bswartzwelder
Well-known member
- Joined
- Oct 24, 2011
- Messages
- 660
Hi All,
I started my circuit boards and fingers in a bucket with AP and aeration earlier this week. The circuit boards were never populated and must have been a production over run or had a mistake in the foil layout. So far, the AP has turned a dark emerald green but since I stacked the boards on end, it might take a while for the air to agitate the solution enough to get to all the boards. I did stak a large board and then a smaller board followed by a larger board to help keep them from "nesting" together. I have had the gold bug for some time and am really getting excited as this batch starts to approach the end point.
My next project will be to try and recover some gold from the flexible strips inside of cell phones. These strips are light brownish in color but where they plug into connectors on the circuit boards they have a really bright gold color. Also, under some keypads there are flexible strips which are usually glued to a plastic or metal backing to make them rigid. These flexible strips usually have a thin, cup shaped metal disc over them so that when you press down on a key, the cup snaps down and makes contact to the two contact spots underneath completing the circuit. Any ideas on processing these? I'm pretty sure there must be some sort of base metal under the gold, but don't know if AP or Acid/Chlorox would be best. It's even possible incineration might be best. Anyone who has done these care to point me in the right direction?
I started my circuit boards and fingers in a bucket with AP and aeration earlier this week. The circuit boards were never populated and must have been a production over run or had a mistake in the foil layout. So far, the AP has turned a dark emerald green but since I stacked the boards on end, it might take a while for the air to agitate the solution enough to get to all the boards. I did stak a large board and then a smaller board followed by a larger board to help keep them from "nesting" together. I have had the gold bug for some time and am really getting excited as this batch starts to approach the end point.
My next project will be to try and recover some gold from the flexible strips inside of cell phones. These strips are light brownish in color but where they plug into connectors on the circuit boards they have a really bright gold color. Also, under some keypads there are flexible strips which are usually glued to a plastic or metal backing to make them rigid. These flexible strips usually have a thin, cup shaped metal disc over them so that when you press down on a key, the cup snaps down and makes contact to the two contact spots underneath completing the circuit. Any ideas on processing these? I'm pretty sure there must be some sort of base metal under the gold, but don't know if AP or Acid/Chlorox would be best. It's even possible incineration might be best. Anyone who has done these care to point me in the right direction?
