New e Gold, for me anyway.

[eesakiwi]

I read a post here where someone said that the 'dip switches have little gold balls in them".

Interesting, lotsa little gold balls equals one bigger gold ball.....
So I found one, pulled it open & sure enough, there was a row of little gold balls & the metal tags they had have a single sided gold layer on them.
This sort.

I found another, with a levered switch on it & pulled it apart & yep, gold plated metal bar contactor & gold plated contacts on the legs.

A few nights ago I dumpster dived a industrial electronics shop & found a AC motor speed controller & some industrial switchgear (and a weird but interesting pump).

The AC motor controller was really interesting for a while, **** hard to get into, rule of thumb was to undo every screw possable & that lead to problems as some needed to be done up so parts could be pulled off it....
This is sorta what it looked like.

Inside was a nice row of gold plated dipswitches & a really nice 2 inch square, seeminly double sided gold plated PCB with a bunch of heavy transisters with silver wires attached to them, just like the common home stereo amp has.

The golds sorta pixilated, but looking closely its a real bright but 'tiley' looking, could be described as 'fish scalely' too. Both sides.....

Along with a 1Lb Ali heatsink. Yay.



The contactor had a lot of copper plated steel parts in it, only a few real copper parts.
But those had a 10mm square silver contact on each end.
So, 3 of them = 6, + the contacts they touch, = 12 silver contacts!

[eesakiwi]

The Dynadrive was one of these

[Bear]

that's some very dangerous switches you have there fella! send em to me, i'll dispose of them in a humane fashion (no innocent parts will be damaged in the process ; )

[Curbside shopper]

Gold or gold plated?

Still an awesome discovery regardless!

[eesakiwi]

This is a pic of the board. Its gold plated over a copper layer.
There was a mica heating element beside it to keep it at a constant temp.
Weird bit it, its worth a lot(the whole unit) but the fault was a tiny double relay the size of the striker on a box of matches.
You can see the silver wire connections & the other side of the board was 100% gold plated.
The clear stuff over the board is a sorta silicon stuff, sticky as, I can't wash or wipe or pick it off. Gorillia snot.


The contactor contacts