Have you given thought to somehow extracting PM’s from old client gear? Doesn’t seem there’s enough in computers, servers, etc. for it to be worth it, unless you have thousands & thousands of machines. Thoughts?
@@drjones762 I only pull the pins/pads off dead CPUs/ram/mobo and get a small baggy full then I send the rest to a local ewaste guy who breaks it down even more then sends me a small bit of cash from whatever metal value he gets out of it. he's able to make a living off it somehow IDK what extra you can do other than soak it in chemicals.
Jason thanks so much for providing the informative and step-by-step videos that you have shared with us as a community! I struggled to understand why I wasn’t capturing the amount of precious metals that were listed in the assays. Your “Smelting 101” series allowed me to understand how to deal with sulfides and recover the almost 100% of the PM’s. Your sharing of your knowledge has been a huge blessing! Thank You Jeff.
I wanted to say that you have an amazing way of teaching that speaks to me. Disabled USMC Vet here that is looking into urban mining and your videos have helped so much in my planning. I hope to maybe get some equipment from you in the future. Greetings from Oly, WA!
Nice video. Here's a tip that I use for my black sand magnet. I put a speaker magnet in a margarine tub and tape the lid tight. To use it, I put the bottom of the tub in the pan. Then I quickly lift it up so that the magnet hits the roof of the tub. This makes a temporary gap between the bottom of the tub and the magnet, which releases the black sand into a separate container. It's cheaper, bigger and faster than the small magnets with the plunger that you press to release the black sand.
Yeah, there's definitely silver in the CPU. If you want to separate just the gold, then crush everything to a powder, pour on some nitric acid to make silver nitrate, and the gold will be completely isolated at that point and you can smelt it out
It's not easy. There is tin in the solder, the tin forms a gel when dissolved in nitric acid. This makes it very difficult to isolate and filter the gold. Also the fumes are horrible and you need a fume hood. I've processed gold and silver using acids. It's fun, but it's not easy.
Interesting. The cone technique is similar to purifying beeswax. the wax floats to the tip while the heavy stuff sinks below. I am learning a lot from your channel. Thank you for doing these.
CPU’s have silver and gold from my experience. Usually I lightly burn, crush, dilute nitric to remove silver and base, Aqua Regia the remaining material, drop gold with SMB. Cement out silver with copper. I’ve been experimenting with the cupel process to reduce my acid cost and waste. There’s no super shortcuts as best as I can determine so far. A few times I have used this process up to removing the base with dilute nitric, then picked out as much as possible the ceramic material and junk silicone chips then directly cupeled. It works fairly well but the cost seems to be a wash and sometimes I will get crud on top while cupeling which will have some gold caught up in it. I Still get a bead or two of gold, but will Crush the crud and put in a pan and gently blow off the very light powders and cupel the remaining material again. Thanks Jason having fun with the process. ✌️PT
I’m processing almost 100 pounds of icy chips right now and I’m really wishing that instead of having to pan out all of the powder slowly, I could throw it all into a huge crucible with flux and get it down to a button. It would make life so much easier. I would love to send you guys a sample to run and see what you guys to come up with if you want to make another video!
He is very good at smelting which is a artwork of it's own "an acquired skill" through trial and error he has developed his skill to Near perfection. I was Entriqued by my brother Tony retired U.S.S. furnaces area manager.Computers control every aspect of the chemistry, unlike the operators of the past.
Silver bearing solder is used to join package components together. Don't forget the rest of the PC. Newer hard drives have PGMs and the other ICs have gold bonding wires and lead frames as well as the gold plated fingers and slot connectors.
@mbmmllc The silver you got came from Silver solder, silver/lead, silver/tin or silver/gold is usually used in these types of components. I hope that this helps answer your question.
@@surebrec5113 have you seen what he charges for an ounce of that crystalized silver hes got the dow to do what EVER he waNTS lol i looked yesterday for a little over an ounce of double refined silver was 1250 U.S.$$
Look up SHOR international they have a seasalt extraction its not really seasalt but they say no prior knowledge of refining says its easy and recovers 99.97% but isn't cheap like 1000 plus the solution they use in the system is sold spereratly so I'd say at least 1200 so it's expensive but doest require acids says it's easy to use just follow instructions sounds a little to good to be true but at 1000+ I'd say you better get what they advertise
Your like the Sreetips of elemental furnace. He does it chemistry style (real good and pure) . Please more of this with your assaying style. There’s not anyone out there doing this like you. More thanks.😍
That was probably the best way I have seen to at least get to the metal part of those cpu's and definitely the cleanest method I have seen without all the cpu dust.
I've worked in the semiconductor analysis industry and the largest source of silver in these CPUs is the silver glass die attach that is used to connect the CPU chip to the ceramic package.
Most people use chemicals to reclaim the gold - I think it would be interesting to have you hook up with, say Cody's Lab, and have you both start with the same amount and type of computer parts to see which method is more cost effective and efficient.
The answer to both of those questions would have to be chemicals in my mind, due to that being the main method for reclaiming precious metals all over the periodic table from many major reclamation facilities
I used to work for an electronics recycling company. We kept our eyes out for particular brands and classes of chips that we then melted down and smelted the gold from. It was worth our time, but we went through tons and tons of material over the course of a year. And this was in '99-2001. a lot of the older chips were very large dies and the circuit designs and manufacturing weren't as optimized as they are these days and so had more material in them than chips from more recent generations.
It is very weird seeing an XRF reader used outside my industry. We used it in paper manufacturing to test for concentration of silicone. Basically, when you have a sticker, the backing is siliconized. We had to have an appropriate amount of silicone, which was measured by our XRF. We also did linerless paper, which had silicone on the face, and adhesive on the back. It would stick to itself just enough to make rolls, but peel apart without requiring a backing
Thank you, this was really good info! People have been asking about using smelting for gold recovery on a particular gold reclamation forum, and members have insisted it can’t be done. You’ve proven them wrong! It can be done!!
