amount to cool down for a certain amount of time it was run. I understand these principles as I've actually schooled many of my teachers in handyman work and other areas of my expertise which includes patience.
 
Teenscrapper a few points to remember.
Concentrated sulphuric acid is extremely nasty and dangerous to boot so make sure you have the correct safety equipment,goggles at least or face shield better, long gauntlets and an acid proof apron.
When the cell is not in use you have to cover it as the sulphuric is extremely water thirsty and will draw water from the atmosphere, imagine what it can do to your skin hence the first point, and once it becomes too dilute it starts to attach other metals more easily.
This isn't rocket science and you can succeed but please be extremely careful many of our commonly used chemicals are dangerous and even more so with heat, dissolutions and additions of other chemicals, have full knowledge of all the risks before you even open a container and take appropriate safety measures, never take these chemicals too lightly the moment you do you will get caught out.
Good luck.
 
accidents can happen, being prepared and understanding the dangers involved,can go a long way to help prevent them and being prepared for them, personal protective gear, a good understanding of dangers, and possible mistakes in your lab work will go a long way to protect you from the dangers, but then again as we all know sometime even when we are careful, stuff happens, a simple thing like, or trying to pour the solution and it slips from your hands and fills your boot with concentrating sulfuric acid, could eat the flesh from your foot, and could cripple you, life has its dangers, but with knowledge, and awareness of the dangers,knowing what they are and protecting ourselves, and taking the necessary precautions we can, perform a dangerous activity fairly safely, but without this understanding even a small mishap can be devastating.

do not take your safety lightly, study the precautions, understand the dangers, understand the precautions needed to protect you from these dangers, and be aware of your actions, so that you put yourself in a safer position in a very dangerous procedure.

Being an ole southern Boy I know you have had to work with many dangerous situations, but just like working with farm machinery we need to understand the dangers, have a good understanding of what we should and should not do, and take the precautions needed, and as you also know even with this understanding and knowledge accidents do happen, so with the concentrated sulfuric acid make sure you have the knowledge needed first, and you have your protective gear on so if and when a spill or accident happens you are protected.

Also when we work with dangerous things, sometimes we can get less conscious, or lax, or think we can take more chances, in our precautions thinking we have done this many times and have not had an accident, this can be the time we get hurt, thinking we will just perform a procedure as we have done many times before and figure we can do it this time without that piece of safety gear... accidents always happen when we are unaware, and least expect them.

Take your time studying and be safe, your gold is going nowhere.
 
Thanks for the reminders and I take in everything yall tell me. One important tip i have learned that many people dont teach is that when working with dangerous things(be it chemicals or a chainsaw) never get angry as it will only end badly. Keep calm stop things then feel free to vent, but as funny as it is looking back geetting chased around by your grandpa who forgot the chanisaw or weedeater was still running, was pretty dangerous.
 
Hi everyone

I am new to the site and could use some guidance on reverse electroplating. I own a recycling company and was raised in the business at young age. I am 28 and market all our material to end users. Recently I started getting into rare earth metals and reverse electroplating to wash various items. I get a lot of silver plate and have washed material in small batches. I want to run large lots up to 500 lbs. but cant seem to get the ampage to be continuous(kicks off and on to much at 6 amp) using 10 amp 12 volts and have been doing small burst of slightly higher. main question i have is what to use as my anode when running material off + terminal. Items consist of silver plate on copper,ss, dicast.?? material is washed to Pb cathode, i also have tried Niobium with pb wrapped around it which works. Pb plates work the best at low amps in small batches. but I have around 1500 lbs. Is alum possible to use also? I have large 316 ss tubs to put material in, could it be ran off SS and the exchange to Pb??

Could i not have enough silver nitrate fixer?? I also put a very small amount of nitric acid in with sulfuric silver nitrate solution. Any help or guidance is greatly appreciated. My family is not as into the hightemps or precious metals as I am and were throwing away all our silver plated material in OUR BRASS!! Now that that's not going on any more, i have to prove its worth it to invest our companies time money and labor to run a system. unfortunately for me i am the youngest, but fortunately most knowledgeable when it comes to the metals. I am determined to get this system going due to all the items i get in my facility like catalytic converters, jet engines fan blades,circuit boards and other. I would rather purchase a system to handle various items but don't know what would be best fit for me. Is their a easier way to wash off silver using other acids and dropping items out?? I have been doing research for about a year with trial and error runs but cant seem to get over this speed bump. fixer is under 170 degrees also. what am i doing wrong
 
Gioscrap,

Apparently we speak this language a little different, I had a little bit of a difficult time understanding the whole post, but I believe I understand the basics of what your asking.

The problem with stripping silver off of plated material with acids is that it will tend to want to plate back onto the remaining metal until you have dissolved the whole of the metal, this is too costly and generates too much waste.

Stripping electrolytically apparently is possible, silver plated article's were stripped of the silver to be re-plated, they used concentrated sulfuric acid cells with about 5% nitric acid, the silver plated object as the anode, lead should work for a cathode.

Now this de-plate the silver from the base metal, the problem comes in recovery of the silver from the cell, the de-platters do not mention recovery of the silver, their goal was to make money re-plating the article, not to recover and refine silver, It is my belief the silver would for the most part accumulate at the bottom of the cell once saturated with silver, (I have never tried it so I am speculating here), with some silver remaining in solution, if this is so you could clean the cell every now and then to recover the silver (possibly as silver sulfate) washing this and melting it with iron in the fluxed melt should convert the silver sulfate back to silver metal, when and if you wished to remove what silver that the electrolyte held my guess would be to dilute the concentrated acid by pouring it into a larger volume of water (note never pour water into concentrated sulfuric acid), then add salt to precipitate the silver as silver chloride, the silver chloride would need converting to metal before melting, there are several methods to do this you will find here on the forum.

As I said I have never tried this, so I am speaking with a bit of speculation here.
Also although it has been discussed several times here on the forum, I am unsure if anyone has ever made one or tried this cell or has found it worth the trouble, to strip the little bit of silver from the base metal, I have been saving up some silver plated scrap and was hoping to try it someday when and if I can get a large enough pile to make it worth setting up a cell for the experiment.

Then again there is always the option for me to sell the scrap as brass.

On the forum you will learn about a concentrated sulfuric acid stripping cell used to strip gold plate from base metals, in my mind the silver-stripping cell would be similar with a few adjustments.

To get up to speed and learn the most you can in this field I have a few suggestions of where to begin.

Hoke's book free download found in book section or a link under many of the members signature lines, this book is mostly about refining precious metals and jewelry waste, but it is one of the best resources to get an understanding of the chemistry and how to recover and refine these valuable metals, the book teaches you chemistry but in a layman's way without going into the chemistry side per say, this book is easy to read and follow, but until you read it a few times you may not see the overall picture the book paints, as you are busy learning the steps inside the book, but if you keep reading it the light will come on.

The guided tour of the forum, and general reaction list, and welcome to new members, found in the general chat section, reading these and following the links will take you on a tour and introduce you to many of the processes used and discussed here on the forum.

Welcome to the forum I have a feeling you are going to like it here.
 

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