Too bad to recover, Too good to throw away

[stella polaris]

Read that Kurtak tried to refine touch pads buy have given up the idea.

When read an old memory came up in my head. A memory I somewhat hate. in my late teens ( more than 40 years ago) I was working with electronics for petrol stations. Among the equipment we was working with was note acceptors ( you put a bill in the scanner and can fill up fuel for the amount.) During this time I noticed that it was gold on the pins. The smartest guy at the company explained for me that it was so thin it was no idea to recover in. So since he was so smart( and he was) I just continued to throw massive amounts in the gaylord. This types of electronics I dumped is the same type people here today dream about with saliva dripping.

So here is the question.
If you have the space what kind of "too bad to recover" would you stack for the future? What is realistic to assume might be profitable to recover in 20 years for an example?This due to higher price or possible new methods.

 

[galenrog]

“Too bad it deal with”, to me means too little reward for too much time and resources. Mylars, for Kurt, met the criteria of too little reward for time and resources. Each individual has, or will at one time, have their own list of items meeting that definition.

Time for more coffee.

 

[Yggdrasil]

“Too bad it deal with”, to me means too little reward for too much time and resources. Mylars, for Kurt, met the criteria of too little reward for time and resources. Each individual has, or will at one time, have their own list of items meeting that definition.

Time for more coffee.

True.
But sometimes the items on the wrong side of that line can be stowed away and may end up in the right side at a later time.
Depending an a bunch of other factors like space and so on.

 

[Shark]

I used to keep a barrel of AP just for odd boards like those. Tossed all kinds of odd stuff in it until it would barely work. Filtered it for the gold, then cemented the copper. Used the copper as a collector metal, then started adding more boards. It was just a way to get use from much of the copper, and the gold was just a little extra that didn’t go to waste.

 

[Darkthirty]

Read that Kurtak tried to refine touch pads buy have given up the idea.

When read an old memory came up in my head. A memory I somewhat hate. in my late teens ( more than 40 years ago) I was working with electronics for petrol stations. Among the equipment we was working with was note acceptors ( you put a bill in the scanner and can fill up fuel for the amount.) During this time I noticed that it was gold on the pins. The smartest guy at the company explained for me that it was so thin it was no idea to recover in. So since he was so smart( and he was) I just continued to throw massive amounts in the gaylord. This types of electronics I dumped is the same type people here today dream about with saliva dripping.

So here is the question.
If you have the space what kind of "too bad to recover" would you stack for the future? What is realistic to assume might be profitable to recover in 20 years for an example?This due to higher price or possible new methods.

Look at rhodium 20 years back ...

 

[stella polaris]

Look at rhodium 20 years back ...

Yes. Only the tricky thing to decide what's at top price in 20 years from now. Many things interact. Needs of Tech industry and profitable reserves are two major ones.

 

[canedane]

Well it is dificault to guess what is going to get high price in the future. Persenly i have doing many mistakes, but i am pretty sure neodym magnets will be worth to collect, and i have +150 kg (with braclets). I have collect 18650 lithium cells, and in the moment i am building a house battery with 5000 used but testet cells, and there i make a bullseye. I have collect Touch pads for 15 years now (not the carbon style) and time will tell if they are worth that. I sell 99.5% of all my escrap by weigth and i am pretty sure it is the right for me. I start to collect escrap in the last century, everybody there heard about it did say if it worth to collect it alreaddy will be done.Wrong! I harvest a lot of high grade stuff for free back then, but diddent know mutch about where the gold an palladium was.
Thank to GRF i know it now
Henrik

 

[stella polaris]

I have collect 18650 lithium cells, and in the moment i am building a house battery with 5000 used but testet cells, and there i make a bullseye.

What is the insurance company say about that? Guess I could see the fire here from Oslo.

Neodymium I collect to. Spot is around 75 usd/kg today. Unfortanly it have spread among people I know and I am now main supplier for my friends to use as tool hangers and other tings. Think that the brackets give more money if sold as tool hangers. Old HD magnets is good for holding a 5 kg sledgehammer.

EDIT: I read it as you had collected 18650 batteries and was thinking the guy have almost 20,000 li batteries in the house. Now I understand its about type 18650 and that you only have 5000 of them.. Please show a picture of the battery battery when ready, Think it will look impressive.

 

[GoIdman]

Since last year i get a lot of modern processors from my suppliers, you know those pinless stuff with soldered heatsink (some have a small amount of gold too). As I understood that solder contains Indium, which i started to pay attention to (I have to admit, it fascinates me as well), with 560USD per kg it can be worth the effort to scrape off when disassembling those processors for the heatsink. I think as usage of indium will go up, price will follow as well.