From my experience dealing with these type of materials. I watched all types of electronics change in their composition, from 18k solid metals to cost saving manufacturing techniques, which used the metal silver as a base metal for pins and so on, which the gold plated. With a heavy gold plate. Not a flash gold look that rubs of with one use like most manufactures today, So, I have handled millions of computer chips. I still have some that are rare and heavily cited in gold. As well as some very heavy duty diods. These computer chips generate electricity for every leg of the chip when exposed to light. But anyway, what you probably recieved was a later model of chip from the 90s to today. It could be older. But the metal content you recieved shows the percentage of metals used to make these chips. But, whats important here is the cost per how many chips to process. And what can you yield. What you are showing is very cool. I wish I was there actually participating in this type of study. I actually helped in the reclaiming of silver from one dirt into 5 gal glass bottles. Throught the vacume filter process. I think its all a very interesting process. After watching several of your videos. I think you might be the kind of person that could do and be interested in making somthing that I keep secret. For good reason. However. The main reason I keep it secret is, because I can't prove it unless I do it first. Thats where I noticed that you have the place and skills to do an awsome job on this type of project. It could be an eye opener. And fun, It could even bring revenue of sorts. But also it could make a great RUclips Learning video . And it will answer a great ancient question concerning alchemy still not realized by man today. Ok brother. Keep up the cool work. Let me know if you want to ?
I found this comment by you interesting.'These computer chips generate electricity for every leg of the chip when exposed to light.' Are you saying that these chips without being powered electrically can still generate electricity by themselves? Is there evidence of this that can be confirmed?And what in your opinion causes this phenomena?
@@joerenaud8292 Yes brother, they might have one leg that is ground. But , each leg give off power when exposed to light. Different voltages I don't know exactly how its done, but what i do know, is that there is a clear window on top , and when you look into it. You can see a small ,, I would say another chip with tiny gold wires spideeing out form it. So its like a solar chip ? Light sensitivity device. I have 4 storage units full of stuff. But these are in there. I don't know exactly where they are or id take fotos of them and their part numbers and send them to you. Ok. Peace, have a great day.
I have so many harvested parts and I’m not sure who to trust enough to send it off to melt down. Ultimately, I would love to do this. So thanks for sharing!
I'm not a refiner, but my understanding of Ewaste or the CPU's is that it's plated with 8 to 10k Gold. If it's karat gold sometimes they put silver in that. I know they usually use copper, and white gold has silver, platinum and or paladium. Have a GREAT Day!!!
@@music-jn3wn They don't use pure gold because it's too soft. If it were pure gold, you could just scrap it off because it would be soft enough to do that.
@@music-jn3wn Many test on many different computer parts have been done. The highest purity was from the 80's and 90's computers and the most was 12k or 50%!! After the gold is recovered it's 8k, 10k or sometimes 12k then you'll see people refine it to 98% to 99% on rare occasions you can get 99.9% pure on the first refining, most of the time it takes a second refining to get it to three 9's fine or 99.9% pure gold!!
@@goranaxelsson1409 Many test on many different computer parts have been done the highest purity was from the 80's and 90's computers and the most was 12k or 50%! After the gold is recovered, it's 8k, 10k, or sometimes 12k, then you'll see people refine it to 98% - 99%. On rare occasions, you can get 99.9% pure on the first refining. Most of the time it takes a second refining to get it to three 9's fine, or 99.9% pure gold!
The big shiny plate was aluminum,, it’s a heat sink, there was a smaller plate that was gold plated steel, all the gold plated pin on the CPU are magnetic so there’s another source of iron, the silicon chip does contain trace amounts of gold, the ceramic body will have either gold or silver bonded wires, on most CPU’s , they have monolithic ceramic capacitors attached to them, this is where you got your trace amount of palladium plus small amounts of silver
I really liked this video, my dad did this for 20 years, us kids had to cut the little gold spikes, and he used acid and the gold turned into gold flakes
Finally a person that does it logicly w/household materials, the lead is a great idea for the collection metal, I GOTTA GIVE TO YA let it be known thanks to u we're gona be financialy stable! Thanks. Maybe u can show us how to xtract platinum from catalic converters. Keep it on.
Silver is probably from intermediate platings of contacts, the steel covers, and from internal solder joints. Gold wires are essentially pressure-welded to the contact points on the wafer inside the IC, but are likely soldered to the lead frame (not lead as in Pb but lead as in terminal), which is the frame of the IC body that has the external connections. Since the IC has to be able to be soldered at normal PCBA soldering heat profiles, any internal solder connections has to be done with much higher temp solder, which would likely contain silver.
The recovery is done in two stages , first treated with nitric to remove base metals , then treated with aquea Regia after the left over ceramic dried and ball milled not hammer milled (1kgs minimum ) again treated with aquae regia , you can pan it see to see the powder has the precious metal and sure it has any way good job
Nitric will also dissolve away the silver. I tend to use a low amount of weak hydrochloric first to eat up the base metals, let it sit for a while so the silver and copper reduce back as the base metals are mostly used up. THEN I add 1M nitric to take away the copper and silver. What's left is a mixture of insoluble oxides, silicates, and platinum group metals. After that, it's easy to hit it with hot aqua and dissolve the platinum group. Cool and neutralize with urea and let sit for a day, all the platinum, iridium, and rhodium will just fall out as a fine grey powder which is easily recovered and washed. Then warm metabisulfite solution with warmed auric chloride, and you swiftly get a spongy gold mass with over 99% recovery!
Great video, many people push there rifined gold to high purity? Not nessary, the silver is the main conductor and gold stop corrosion. Great process and not harsh chemicals. I'm going to use your techniques for sure. Thanks 👍
Great video - quite informative. I like that you are avoiding chemicals. Have you considered taking a number of cupelled buttons and remelting them in a small cone mold to see if the atomic weight will seperate the god and silver?
Just found your channel. Enjoyed the video. Just wanted to point out, most of that iron came from the cpu pins. They are steel clad in gold usually on the ceramic cpus
I think the Silver came from solder on the pins & 1/3 weight gold is about right for 4 CPU's . Next time use the grinder to crush the material & after use a magnet to remove all the iron, Great video
Older CPUs and some of the new ones use solder for heat transfer between the die and the integrated heat spreader (that metal plate). That's where the silver could've come from.
