STOP when you see red!!

[glorycloud]

Anytime you see a component on a board that is in red plastic be sure to check it out for "hidden gold"! Especially red switch boxes and any push buttons in red. Crack them open and see what is inside. The red switch boxes will have little gold balls - one per switch in the box. They appear to be solid. They are about the size of the ball in a old ball point pen. Just be careful when you crack the switch open as the gold balls will go flying everywhere. They're really "sticky" as well as they seem to have an lubricant of some sort on them. I will count and be sure that I have harvested one gold ball per switch to be sure I don't miss any.

I have found the best way get the switches open is to first use pliers to twist the whole switch off the board. Then use a wire cutter of some sort to carefully cut the switch in half. Then take a very narrow flat head screw driver and after putting the switch up on it's end with the fresh cut facing up, put the tip of the flat head into the groove between the rocker pins and the area where the balls are located. Gently tap the end of the screw driver downward forcing the switch to split apart. If you are careful, the bottom plate of the switch will seperate from the top of the switch where the rocker arms are revealing what I lovingly refer to as the pearls in the oyster shell! See the pictures below.

Some switches can have 10 or 12 little gold balls in them while some have only four. Again, there should be one gold ball per rocker arm in each switch.

The push in type single dump switch as found on the IBM store loop cards have a nice little gold bar inside it that when depressed makes a contact inside the switch. I'm not sure if that bar is plated or not but it seems to be solid to me. However, before you destroy those IBM store loop cards PM me as they can still be resold for more than the gold scrap value of the finder, etc.

Anyway, I hope this helps you find some more "value" in your boards!!

 

[qst42know]

Yes I save them but don't count on them being solid gold. Plating a switch ball would be an easy cost savings not missed by the engineers. The DIP switches I have run across have been blue or red. The color of the plastic means nothing from what I've seen.

 

[jimdoc]

Try a magnet on them, that will answer your solid gold questions.
I find them to be slightly magnetic, probably because of a nickel
layer under the gold.
Jim

 

[qst42know]

Many components are magnetic for automated assembly. Pins in CPU's or balls in switches.

 

[Palladium]

i have noticed little thin disks inside some of the switches. They are not gold plated, but shinny---shinny posished silver color but the contacts they complete are gold plated bars. Wonder if it's Rh plated :?:

 

[glorycloud]

The balls in the red switches don't seem to be magnetic at all. I haven't tried to process any yet. I have just been collecting them. Anyone want to offer a suggestion as to how to best process them?

The green switches seem to have a flat gold bar that gets pushed back and forth. I harvest them just like I harvest the gold balls from the red switches. The light blue switches from newer mfg'd boards seem to be the "cheapies" only having gold plated tips on flat pins. Most days I just leave them on the boards as I doubt it's worth my effort to harvest what little gold is inside them.

 

[jimdoc]

I just checked my stash of gold balls from the red switches again.
If you put them in an empty plastic container and run a hard drive
magnet on the other side you will see that there is a magnetic attraction.
I have not checked them all, it seems like some may not be magnetic,
or not as much as the others.

I just save them to fill a container with them for looks, but would be
interested to hear of any yields on them.
Jim

 

[nicknitro]

Great Post Glory Cloud,

I can't and won't tell you how many of these switches on boards I have tossed. LOL Even if they are just plated, " Which mine reacted to magnet as well." , still, you know there is a guy out there with like ten billion of these dip switches just rotting in a pile.

Today is your day "Guy" LOL


Thanks again Glorycloud,
Nick

 

[goldsilverpro]

What is the diameter of the balls? With that info, it is easy to estimate their value, since they are obviously plated.

If there isn't a good technical reason why the balls (or, anything else) would be solid gold, then they are plated. The manufacturers aren't stupid and they don't, and never have, wasted gold. Besides IC bonding wire, the use of solid gold on any components is almost unknown. There are very few exceptions and they are extremely rare.

 

[glorycloud]

GSP,

I will get a measurement for you. For discussion purposes and for the reading enjoyment of the forum, let's say they are plated and not solid. What would be the best method for recovering the gold from the balls? Any ideas?

Thanks!

 

[goldsilverpro]

For discussion purposes and for the reading enjoyment of the forum, let's say they are plated and not solid.

Strange statement. You really, really want these to be solid gold, don't you? There's a vulgar old saying in this business that if you wish in one hand and crap in the other, just see which one fills up the fastest. I have taken these apart myself and I see no reason why they would be solid gold. They seem to act as contacts and plating would work fine for that. The only purpose of gold would be to have a non-corrosive contact surface and plating would suffice. You have to think like the designers think - is solid gold really needed on these parts or would gold plating work just as well? Always assume that the parts are made as cheaply as possible, yet still work with a decent life-expectancy.

Put a few drops of nitric plus an equal amount of water in a test tube, heat it up fairly hot, and drop in a couple of balls. I would guess that they would tend to dissolve and the gold would flake off, thus proving they are plated.

I am guessing the balls are between .03" and .045" in diameter. If they are .03" dia. and if the plating is 30 micro" thick, which is fairly standard for contact surfaces, one ball would be worth about $.00076 and the gold weight would be about .000025 grams, assuming my quicky math is right. It would take 1,315 of them or 131 of the larger 10 switch assemblies - balls only - to make one dollar. If the diameter is .045", it would only take half as many.

I may be wrong about this but the odds against these being solid gold is huge.

 

[glorycloud]

my reason for asking how to process them had really to do with a request for knowledge. I thought that nitric did not dissolve gold but I haven't used nitric before. If they are completely covered in gold, how would the nitric get to the base metal inside.

