Using hot acetone to melt IDE pins enclosure.

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glaucodobrasil

Active member
Joined
Jan 25, 2015
Messages
37
Hey folks, fine?

I would like to know if make sense to use hot acetone to dissolve the IDE pins enclosure to process them in a Tumbler Cell. I costumed to do that to dissolve plastic to make a layer over the bed of my 3D Printer, and as pure acetone is easiest and cheap for me to get, I would like to try that instead of using HCl to dissolve the metals.

Tks!
 
Not by the flammable part, I guarantee. I did that a lot of times. You need a large vessel, a heated bed, and patience to do not overload acetone. If you keet it bellow 50C-70C (I don't remember right now), is safe enough to make the plastic soft. I melted a lot of ABS in the past that way. I do care about the gold.
 
glaucodobrasil said:
Not by the flammable part, I guarantee. I did that a lot of times. You need a large vessel, a heated bed, and patience to do not overload acetone. If you keet it bellow 50C-70C (I don't remember right now), is safe enough to make the plastic soft. I melted a lot of ABS in the past that way. I do care about the gold.
Click to expand...

What do you do with all that waste solution you created... the sticky flammable mess? Seems you've convinced yourself it would be OK to move forward with this even though you just had two pros tell you it's a bad idea.

If it were my IDE connectors, I would throw them in AP and forget about them for a while. Once done rinse them well and settle/filter the foils for processing.
 
Acetone has a very low flash point, any spark can set it off. You need proper exhaust and explosion proof motors and if you were here in the US you would need to condense all of those acetone vapors before you pump that exhaust air out of your work space.

The NFPA rating system lists Acetone with a rating of 3 for its fire hazard listing. 3 means serious.

Translation: this stuff will burn your place down. Maybe not the first day or the first month but sooner or later you have to realize that any spark will set it off. Any spark, static electricity, it won't take much.

If you want to free up the pins granulate the IDE's.
 
Two members posted time ago their ideas (sorry if i can remember who)
Freeze the pins and enclosures then smash, put everything in salty water and the plastics should float (not tested yet by me)
 
byte-tech said:
Two members posted time ago their ideas (sorry if i can remember who)
Freeze the pins and enclosures then smash, put everything in salty water and the plastics should float (not tested yet by me)
Click to expand...
Maybe I will try that later, but actually I don't have much of it to deal, only 2kg, next time I will remove the entire enclosure from the motherboard and then remove the pins with a screwdriver and a hammer. I'm doing tests here on what is the best method of depopulating the motherboards, and I get stucked after leaving some IDEs on their enclosures. Removing the enclosure from the pins in the motherboard do a lot of mess, but at least is easiest to deal.
I let two of them in 50ml of cold acetone in a pot yesterday, and today the pins are very easy to remove. I will keep that soaked for more two days... who knows, maybe after this time will be enough to just shake it and get the pins off...
 
For just 2 kilo I would use old fashioned elbow grease.
Do not be afraid of a little work. You will have them done faster than what you spend thinking about chemical method, with no waste created.
 
I'm no expert, just starting to learn a lot about the process myself, but i can give you some useful advice from my own experiences. Those who often try to do it fast or cut corners, no matter how good the idea may seem can get hurt, or hurt others. The reason there is a process is to make sure it's done right, with no harm in the end. Listen to these guys, what i have read from them in some posts may seem harshly worded, but they have already saved my skin and don't even know how. Just do it safe, and thank you all on the forum. :shock:
 

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