I agree, the powdered ceramic (alumina) should dissolve in your flux. On it's own it has a super high melting point. I think iron and maybe nickel is used some cpu pins. All I know is they're often magnetic. Is there anything you can add to the flux that will oxidize iron/nickel so that it doesn't end up in the lead? Seems like this method got a very nice recovery... great video.
when i did a direct smelt from 1960s electronics (heavy gold plating) I was shocked after I direct smelted my lead button --> because this is exactly what happened to my surprise. The iron nickel eded up in the lead button. When I cupelled out my large lead button, my cuppellation process was a disaster due to all of this teal in color steel.... JASON whats is the best way to oxidise out the iron / nickel in the smelting process..... I used chapmans flux 190g, plated pins 64g, and 110g borax, I left the smelt boil for about 30 minutes at 2200 and figured all the steel would be in my slag, and this was definitely not what happened!!! HELP!!!
I would say the pins are silver with a gold plating. Silver is the best conductor and gold is used as a protector. Electrons always take the path of least resistance hence gold plated silver pins. It makes sense being silver is also a lot cheaper than gold. Cool experiment. Would love to see you do it again and gain more knowledge about how things are made.
I used KCN to strip Au off of Kovar based dust covers. Involved process using many chemicals. Wish I remembered. Was back in 1990. Fun job as a chemist out of college.
The CPUs' if done right, the average yeild is about .3 grams of Au each. I did it about 5 years for a salvage company. The cap is a nickle alloy, about 50% highly magnetic. Bad move leaving that in. Why did I stop? Frankly, todays electronics are not worth the effort. Even fiber CPUs' with gold pins, not worth it. They yeild about 2 bucks per pound. As in, you have 1 pound of them remove the pins. that being said, anyone looking to buy stuff like that on E bay, you will likely loose a whole lot of money
Eeyup, the older stuff had more gold in it compared to the newer stuff. Seen videos/images of components from the 70's and 80's that were huge and probably had a good bit of gold in it. Now, like you say, it's hardly worth the effort.
@@magmasunburst9331 I know it's been 3 years, but about 2000. From then till about 2010 you could get a fair amount, but only from very specific parts. Expantion cards, ram and flatback chips Had a fair amount in gold fingers and gold wires. The change is due in part to size. Today you don't even need a network card, it's on the board and about the size of your finger nail. That's one example. Instead of 50 chips all doing different things it might be only 5 doing it all
I was on a video watching some guy melting aluminum cans into bars and it suddenly occurred to me I could be high class watching someone melting gold, and so here I am among you fine high society folks.
Protip when you're panning that fine material in a closed environment, add some jetdry to the water to prevent gold and other material from floating on the surface.
Old chips like those, looking to be mid 90's to early 2000's, well they mainly used silver leads and pins that were gold plated. Newer ones use aluminum alloys often instead of silver. You have to realize, through the 90's into early 2000's silver was at all-time lowest prices, some spot prices as low as ~$3 an oz. During that period, gold was relatively low, too, around ~$300 - $350 per oz. So it made more sense to use the cheap silver (which was cheaper often at the time than copper) as a base, & gold plate it. That era, you mainly saw solid gold pins/leads only in aeronautical, military, aerospace, and high-end industrial electronics applications.
I am enjoying the frequent uploads! I would love to work on your small crushing equipment. It would be something else to change out a die with, at most, a small come-along. The largest die we ever flipped was a primary at a quarry that ran about 7 tons. I enjoyed it but I don't miss it. I'll bet there isn't ONE computer screen on your solid-ass equipment.
Silver is used in solder for electronics, so the CPU had a lot of sliver. Their may be some gold plated wiring depending on the pins and thickness of the chip. You'd have to pull up the specs for each chip to find the Au / Ag content.
Awesome lesson. I have a boxful of chips and cpu s but none of the skills. Just a couple days ago I said outloud I wish I could find out how to smelt vs the ugly dirty chemical processes I've seen. Thanks for this. subscribed. I'm just north of the Canuck border in BC. Grew up prospecting with my dad. Just retired and heading back to that way of life.
The only place I can think of that may have silver in a CPU would be the solder used for the decoupling capacitors of the chip. They typically are on the bottom, under that metal plate surrounded by the gold plated pins. This would also explain the palladium in the final sample as these capacitors do contain a very small amount of palladium. EDIT: The pins are also soldered to the chip. That is an additional source of silver.
I've been recovering metals for a while now. I find it's easiest to remove any metals you know aren't gold right off the bat (the aluminum, copper nickel heat sinks...). I personally like dissolving my mixed metals into nitric acid to remove all base metals; filter the mixed carat gold then dissolve the mixed carat gold into aqua regia to recover the pure gold.
Yet again, that is not the purpose or point of this vid! We all know chems work best. He’s not refining, just trying to see if you can smelt it out....and that’s all.
The silver and gold mix you have there is called Electrum. This is actualy allready worth something and the value is determined by the amount of gold and silver is in it!
@Computer Whisperer Not really, I haven't gotten that technical into it but anything pre-Pentium has more Gold and those made in the last ten years have much less. It's just the nature of the business and learning how to cut costs. Some processes don't need the enhanced flow of data that we used to think they did ( which required gold ) so we are using cheaper materials for those tasks in a motherboard. Most memory chips that I buy to upgrade pc's don't even have any gold in them for instance but they did 20 years ago.
My first job was at Marconi in the 80`s. They looked like the same type of chips we made. We made all sorts from telephone dialling chips to space SOS chips. The cheap ones use epoxy to attach the dies and ali wires bonds and the more expensive ones used gold to attach the die and gold wire bonds. Never heard of any silver being used back then.
just found your channel, watched tons of your videos and subscribed... good stuff, keep up the good work man and best wishes... one question, is there any way to recover the lead from those used cupel's?
I actually looked it up, there are research papers written, but they're written by treehuggers who just want to neutralize the environmental threat from lead. Translation: yeah, but unless you're a tree hugger, it's more expensive than it's worth...
Could you do a video where you compare recovery from same sample by use of smelting half of it with lead; and the other half you use the acid recovery?