I understand that they surely have little value as does most e-scrap. I appreciate you doing the math for me. It helps keep things in perspective as far as the time invested to glean a small amount of gold.

 

[goldsilverpro]

All gold plating is porous. In other words, the density of plated gold is less than that of cast gold. The acid penetrates through the pores. When the acid dissolves the metal(s) underneath, the gold flakes off. At about 100 micro", however, the pores become almost completely covered by more gold and the acid will only penetrate with difficulty, unless the gold is extremely stressed. Just about all of the gold plating used in electronics is between 8 and 65 micro" thick, depending on the requirements of the particular application.

In general, the larger the flakes, the thicker the gold. However, the types of plating that contain more tensile stress will tend to break up into smaller pieces - the stress causes microscopic cracks which also allows the acid to penetrate. For example, the hard, shiny, alloyed (this gold is usually from 99% to 99.9% pure), stressed plating on fingers will break up more than the type of gold used on CPUs, which is soft, matte, 99.99% pure, and relatively unstressed. A company I worked for sold about 100 different types of gold plating baths, each one producing different deposit characteristics.

 

[Chumbawamba]

It might help to understand what these parts cost. As an electronics guy I know that dip-switches only cost a buck or so a piece, less in quantity. Most (99%+) of the parts on a circuit board are parts that cost less (in most cases WAY less) than a buck per unit. So then you gotta figure, if they contain any precious metal at all, it's going to be a very miniscule amount, based on the price of the component. Because there's no way in hell an electronic product, which in many cases usually has the slimmest of margins at the wholesale level, is going to use parts that have lots of easily retrievable gold, i.e. expensive parts. A $1 dipswitch will not yield any amount of gold worth going after, at least not by hand. You get at that gold by taking a ton of circuit boards, roasting it for a few hours, grinding it into a powder, and then treating with acid, all in huge operations that deal in tons of material at a time.

IN MOST CASES, the only components that you'll find on a circuit board that contain any appreciable amount of gold are CPUs, edge connectors, and plated pins. Perhaps you might occasionally find the specialized (very expensive!) relays with gold contact points. But other than CPUs and connectors (in quantity), any precious metals are going to be in microgram amounts.

As far as I know, the Pentium Pro is the most common component that you will find with so much gold per unit (I've heard anywhere from .33 to .7 grams...what's the actual number now?) I know of nothing else with that much gold in it. And guess what? It was expensive when it was new (and gold was at a relative low).

Now, I'm not denying the possibility that there might be a very expensive dip-switch package that is expensive because it uses solid gold balls for some specialized purpose as GSP suggested, but the way to find out for sure is to get some electronics data books and match up the part numbers. That will tell you what you have.

 

[glorycloud]

I think maybe I should just go back to selling the parts out of servers and PC's like I have for over 20 years. I sold a system board today for $200.00. The gold value might have been $10 or so? Perhaps I should start a forum for all the would be e-scrap gold miners that ruin perfectly good boards every day that have resale values far greater than the gold and PM contents? LOL!

Enough said GSP - you have cured me from wasting my time on e-scrap.

 

[Despotic]

Besides IC bonding wire, the use of solid gold on any components is almost unknown.

The IC bonding wire is solid gold? :shock:
I thought it was just plated as well.

-Craig

 

[patnor1011]

I saw that balls from switches too and there is thread about them here:
http://goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=4460&highlight=

 

[silversaddle1]

I think maybe I should just go back to selling the parts out of servers and PC's like I have for over 20 years. I sold a system board today for $200.00. The gold value might have been $10 or so? Perhaps I should start a forum for all the would be e-scrap gold miners that ruin perfectly good boards every day that have resale values far greater than the gold and PM contents? LOL!

That's a very good idea! If you how the know-how, why not share it here!

Enough said GSP - you have cured me from wasting my time on e-scrap.

It's not a waste of time, just takes lots of scrap to make some good coin. Just keep saving your gold plated scrap and before you know it, you'll have 10-20 pounds!

 

[glorycloud]

SS - There is a whole industry out there for maintaining computers. I have been working on processing e-scrap as a "science project" to see if it is worth my time. It isn't as a business but as a pure hobby I can see where you could salt away some pennies for a rainy day as a small scale operator.

Almost every item in a PC or server or printer or whatever has a part number of some sort. Google up any part number and see what it "might" sell for. All the listings you see will probably be for retail pricing. No one will pay you that price but it helps see what they are being offered at. The reason ebay works for "scrap gold" is because it's "scrap" and you get what you get. In the parts world, when you have a user that has a computer or printer "down", the replacement part that you send had better work. As wholesalers. we warrant all our parts for DOA or up to 90 day warranty.

We buy from recyclers because they don't know what they are selling and they normally can't test the part for functionality and therefore they can't warrant the item so they get pennies on the dollar for them. For the guys that can test them, there are websites galore that resell parts by IBM, HP, Dell, Okidata, Sun, you name the MFG. If you will guarantee that it works and is cosmically correct and in an anti-static bag and WELL PACKED, then you can get a better return that stripping headers, etc. off boards to soak them in nitric / AP / AR or you chemical of choice.

There have been times when I have purchased whole machines just to get a piece of plastic to make a good and working machine complete that had been damaged in transit for the next customer's order. I have paid $15 for a bezel or $30 for a side door or top of a server case!!

Anyway, what has no resale value for me will continue to go in the recycle bins until I resell them perhaps to the fine folks on this forum for them to "play with" in there free time.

 

[Despotic]

Anyway, what has no resale value for me will continue to go in the recycle bins until I resell them perhaps to the fine folks on this forum for them to "play with" in there free time.

or I could just drive down with my trailer and offer my services of Free Removal for you. :lol: :lol: