Ribbon Cable

[istari9]

I guess because I did not know it was alum and put it in the copper pile. Now that box may weigh about 100lbs and there are several. So the yard picks them, empties them, and weights the empty boxes. Then I get paid.

Ray

 

[Gotrek]

I always thought they were aluminum. SATA cables are Tinned copper (tons of info online about those) not so sure anymore about regular ribbon IDE. I emailed Startech a local canadian distributor to find out. I'll keep you posted.

 

[Gotrek]

Answer

Thank you for your inquiry! Generally, the conductors in these cables are made from aluminum, around 30ga. You can verify with a particular cable by checking the cut-off ends visible above the last connector.

If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact us again.

Sincerely,
Andrew McIntosh
Technical Support, StarTech.com

 

[flankdrive04]

I guess because I did not know it was alum and put it in the copper pile. Now that box may weigh about 100lbs and there are several. So the yard picks them, empties them, and weights the empty boxes. Then I get paid.

Ray

WOW, thats a lot of cable!! Would love to see your operation. It must be on a big scale??

 

[istari9]

Funny I never thought of my operation as big. I just work in the basement and keep a stady flow of material going through as I process it.
I still pick up more each week from several computer dealers. I really enjoy the work and love the color of PMs !

Ray

 

[usaman65]

any sucess on the maylars???

 

[Anonymous]

Hey guys..new to this forum and have already found a lot of useful information. My father owns a recycling business and I can recall one of the customers saying that he used to burn the mylar sheet into an ash. After all the mylar sheets were burnt he would place the ash in a large crucible and heat them for 20 minutes. After 20 minutes the silver would pool in the bottom of the crucible and the slag would stay at the top. I would assume that burning the mylar sheets would not be to safe though. Maybe someone could give this a try.

Has anybody tried this yet? After page 2 a whole new post started....lol what if you reduced the amount of mylar by cutting extra mylar from around the traces? What is the by-product of burning mylar?

 

[peter i]

Mylar is PET or Polyethylene terephthalate.

Its an aromatic plastic and will combust to carbon dioxide and water if fully burned. If partially burned.... do not breath the smoke, it could be nasty.

Your time spent cutting off mylar is worth more than the silver you might reclaim.

 

[MICHIGANPROSPECTOR]

It was passing as #2 insulated, then #3. Now its down to 20 cents, which is actaully fine because I can get more for it elswhere and I don't need to clip the connectors. I had the neighbor clipping the wires for me then we would split the money from the wire. He just finished two coffee bags full when the price shot down unexpectadly

I clipped and dissasmbled some older ribbon connectors the other day and found some of them to contain gold plated pins. Others howver were just tin. Has anybody been able to determine whether or not these are cost effective to recover?

 

[samuel-a]

I clipped and dissasmbled some older ribbon connectors the other day and found some of them to contain gold plated pins. Others howver were just tin. Has anybody been able to determine whether or not these are cost effective to recover?

thus that are gold plated, yield 0.1% or less gold by weight.
you decide if it's cost effective...

i clip them connectors from the ribbon and when i'll have enough, i'll just sell them to mr. scrap man or to a refiner to process them for me.

 

[MMFJ]

Getting back to the topic of this thread (since it has been idle for a LONG time.....), and since silver is much higher today.....

We got a DOD paper shredder in our JUNK the other day and thought about processing mylars in it as it comes out pretty much "DUST".


Now, ideas?

We've got about 100 keyboards from our latest haul and thinking this topic needs a bit of attention (seems keyboards are a 'bane' to everyone?)

 

[lazersteve]

There are a lot of good older forum post on processing keyboard mylars, including incineration, acid treatment, and yield data.

Steve

 

[Tagsyboy]

Steve, I have been searching the forum for info on processing mylars and the amount of reading could go on for days, in this thread you talk about melting the mylars. did you use and chemicals to make that silver BB or did you just melt the mylar down into it ? do i need any nitric ?
Thanks,
Tags

Is anyone following this thread? :?

It's so quite you could hear a pin drop.

Anyway, I've slowly melted one mylar from a keyboard. The mylar and silver traces weighed 5 grams after gently melting with a heat gun set to medium. The mylar melted with no fumes and just crumpled into a semitransparent ball in the melting dish.

I then went at it with my Oxy/Act torch on the lowest possible gas flow and with the tip 6-8 inches from the mylar silver mass in the melting dish. After 30 minutes of tedious melting and periodic pouring off of black resins the silver began to group into a nice mash under the black goo. I tried to keep the mylar from igniting and producing a sooty smoke.

When no more melted resin would pour off, I added two teaspoons of borax and stepped up the heat; not full on but hotter and closer. Within five minutes the silver pooled into a BB while the borax flamed up as the last of the mylar residue burnt away in it.

Surprisingly the borax came out clear yellow when the last of the silver BB's joined together.

Here's a photo of the silver from the above process:

I can't weigh the BB on my scales due to it's size , but I estimate it is no more than a quarter of a gram. If it is a quarter gram then a single pair of keyboard mylars should produce approximately 1/2 gram of silver per keyboard.

More to come later.

Steve

 

[NoIdea]

morning all - Pyrolysis! Do Not Incinerate! The time i have spend understanding the process of pryrolysis and how different materials behave under these conditions, there is deffinately more to it than heating organics in the absence of air. When mylars are heated to a point where the plastic film starts to disintegrate, you end up with gases, volitile liquids(in gas state), carbon, waxes, etc, and silver. The problem here is the turbulent nature of the pyrolysis gas products, the silver sometimes hitches a ride, and will look to find a place to deposit itself, usually somewhere near the exit. So this tells me firstly, you will loose silver if you choose incineration, and secondly the silver will seed out onto the coolest part of the pyrolysis reactor. The silver forms as a oddly shaped nugget or sometime if hot enough will pool into a nugget, either way the silver stays within the reactor. And of course if you scrub all your waste flue gas, you should not loose squat.

hope this helps someone.

Cheers

Deano

 

[RESET]

What is an acceptable melting dish to be used with the melting method? Can I use a stainless mixing bowl? I want to shread multiple sheets and process them without nitric.

 

[Westerngs]

Reset,

You want to stay away from metal containers for melting things. The molten metals will sometimes alloy with the container and you end up with a major headache.

Your best bets are clay melting dishes or clay graphite.

 

[RESET]

Could I use the metal bowl for the primary melt of the mylar then transfer it to a crucible for the final melt with the borax?

EDIT: Never mind. Even in the first melt, I would be melting the silver traces according to Steve's post.

 

[sena]

i was running small batch of 30kg mylar and processed using nitric leaching , some mylar overlapped accidentally making no contact with nitric , so after washing and drying , i took the virgin ones and some half leached ones for incernation, for a trial, so i took iron vessel ,the bottom i made a thick layer of
charcoal , so that the melt doesn't stick to the metal , after it completely burnt out and it was like a plastic mould .ill post some pictures tomorrow, it would be crushed and taken for second stage for roasting in ss pan .

Regards
Sena

 

[justme2]

In one post diluted Nitric was mentioned but I didn't see the percentage is it 50/50 ?

In another post I saw "heated Nitric" was that also a 50/50 solution and how much heat ?

Thanks, in advance, for the info. mcw

 

[niteliteone]

In one post diluted Nitric was mentioned but I didn't see the percentage is it 50/50 ?

In another post I saw "heated Nitric" was that also a 50/50 solution and how much heat ?

Thanks, in advance, for the info. mcw

Generally when we speak of working with nitric acid, we automatically assume it around 67% from the supplier and it is then diluted with an equal amount of water when we use it i our process's. At least I do.
Unless stated differently.