The chips were silicon, you need 1200c to enter the glass phase. There were also many areas of silicide (silicon/metal) with a variety of precious metal. Ti, Cu, Pt, W, Au, Ag, Co are almost guaranteed to be involved. Plus a handful of other random ones based on the manufacturer. There’s something awe inspiring about carrying a million dollars in gold, platinum or palladium, with a 500k core deposit. Volume and quality wise I’m wondering if you would have been better off just clipping the bonding wires.
that was the first time i saw them done that way, the way i saw it done before was the cpu was incenerated, then crushed, then a magnet ran over the powder, it was soaked in a acid solution to get out the pms, this was a fun video had my fingers crossed that this would be a safer, faster way, and it looks like it was to me, just have to scale this up,. thank you for the info. be strong, be safe, and be blessed
russ sherwood CPU you mentioned is ics different from ceramic cpu in this video mostly you will lose plating any kind of metal except platinum groups The assaying method recovery is mainly done for low grade stuff
You had the chance to remove the aluminum before you threw the mix into the furnace, why did you leave it in? Just causes problems when refining. I do believe there is also IRON in those cpu's. The metal plates and the PINS have iron in them. I doubt you got the furnace hot enough to melt that. The silver could have come from two places. The Solder used to hold the metal plates on the bottom of the cpu's, and possibly could have come from under the Silicon dies. It may have also come from the LEAD you used in the cupel to collect the metals. The bonding wires are not always made of gold in those cpu's. I would have removed the steel plates and the aluminum before starting this process. (a heat gun works very well) It would give you a better idea on what kind of material you are working with.
Dude, this guy is breathing in poisonous chemicals to make people happy by doing this, I think it's enough that RUclips has become corrupt and that it's closest thing that a lot people can get to a job
Just watch out, some of those old CPU's are worth much more on the secondary market then the gold content in them. The Motorola CPU you smashed probably is. Some CPU's are really expensive and hard to find. So look them up before smashing them. :)
The silver probably comes from silver loaded epoxy die attach, which glues the silicon die to to the ceramic carrier, prior to wire bonding, the bond wires will be either gold or aluminium depending upon the finishes of the carrier and the die. some carriers will use silver within the plating as well. If its gold wire bonds they will be pretty pure gold. Also once the silicon die is attached to its carrier and the wire bonding has been completed, almost all finishing processes will use "Non-Conductive" materials the pins which are gold plated have only a few microns of gold, purity of the pin plating will largely depend upon the quality of the chip.
That was surprising I thought CPUs were high karat plate.Jason do you sell your steel cone molds? If not you might try marketing them I can't find anything like them anywhere to buy one.i know they are fairly easy to make if you have equipment and skills but many of us don't.I would buy one new or used and pay shipping.thanks for all your great info and involved testing.
It would be a losing prospect if only doing 4. The people who do this to make money do thousands at a time and take extra steps to reduce the waste material before smelting.
My thinking is that you could get rid of some of the flux. Borate is only needed when there's oxidation; so not sure how lead would work with borate since it doesn't oxidize Maybe try it with just the silica; it might remove the silicone better. Also, removing any steel, aluminum or magnetic pieces with a magnet first would help. I've also seen videos of treating the chips with acid first... Pretty cool process. I'd call the nugget e-waste electrum.
I'm just making an educated guess here semi, I would say that the wires were gold-plated silver. I know the chip wafer itself is just layers of silica chemically etched as far as the circuitry inside the chip. When you watch them manufacture the round discs that they cut the chips out of it is just pure silica substance with no wires in it. 👍🏻
If you are wondering where the silver came from I might have an answer. The ceramic cases are not solid ceramic all the way trough. They are multilayerd circuit boards where the substrate is ceramic and the conductor is made of silver. Look up the cofired ceramics process and thick film technology here on the tube if you are interested. The caseing of those chips are probably aluminium oxide or nitrite. Maybe you could flux the aluminium oxide with the addition of cryolite? I have no idea how adding a fluoride would interact with the other components.
@@Malaphor That's what I was thinking, but he was only smelting 1 CPU. Imagine 10 CPUs, then the price drops. But regardless, for the amount of gold retrieved for the amount of effort, it's probably not worth it, unless you have a 1,000 CPUs.
In the 90s missiles had gold wiring and some computer's but after the price of gold got above $500 that all changed to silver has very good conductivity ,wiring mostly
Wouldn't you lose gold plating in the grinder by it smearing onto the grinder plates? That 1.07g pellet could just go into acid to remove the other metals, once seperated, the silver etc could be saved by electrolysis.
The Silver comes from the bond wires that connect the terminals on the Silicon chip die to the CPU package internal terminals. The CPU package external terminals (pins) are gold coated.
Can you put Portland cement in a small terracotta pot (the type that is used for pot plants) and use it for cupelling in an electric furnace instead of a flame furnace?
As an IT professional and a Silver and Gold stacker, I really enjoyed this video. Please do more. Awesome!
Have you given thought to somehow extracting PM’s from old client gear?
Doesn’t seem there’s enough in computers, servers, etc. for it to be worth it, unless you have thousands & thousands of machines. Thoughts?
@@drjones762 I only pull the pins/pads off dead CPUs/ram/mobo and get a small baggy full then I send the rest to a local ewaste guy who breaks it down even more then sends me a small bit of cash from whatever metal value he gets out of it. he's able to make a living off it somehow IDK what extra you can do other than soak it in chemicals.
Jason thanks so much for providing the informative and step-by-step videos that you have shared with us as a community! I struggled to understand why I wasn’t capturing the amount of precious metals that were listed in the assays. Your “Smelting 101” series allowed me to understand how to deal with sulfides and recover the almost 100% of the PM’s. Your sharing of your knowledge has been a huge blessing! Thank You Jeff.
Thank you so much Jeff! I'm glad you are finding the info useful and applicable. More vids to come
I wanted to say that you have an amazing way of teaching that speaks to me. Disabled USMC Vet here that is looking into urban mining and your videos have helped so much in my planning. I hope to maybe get some equipment from you in the future. Greetings from Oly, WA!
Just wanna say that you could make more money off old pc parts by selling them on ebay than doing this! ha
Nice video. Here's a tip that I use for my black sand magnet. I put a speaker magnet in a margarine tub and tape the lid tight. To use it, I put the bottom of the tub in the pan. Then I quickly lift it up so that the magnet hits the roof of the tub. This makes a temporary gap between the bottom of the tub and the magnet, which releases the black sand into a separate container. It's cheaper, bigger and faster than the small magnets with the plunger that you press to release the black sand.
Yeah, there's definitely silver in the CPU. If you want to separate just the gold, then crush everything to a powder, pour on some nitric acid to make silver nitrate, and the gold will be completely isolated at that point and you can smelt it out
Its not really that simple, and there are some real safety considerations using that method
@@chrism4008I mean, that’s the basic gist of it tho. Burn, crush, separate the gold with nitric. What else is there?
@@TroubledOnePaydirt😂
@@TroubledOnePaydirt Just don't forget to hire the neighbor's child to carryout the hazardous duties, for your own safety.
It's not easy. There is tin in the solder, the tin forms a gel when dissolved in nitric acid. This makes it very difficult to isolate and filter the gold. Also the fumes are horrible and you need a fume hood.
I've processed gold and silver using acids. It's fun, but it's not easy.
Interesting. The cone technique is similar to purifying beeswax. the wax floats to the tip while the heavy stuff sinks below.
I am learning a lot from your channel. Thank you for doing these.
CPU’s have silver and gold from my experience.
Usually I lightly burn, crush, dilute nitric to remove silver and base, Aqua Regia the remaining material, drop gold with SMB. Cement out silver with copper.
I’ve been experimenting with the cupel process to reduce my acid cost and waste.
There’s no super shortcuts as best as I can determine so far.
A few times I have used this process up to removing the base with dilute nitric, then picked out as much as possible the ceramic material and junk silicone chips then directly cupeled.
It works fairly well but the cost seems to be a wash and sometimes I will get crud on top while cupeling which will have some gold caught up in it. I Still get a bead or two of gold, but will Crush the crud and put in a pan and gently blow off the very light powders and cupel the remaining material again.
Thanks Jason having fun with the process.
✌️PT
That was a cool experiment. I'd like to see you do more smelting of ewaste, for example BGA chips, ICU chips, RAM sticks. Good Job!
He just did CPU's but need way more than 4. That plating is about 20 atoms or less thick
I’m processing almost 100 pounds of icy chips right now and I’m really wishing that instead of having to pan out all of the powder slowly, I could throw it all into a huge crucible with flux and get it down to a button. It would make life so much easier. I would love to send you guys a sample to run and see what you guys to come up with if you want to make another video!
He is very good at smelting which is a artwork of it's own "an acquired skill" through trial and error he has developed his skill to
Near perfection. I was Entriqued by my brother Tony retired U.S.S. furnaces area manager.Computers control every aspect of the chemistry, unlike the operators of the past.
@@redbaronrefining5322 try a blue bowel
@@redbaronrefining5322 would nitric acid not dissolve the silicon powder?
Silver bearing solder is used to join package components together. Don't forget the rest of the PC. Newer hard drives have PGMs and the other ICs have gold bonding wires and lead frames as well as the gold plated fingers and slot connectors.
As per 1 comment I would definitely try older CPUs memory chips & circuit boards. I like this method of reclaiming over hazardous chemicals.
@mbmmllc The silver you got came from Silver solder, silver/lead, silver/tin or silver/gold is usually used in these types of components. I hope that this helps answer your question.
Gotta send it to sreetips, he l sort it out!
@@digger105337 sreetips is the man, he must have a ton of money tied up in gold/silver right now.
Id say silver solder
I know that the plate he thought was aluminum was/should have been a silver plated copper plate.
@@surebrec5113 have you seen what he charges for an ounce of that crystalized silver hes got the dow to do what EVER he waNTS lol i looked yesterday for a little over an ounce of double refined silver was 1250 U.S.$$
Any way of recovery that excludes acids is great. 👍
Look up SHOR international they have a seasalt extraction its not really seasalt but they say no prior knowledge of refining says its easy and recovers 99.97% but isn't cheap like 1000 plus the solution they use in the system is sold spereratly so I'd say at least 1200 so it's expensive but doest require acids says it's easy to use just follow instructions sounds a little to good to be true but at 1000+ I'd say you better get what they advertise
What do I need to get the silver and gold out of the cpu
Your like the Sreetips of elemental furnace. He does it chemistry style (real good and pure) . Please more of this with your assaying style. There’s not anyone out there doing this like you. More thanks.😍
great minds think alike
It’s funny but I saw a bunch of guys on the Refining forums saying that you can’t reliably smelt gold pens. Looks like you did great to me.
That little mill of yours is pretty cool.
It is, by all intents and purposes, a flower mill. It works literally the same way
yup
It's really cool to see all these different kind of recovery methods than most of the other ewaste channels.
That was probably the best way I have seen to at least get to the metal part of those cpu's and definitely the cleanest method I have seen without all the cpu dust.
I've worked in the semiconductor analysis industry and the largest source of silver in these CPUs is the silver glass die attach that is used to connect the CPU chip to the ceramic package.
Is there any way to separate the silver from the gold and end up with both?
@@beebob1279yes, but its time consuming and you need dangerous acids and probably an electrolysis cell
Most people use chemicals to reclaim the gold - I think it would be interesting to have you hook up with, say Cody's Lab, and have you both start with the same amount and type of computer parts to see which method is more cost effective and efficient.
The answer to both of those questions would have to be chemicals in my mind, due to that being the main method for reclaiming precious metals all over the periodic table from many major reclamation facilities
It takes money to make money , since I want to make money , first , I hopeave to take money... Right?
Uuuuuuu
sreetips>Codylab
The chemicals to do the process in most cases like this cost more then the gold or silver is worth
I used to work for an electronics recycling company. We kept our eyes out for particular brands and classes of chips that we then melted down and smelted the gold from. It was worth our time, but we went through tons and tons of material over the course of a year. And this was in '99-2001. a lot of the older chips were very large dies and the circuit designs and manufacturing weren't as optimized as they are these days and so had more material in them than chips from more recent generations.
It is very weird seeing an XRF reader used outside my industry. We used it in paper manufacturing to test for concentration of silicone. Basically, when you have a sticker, the backing is siliconized. We had to have an appropriate amount of silicone, which was measured by our XRF. We also did linerless paper, which had silicone on the face, and adhesive on the back. It would stick to itself just enough to make rolls, but peel apart without requiring a backing
Hi
Silver comes from solders that connect the pins to the CPU.
Gold amount is what those 4 CPUs should have.
Cool video.
Thank you, this was really good info!
People have been asking about using smelting for gold recovery on a particular gold reclamation forum, and members have insisted it can’t be done. You’ve proven them wrong! It can be done!!
From my experience dealing with these type of materials.
I watched all types of electronics change in their composition, from 18k solid metals to cost saving manufacturing techniques, which used the metal silver as a base metal for pins and so on, which the gold plated. With a heavy gold plate. Not a flash gold look that rubs of with one use like most manufactures today,
So, I have handled millions of computer chips. I still have some that are rare and heavily cited in gold. As well as some very heavy duty diods.
These computer chips generate electricity for every leg of the chip when exposed to light.
But anyway, what you probably recieved was a later model of chip from the 90s to today.
It could be older.
But the metal content you recieved shows the percentage of metals used to make these chips.
But, whats important here is the cost per how many chips to process. And what can you yield.
What you are showing is very cool.
I wish I was there actually participating in this type of study.
I actually helped in the reclaiming of silver from one dirt into 5 gal glass bottles. Throught the vacume filter process.
I think its all a very interesting process.
After watching several of your videos. I think you might be the kind of person that could do and be interested in making somthing that I keep secret.
For good reason.
However. The main reason I keep it secret is, because I can't prove it unless I do it first.
Thats where I noticed that you have the place and skills to do an awsome job on this type of project.
It could be an eye opener. And fun,
It could even bring revenue of sorts.
But also it could make a great RUclips
Learning video .
And it will answer a great ancient question concerning alchemy still not realized by man today.
Ok brother. Keep up the cool work. Let me know if you want to ?
I found this comment by you interesting.'These computer chips generate electricity for every leg of the chip when exposed to light.' Are you saying that these chips without being powered electrically can still generate electricity by themselves? Is there evidence of this that can be confirmed?And what in your opinion causes this phenomena?
@@joerenaud8292
Yes brother, they might have one leg that is ground. But , each leg give off power when exposed to light. Different voltages
I don't know exactly how its done, but what i do know, is that there is a clear window on top , and when you look into it. You can see a small ,, I would say another chip with tiny gold wires spideeing out form it. So its like a solar chip ? Light sensitivity device.
I have 4 storage units full of stuff. But these are in there. I don't know exactly where they are or id take fotos of them and their part numbers and send them to you.
Ok. Peace, have a great day.
I have so many harvested parts and I’m not sure who to trust enough to send it off to melt down. Ultimately, I would love to do this. So thanks for sharing!
I'm not a refiner, but my understanding of Ewaste or the CPU's is that it's plated with 8 to 10k Gold. If it's karat gold sometimes they put silver in that. I know they usually use copper, and white gold has silver, platinum and or paladium.
Have a GREAT Day!!!
not correct. the plating is almost pure gold. .995.
@@music-jn3wn They don't use pure gold because it's too soft. If it were pure gold, you could just scrap it off because it would be soft enough to do that.
The plating is between 98 and 99.5% pure, some cobalt is added to increase the hardness in places where you need higher hardness.
@@music-jn3wn Many test on many different computer parts have been done. The highest purity was from the 80's and 90's computers and the most was 12k or 50%!! After the gold is recovered it's 8k, 10k or sometimes 12k then you'll see people refine it to 98% to 99% on rare occasions you can get 99.9% pure on the first refining, most of the time it takes a second refining to get it to three 9's fine or 99.9% pure gold!!
@@goranaxelsson1409 Many test on many different computer parts have been done the highest purity was from the 80's and 90's computers and the most was 12k or 50%!
After the gold is recovered, it's 8k, 10k, or sometimes 12k, then you'll see people refine it to 98% - 99%. On rare occasions, you can get 99.9% pure on the first refining. Most of the time it takes a second refining to get it to three 9's fine, or 99.9% pure gold!
That Motorola 68040 CPU on the left sells for $50 on Ebay or Amibay...specialized IC for Amiga, Atari and Apple vintage computers.
More than that, more like $75 to $100 (assuming its working)
@@Penrodyn on Ebay maybe, but not on Amibay
The big shiny plate was aluminum,, it’s a heat sink, there was a smaller plate that was gold plated steel, all the gold plated pin on the CPU are magnetic so there’s another source of iron, the silicon chip does contain trace amounts of gold, the ceramic body will have either gold or silver bonded wires, on most CPU’s , they have monolithic ceramic capacitors attached to them, this is where you got your trace amount of palladium plus small amounts of silver
Finally, someone knowing what they are talking about!
I really liked this video, my dad did this for 20 years, us kids had to cut the little gold spikes, and he used acid and the gold turned into gold flakes
Thank you for sharing your journey of discovery with this metal smelting. Its very enjoyable to watch the process trial and error and success.
Finally a person that does it logicly w/household materials, the lead is a great idea for the collection metal, I GOTTA GIVE TO YA let it be known thanks to u we're gona be financialy stable! Thanks. Maybe u can show us how to xtract platinum from catalic converters. Keep it on.
Yes they are silicone dies.
A great demonstration Jason! Keep up the fantastic work.
I have no suggestions except thanks for posting this video. Pretty darn cool what we can find in our own back yard...Have a good one.
I like your channel mate, keep at it
Thanks Ben! Glad to have you on board
You both rock! 🤟🏻
I'm addicted to booth of your channels. :)
Silver is probably from intermediate platings of contacts, the steel covers, and from internal solder joints. Gold wires are essentially pressure-welded to the contact points on the wafer inside the IC, but are likely soldered to the lead frame (not lead as in Pb but lead as in terminal), which is the frame of the IC body that has the external connections. Since the IC has to be able to be soldered at normal PCBA soldering heat profiles, any internal solder connections has to be done with much higher temp solder, which would likely contain silver.
silver is in the solder for the pins. Always a nice bonus when processing chips.
Yeah, I was thinking Kovar pins, silver solder. But where is the Palladium used?
@@MysteryScienceTheater-uq9ht ceramic capacitors
Wow, Jason got 2 CPUs made in Malaysia @ 0:39
Great video and I think you hit it on the head with your post-melt thoughts.
Doing this with acid is much faster and will give you a much better recovery! Great video tho! Love when people do things differently!
A chemist hid his gold from fhe Germans during ww2 using acids. Dissolved all the gold until after the war
The recovery is done in two stages , first treated with nitric to remove base metals , then treated with aquea Regia after the left over ceramic dried and ball milled not hammer milled (1kgs minimum ) again treated with aquae regia , you can pan it see to see the powder has the precious metal and sure it has any way good job
Nitric will also dissolve away the silver. I tend to use a low amount of weak hydrochloric first to eat up the base metals, let it sit for a while so the silver and copper reduce back as the base metals are mostly used up. THEN I add 1M nitric to take away the copper and silver. What's left is a mixture of insoluble oxides, silicates, and platinum group metals.
After that, it's easy to hit it with hot aqua and dissolve the platinum group. Cool and neutralize with urea and let sit for a day, all the platinum, iridium, and rhodium will just fall out as a fine grey powder which is easily recovered and washed.
Then warm metabisulfite solution with warmed auric chloride, and you swiftly get a spongy gold mass with over 99% recovery!
@@Alondro77 - thanks for explaining your recipe!
@@Alondro77 do you have a video on your complete method, with equipment, chemicals and proper ratios?
This has been the easiest way I have ever seen I am very appreciative of this new knowledge.
Awesome video maybe grind the chips to powder first then pull out magnetic stuff then melt
Great video, many people push there rifined gold to high purity? Not nessary, the silver is the main conductor and gold stop corrosion. Great process and not harsh chemicals. I'm going to use your techniques for sure. Thanks 👍
Great video - quite informative. I like that you are avoiding chemicals. Have you considered taking a number of cupelled buttons and remelting them in a small cone mold to see if the atomic weight will seperate the god and silver?
Gold and silver alloy together when smelted. They must be chemically or electrolytically separated.
@@xenaguy01 The metal could be used to make jewellery. Romans called that alloy Electrum I believe.
@@sorornishicffbaddcde8567 Used in the first coins we know about, from 600 BC Lydia.
Great video!
Learned a lot from it as well as the comments below.
Thank You All!
Just found your channel. Enjoyed the video. Just wanted to point out, most of that iron came from the cpu pins. They are steel clad in gold usually on the ceramic cpus
The pins on some CPUs are copper alloy. If they're CuBe, be careful!
i total respect your approach.. hopefully i can break into this industry soon with your equipment
If they are in good condition (no bashed up pins, for example), you will generally get more money selling the chips to computer collectors.
It depends on the processor, but yes, some CPUs maybe worth more reselling than smelting!
I think the Silver came from solder on the pins & 1/3 weight gold is about right for 4 CPU's . Next time use the grinder to crush the material & after use a magnet to remove all the iron, Great video
A magnet would remove a lot of the gold too, the pins are made from a nickel iron alloy.
Thanks for the info
Older CPUs and some of the new ones use solder for heat transfer between the die and the integrated heat spreader (that metal plate). That's where the silver could've come from.
I thought it was mostly indium in that solder?
I agree, the powdered ceramic (alumina) should dissolve in your flux. On it's own it has a super high melting point. I think iron and maybe nickel is used some cpu pins. All I know is they're often magnetic. Is there anything you can add to the flux that will oxidize iron/nickel so that it doesn't end up in the lead? Seems like this method got a very nice recovery... great video.
when i did a direct smelt from 1960s electronics (heavy gold plating) I was shocked after I direct smelted my lead button --> because this is exactly what happened to my surprise. The iron nickel eded up in the lead button. When I cupelled out my large lead button, my cuppellation process was a disaster due to all of this teal in color steel.... JASON whats is the best way to oxidise out the iron / nickel in the smelting process..... I used chapmans flux 190g, plated pins 64g, and 110g borax, I left the smelt boil for about 30 minutes at 2200 and figured all the steel would be in my slag, and this was definitely not what happened!!! HELP!!!
JASON HELPPP!!!!
hey man thank you for your wonderful video
♥
2:03 “like looking at the suns surface. Pretty cool footage!
I would say the pins are silver with a gold plating. Silver is the best conductor and gold is used as a protector. Electrons always take the path of least resistance hence gold plated silver pins. It makes sense being silver is also a lot cheaper than gold. Cool experiment. Would love to see you do it again and gain more knowledge about how things are made.
I used KCN to strip Au off of Kovar based dust covers. Involved process using many chemicals. Wish I remembered. Was back in 1990. Fun job as a chemist out of college.
The CPUs' if done right, the average yeild is about .3 grams of Au each. I did it about 5 years for a salvage company. The cap is a nickle alloy, about 50% highly magnetic. Bad move leaving that in. Why did I stop? Frankly, todays electronics are not worth the effort. Even fiber CPUs' with gold pins, not worth it. They yeild about 2 bucks per pound. As in, you have 1 pound of them remove the pins. that being said, anyone looking to buy stuff like that on E bay, you will likely loose a whole lot of money
joe k
Im sure you can get more than 2 bucks from a restored retro machine. 486/pentium/mmx. And im sure it weights less than a pound.
Eeyup, the older stuff had more gold in it compared to the newer stuff. Seen videos/images of components from the 70's and 80's that were huge and probably had a good bit of gold in it. Now, like you say, it's hardly worth the effort.
What years did it start to go bad?
@@magmasunburst9331 when gold was an expensive choice, about when the banks started f'ing the economy more than usual
@@magmasunburst9331 I know it's been 3 years, but about 2000. From then till about 2010 you could get a fair amount, but only from very specific parts. Expantion cards, ram and flatback chips Had a fair amount in gold fingers and gold wires. The change is due in part to size. Today you don't even need a network card, it's on the board and about the size of your finger nail. That's one example. Instead of 50 chips all doing different things it might be only 5 doing it all
I was on a video watching some guy melting aluminum cans into bars and it suddenly occurred to me I could be high class watching someone melting gold, and so here I am among you fine high society folks.
