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I met a guy in his late 70's and he showed me what he was doing with his Computer Mem
cut off the gold fingers and put in a glass coffee pot with Muriatic acid and peroxide
I saw what appeared simple - - gold flakes at bottom of glass - he then put flakes in coffee strainer and washed .
he told me as is it's 10 to 12 carat melted approaches 18 to 24
I did see the gold flakes is what he says true ?
He only bothers with fingers and CPU's
boards he said requires to much room
to work on .
Yes, it's true. To find more information, and the best information on this type of thing, go to GOLD REFINING FORUM - GOLD REFINERS HELPING ONE ANOTHER
I'll 2nd what ryanw said.
If you decide to check out the GRF, don't ask questions, just read for about a year and then decide if refining is something you really want to do.
Since it's against forum rules we don't discuss refining here. I do find the subject very interesting but it's not for me.
I prefer to save up my circuit boards and sell them once a year. The last few years I've averaged around 1800 pounds of boards at about $2.30 a pound.
I'm perfectly happy with this and there are no chemicals involved.
and best of all you get to keep all your digits and all those important things...like lungs...right jimicrk??
Seriously, it is fun to learn about...go to the GRF like they said. Just know, that unless you REALLY know what you are doing, you can hurt yourself BADLY, waste a bunch of money, and still not get all the gold. Like the others, I just send mine off and get paid. If I REALLY wanted a chunk of gold, I can always send off to a refinery that does that sort of thing. They will send me back my cut.
You are correct.Quote:
Originally Posted by webuyselltradestuff
Would not want to lose any digits........especially my thumbs. :))
Agreed. Much more profitable vs. the time invested. On a small scale, it is impossible to make any profit refining ewaste. I occasionally read the Gold Refining Forum, but only to learn, no intention of trying any of it.Quote:
Originally Posted by jimicrk
Think of it like this.
The process you are referring to is called AP. You can go on GRF and read the actual process, and many threads related.
Gold plating is only worth around 35-40 cents per sq inch.
Unless you are doing a massive quantity of boards, which is a high overhead alone, this process will not net you anything but a little tiny bit of gold you can then sell for a tiny bit of money.
The time it would take to refine a sizable quantity, let's say at least a Troy ounce, will change your mind. If you decide to invest and make it profitable, you need to purchase equipment. And not just a couple air stones and 5 gallon plastic buckets. To make my AP process profitable and lucrative, I use a 250 and a 375 gallon fish tanks. There is the expense of running pumps, either responsibly disposing of your waste solution, and it generates a lot if you are doing this to be profitable or recovering the copper and other metals from the waste solution yourself, which takes additional equipment and a lot more knowledge. Other expenses will include some way of melting your gold, bringing the purity to 99.5 if you intend to sell for spot, remember you will be selling small quantities, so you probably will not get spot, depending on where you sell your gold.
The AP process is an electronics etching solution, and while it is probably one of the safest methods, you still need to wear safety gear, and know what you are doing. For example, if there is too much oxidizer, or oxygen involved, you may dissolve some gold which will end up cementing out as a black fine sand. To recover this gold takes another different process and requires the proper filtering. More cost.
If you truly wish to learn, you would serve you purpose well by reading posts on GRF. I am not here to discourage you, on the contrary, if you are serious, I only wish to help you to be aware of what you will be getting into. Refining for a living is not easy, it isn't simple, there are no magic bullets. It takes reading, buying the right equipment, understanding laboratory procedures and so much more. It is almost like science and craft work combined. You learn from reading and experience, but far more reading than anything else.
Choose wisely. Many many people who started refining have since given it up. Very few make a living refining on a small scale. Those who do, eat, breath and you know what, recovering and refining. Trying to find someone whom you might learn from is even more difficult, that is what GRF is all about, refiners helping refiners. Make an account there, read the threads posted, read about the AP process, pick up and read ancopy of Hoke's book which a free copy is downloadable from links on GRF and can legally be downloaded, this, so you might understand the terms used, and thus be able ton communicate readily with those who might help you.
Whatever you decide, good luck and be careful.
Scott
Scott I used an abrasive in the ball mill to abrade the gold free from the boards, no labour involved with clipping off fingers with a huge savings in chemicals. The nickel underlay that the gold is plated onto is tough and does not wear off.Quote:
Originally Posted by NobleMetalWorks
Tin solder is soft and wears away into the abrasive material, you can screen out the MMLC's and ram chips for further processing.