Copper is always good to hold for quick cash too.

Pete

 

[nickvc]

I had an old customer some years back that started refining scrap computer parts back in the early 70s and he knew of areas where the companies dumped tons of parts in landfill that now has houses and factories on, the point was that the margins in the early days were huge so just dumping faulty product didn’t matter

 

[kurtak]

Read that Kurtak tried to refine touch pads buy have given up the idea.

For reference here is a link to what I posted yesterday

https://goldrefiningforum.com/threads/laptop-touch-pad-boards-and-keyboard-traces.33749/#post-362147
To clarify what I was saying in that post - is there gold plating on those laptop touch pad circuit boards

Yes - & it even looks impressive - but it is not & that is because it is ENIG plating - so you can not expect much in recovery especially if you have only a few of them

Putting it in perspective -----

If you have a pound of gold plated fingers from RAM or Finger Cards you can expect a recover of (+/-) right around 1.5 grams per pound

With those laptop touch pads you will be LUCKY to recover 1 gram from 2 pounds - & they are light weight so it takes a lot of them to even make a pound

AND they are a pain in the butt to process because before you can even put them in AP (or nitric) to relieve the plating from the pad you have to soak them in a mineral solvent & wipe each pad down with a paper towel to remove the adhesive that glues the "touch pad" to the circuit board

Very time consuming - to chase 1 gram gold - IF you have 2 pounds of them

So I am not saying "don't process them" - just be aware that they are not even close to being as impressive as they look - cost of recovery will (likely) be greater then the value recovered --- which is why I will never process them again

Therefore - what I learned in that one & only time of processing them is that you are better served spending your time & effort going after known & proven material - that pays - such as actual finger - & throw those touch pads in with your "low grade" boards to be sold to a company like boardsort - they go in the "low grade peripheral" category = $1/pound

There is a reason why companies like boardsort don't list them as a "category we buy" --- it is because there recovery is SO LOW they do not justify a category of there own "for recovery"

Kurt

 

[kurtak]

When read an old memory came up in my head. A memory I somewhat hate. in my late teens ( more than 40 years ago) I was working with electronics for petrol stations. Among the equipment we was working with was note acceptors ( you put a bill in the scanner and can fill up fuel for the amount.) During this time I noticed that it was gold on the pins. The smartest guy at the company explained for me that it was so thin it was no idea to recover in. So since he was so smart( and he was) I just continued to throw massive amounts in the gaylord. This types of electronics I dumped is the same type people here today dream about with saliva dripping.

sorry but that really made me laugh - that is a story very much like what my brother told me when I very first started to get into this - he was an industrial automation programmer so a very smart guy as well (just thin plating so not worth chasing - when talking about plating on fingers)

But as we all know - finger plating is well worth going after

Which of course impressed him when I proved him wrong

Kurt

 

[Shark]

I used to keep a barrel of AP just for odd boards like those. Tossed all kinds of odd stuff in it until it would barely work. Filtered it for the gold, then cemented the copper. Used the copper as a collector metal, then started adding more boards. It was just a way to get use from much of the copper, and the gold was just a little extra that didn’t go to waste.

Just to clarify this, I did not run this as a regular work load. It was just something I tinkered with when incoming materials slowed down. (Read this as “when I got bored”) I stopped doing this some time back as other things started to keep me occupied. I haven’t run the quantities that Kurt and many of you have, but it helped me to learn when I was first starting out and feel it was worth it early on as a learning tool.

 

[stella polaris]

Just to clarify this, I did not run this as a regular work load. It was just something I tinkered with when incoming materials slowed down. (Read this as “when I got bored”) I stopped doing this some time back as other things started to keep me occupied. I haven’t run the quantities that Kurt and many of you have, but it helped me to learn when I was first starting out and feel it was worth it early on as a learning tool.

its what I call an extensive method. it works slowly but steady. However it demands space something not all have.

 

[stella polaris]

True.
But sometimes the items on the wrong side of that line can be stowed away and may end up in the right side at a later time.
Depending an a bunch of other factors like space and so on.

I store SMD resistors, for the future, just for this reason.

 

[g_axelsson]

I did some refining of IC:s this summer with 50+ grams of gold as a result. In the end I also got about half a kilo of lead-tin scrap and a bucket of ash after panning off all the bond wires.

I did a test of the lead-tin metal and it contains about 1 gram gold per kilo of metal. To dissolve all that metal to get that small amount of gold would be too expensive at the price I pay for acids today. So that can with the metal powder will end up on a shelf in storage for now. If I sold it as scrap today I would get a dollar at the most.

The bucket with the ash probably only contains trace gold at the moment. My recovery rate was 97% based on the second panning I did. About 50 grams on first run and 1,5 gram on the second.
But it still contains some copper oxide, some lead and tin oxides and what I suspect, small flakes of silver plate, though I haven't tested that yet.
My plan is to set up a cyanide leaching circuit and get that copper, silver and gold still left in it before discarding the ash.

... and no, I don't flush down the ashes in the sink or pour it out on the lawn as one youtuber does because there still are toxic metal oxides in the mix.

Göran

 

[BShan]

sorry but that really made me laugh - that is a story very much like what my brother told me when I very first started to get into this - he was an industrial automation programmer so a very smart guy as well (just thin plating so not worth chasing - when talking about plating on fingers)

But as we all know - finger plating is well worth going after

Which of course impressed him when I proved him wrong

Kurt

Unusual scrap, worth refining I assume? < and you saw this today, this member posts this unusual material, and has the same experience of chemists he knows telling him it's too thin to bother chasing. I want to hear what they say when OP tells them his sample results, but I also think OP should keep it to himself until after he's secured rights to all the bits, or they might stop giving him that interesting material.

 

[Kevin.rochay]

It's fascinating to reflect on the value of old electronics! In the past, I've seen cathode ray tubes (CRTs) from old televisions and monitors being discarded due to the high cost of recycling the leaded glass. However, in the future, there might be a resurgence in demand for CRTs if nostalgia drives a reinterest in retro gaming or if new applications requiring high-quality, low-latency displays emerge.

 

[g_axelsson]

Since last year i get a lot of modern processors from my suppliers, you know those pinless stuff with soldered heatsink (some have a small amount of gold too). As I understood that solder contains Indium, which i started to pay attention to (I have to admit, it fascinates me as well), with 560USD per kg it can be worth the effort to scrape off when disassembling those processors for the heatsink. I think as usage of indium will go up, price will follow as well.

Copper is always good to hold for quick cash too.

Pete

I'm also convinced that indium will increase in value over the next 20-50 years.

There are no indium mines. All indium produced is recovered from zinc or copper mines as a by-product. As recycling goes up and gets more effective, the indium sources becomes more scarce. As far as I know, indium is not recovered from scrap in any substantial way.

So laser diode solder, heat sinks, touch screens and flat screens are all a good source of metallic indium or indium tin oxide, ITO... but there are no economical ways to recycle that scrap today.
So what to do with all the LCD-panels I got after just scrapping half a ton of screens? Save it in the back of a warehouse or dump it at the recycling station? I really don't know. At least LCD panels are easily stacked quite compact compared to most other scrap. But on the other hand, in 20 years I'm retired.

I have also started to recover indium from modern CPU:s as an experiment and I have a small bottle with indium I have extracted, next to my gold and silver.

Dilute sulphuric acid dissolves metallic indium but not tin, then you can recover it by electrowinning or precipitate it as a hydroxide.
For ITO I have heard that oxalic acid can be used to dissolve it and by carefully adjusting the pH, tin and indium can be separated. I haven't tested it yet though,

Göran

 

[Yggdrasil]

I'm also convinced that indium will increase in value over the next 20-50 years.

There are no indium mines. All indium produced is recovered from zinc or copper mines as a by-product. As recycling goes up and gets more effective, the indium sources becomes more scarce. As far as I know, indium is not recovered from scrap in any substantial way.

So laser diode solder, heat sinks, touch screens and flat screens are all a good source of metallic indium or indium tin oxide, ITO... but there are no economical ways to recycle that scrap today.
So what to do with all the LCD-panels I got after just scrapping half a ton of screens? Save it in the back of a warehouse or dump it at the recycling station? I really don't know. At least LCD panels are easily stacked quite compact compared to most other scrap. But on the other hand, in 20 years I'm retired.

I have also started to recover indium from modern CPU:s as an experiment and I have a small bottle with indium I have extracted, next to my gold and silver.

Dilute sulphuric acid dissolves metallic indium but not tin, then you can recover it by electrowinning or precipitate it as a hydroxide.
For ITO I have heard that oxalic acid can be used to dissolve it and by carefully adjusting the pH, tin and indium can be separated. I haven't tested it yet though,

Göran

How do you get the Indium off the processors?
Melting and scraping?