Just remember to rinse off any powder sticking to the boards once removed from the tumbler.
I ran 276 pounds of gold fingered ram using this process,
There are also a few other ways, like an ice blaster. It operates as a sand blaster, but with ice. It will strip the gold and a bit of other material, it needs to be incinerated really well after but I have had excellent results doing this in a glove box where nothing is lost.Quote:
Originally Posted by alloy2
Another way is straight incineration, where all the board material and all you are left with is the metals, and then those processed with wet chemistry, I have done this as well but it's far too much work to be more viable than what I am already doing.
Currently, I load boards into a tank by clipping them onto a lengthwise chord that runs the length of the tank, a small electric motor connected to the chord draws the boards across the tank. I have another sump tank under the large tank with a polypropylene sponge (Because it does not dissolve in AR), a pump in the sump that pumps the solution back into the tank through several jets that agitate the solution. The solution continually circulates by gravity through a pre-filter, that also adds oxygen, down into the sump through the poly sponge that filters the gold foils. When the sponge becomes loaded, I simply remove it and put the entire poly sponge into AR, when dissolved the sponge is put aside and used to replace the next pregnant sponge. I have a drain with a valve that will move solution into a third tank where I recover the metal values and resolve the solution so it can be disposed of. I like this method because it's load and forget, and doesn't take a lot of labor to operate, and strips the gold fairly quickly. I keep huge salt water tanks and just simply used the same technology, filters, sump, etc and altered it where needed. The most expensive part is the acid resistant pump.
Your way also works, but as gold is soft I try to stay away from anything that might rub it off onto equipment or tools. Because boards have a much lower recovery value though, I would prefer incinerating chips, or processing cons or industrial scrap/waste. I live close to silicon valley so I get everything from sputtering targets, to scientific samples, to testing targets that have heavy gold plating.
I enjoy your posts, people who refine tend to think in specific ways when it comes to recover values from material. You seem to use mechanical methods to recover values from material which I can appreciate. Keeping it mechanical circumvents a lot of the problems that wet chemistry for example can create. My personal favorite however, and what I love doing most is fluxing/smelting. I'm to the point where I can look at the slag and know how to alter the flux and smelting to produce results I am looking for. For the last 6 months I have been smelting using induction, and using clay/graphite crucibles which are not really intended for induction technology but hold up far better to aggressive flux than graphite or more expensive crucibles. The crucibles have to be carefully seasoned or bulges will form on the inside of the crucible which will make the fail much faster, but if done correctly and carefully clay graphite works really well. I am currently getting between 35-40 uses before the crucible looks like it's going to fail.
Thanks for your posts, I do enjoy reading them!
Scott
Ahh now you have my attention ( fluxing and smelting ) I have a several thousand tons of material to run through the centrifuge the concentrates consisting of gold and platinum will be smelted without further processing.The resulting dore refinery ready.
Since the material I'll be running is consistent in its nature will spend the money to have a laboratory formulate a fluxing agent best suited to the material I'm smelting.
My days on the forum are limited as I have sold my sail boat, then during this upcoming week will move back to the mainland to pick up on this project where I left off last fall before moving to the Island.
I will not have internet access at my new location, I have enjoyed sharing my experiences from the many years I worked as a scrapper but times have changed and so has the industry. What may have worked in my day no longer applies to today’s world.
I am finding that the old ways of doing some things, seems to work better a lot of times. For example, instead of pouring on a table, I use a sandtrap. Not only does it provide support for molds, but also leaches the heat really well, specially in a large cone mold. Same with crucibles. And if a crucible does fail, the same takes the metal and slag without spattering everywhere.Quote:
Originally Posted by alloy2
Your knowledge and experience have real value, specially in today's world where there is such a drastic distance between the old ways of doing things, and the new. For so very long very few people were interested in metallurgy in the United States, there was a gap here in the States, yet in other countries they continued to advance. An amalgam of old and new that uses the best methods of both is better than one or the other in my humble opinion.
I'm sorry to hear you won't be on the forum very much in the future. But when you do get a chance, stop by. You add value, and information!
Scott