Protip when you're panning that fine material in a closed environment, add some jetdry to the water to prevent gold and other material from floating on the surface.
Old chips like those, looking to be mid 90's to early 2000's, well they mainly used silver leads and pins that were gold plated. Newer ones use aluminum alloys often instead of silver. You have to realize, through the 90's into early 2000's silver was at all-time lowest prices, some spot prices as low as ~$3 an oz. During that period, gold was relatively low, too, around ~$300 - $350 per oz. So it made more sense to use the cheap silver (which was cheaper often at the time than copper) as a base, & gold plate it. That era, you mainly saw solid gold pins/leads only in aeronautical, military, aerospace, and high-end industrial electronics applications.
I am enjoying the frequent uploads! I would love to work on your small crushing equipment. It would be something else to change out a die with, at most, a small come-along. The largest die we ever flipped was a primary at a quarry that ran about 7 tons. I enjoyed it but I don't miss it. I'll bet there isn't ONE computer screen on your solid-ass equipment.
Silver is used in solder for electronics, so the CPU had a lot of sliver. Their may be some gold plated wiring depending on the pins and thickness of the chip. You'd have to pull up the specs for each chip to find the Au / Ag content.
Most solder is a eutectic tin/lead allow. Silver solder is only used sparingly and then, only in high- temp areas.
All those cpus are only coated with micron of gold. You need a 50 percent nitric solution and some heat to seperate the gold
Awesome lesson. I have a boxful of chips and cpu s but none of the skills. Just a couple days ago I said outloud I wish I could find out how to smelt vs the ugly dirty chemical processes I've seen. Thanks for this. subscribed. I'm just north of the Canuck border in BC. Grew up prospecting with my dad. Just retired and heading back to that way of life.
I'm really enjoying these smelting videos. Keep them coming.
these ceramic processors they are very generous in gold bath colleague congratulations on your work
Thanks for watching
Have you compared how much gold you recovered to how much if chemicals were used?
The only place I can think of that may have silver in a CPU would be the solder used for the decoupling capacitors of the chip. They typically are on the bottom, under that metal plate surrounded by the gold plated pins. This would also explain the palladium in the final sample as these capacitors do contain a very small amount of palladium.
EDIT:
The pins are also soldered to the chip. That is an additional source of silver.
I've been recovering metals for a while now. I find it's easiest to remove any metals you know aren't gold right off the bat (the aluminum, copper nickel heat sinks...). I personally like dissolving my mixed metals into nitric acid to remove all base metals; filter the mixed carat gold then dissolve the mixed carat gold into aqua regia to recover the pure gold.
Yet again, that is not the purpose or point of this vid! We all know chems work best. He’s not refining, just trying to see if you can smelt it out....and that’s all.
The silver and gold mix you have there is called Electrum. This is actualy allready worth something and the value is determined by the amount of gold and silver is in it!
I use acids to recover gold from CPU's and there is more gold in the older CPU's. 2x86 - 4x86 have the most gold.
@Computer Whisperer Not really, I haven't gotten that technical into it but anything pre-Pentium has more Gold and those made in the last ten years have much less. It's just the nature of the business and learning how to cut costs. Some processes don't need the enhanced flow of data that we used to think they did ( which required gold ) so we are using cheaper materials for those tasks in a motherboard. Most memory chips that I buy to upgrade pc's don't even have any gold in them for instance but they did 20 years ago.
My first job was at Marconi in the 80`s. They looked like the same type of chips we made. We made all sorts from telephone dialling chips to space SOS chips. The cheap ones use epoxy to attach the dies and ali wires bonds and the more expensive ones used gold to attach the die and gold wire bonds. Never heard of any silver being used back then.
just found your channel, watched tons of your videos and subscribed... good stuff, keep up the good work man and best wishes...
one question, is there any way to recover the lead from those used cupel's?
I actually looked it up, there are research papers written, but they're written by treehuggers who just want to neutralize the environmental threat from lead. Translation: yeah, but unless you're a tree hugger, it's more expensive than it's worth...
Loved the video! Well done mate!
Thanks Owl
Could you do a video where you compare recovery from same sample by use of smelting half of it with lead; and the other half you use the acid recovery?
The chips were silicon, you need 1200c to enter the glass phase. There were also many areas of silicide (silicon/metal) with a variety of precious metal. Ti, Cu, Pt, W, Au, Ag, Co are almost guaranteed to be involved. Plus a handful of other random ones based on the manufacturer. There’s something awe inspiring about carrying a million dollars in gold, platinum or palladium, with a 500k core deposit.
Volume and quality wise I’m wondering if you would have been better off just clipping the bonding wires.
Use a magnifying glass in your pan and clean water. Inside those chips were 24k gold super small wires you missed.
that was the first time i saw them done that way, the way i saw it done before was the cpu was incenerated, then crushed, then a magnet ran over the powder, it was soaked in a acid solution to get out the pms, this was a fun video had my fingers crossed that this would be a safer, faster way, and it looks like it was to me, just have to scale this up,. thank you for the info. be strong, be safe, and be blessed
russ sherwood CPU you mentioned is ics different from ceramic cpu in this video mostly you will lose plating any kind of metal except platinum groups
The assaying method recovery is mainly done for low grade stuff
You had the chance to remove the aluminum before you threw the mix into the furnace, why did you leave it in? Just causes problems when refining. I do believe there is also IRON in those cpu's. The metal plates and the PINS have iron in them. I doubt you got the furnace hot enough to melt that.
The silver could have come from two places. The Solder used to hold the metal plates on the bottom of the cpu's, and possibly could have come from under the Silicon dies. It may have also come from the LEAD you used in the cupel to collect the metals. The bonding wires are not always made of gold in those cpu's.
I would have removed the steel plates and the aluminum before starting this process. (a heat gun works very well) It would give you a better idea on what kind of material you are working with.
Dude, this guy is breathing in poisonous chemicals to make people happy by doing this, I think it's enough that RUclips has become corrupt and that it's closest thing that a lot people can get to a job
It really is fascinating to see the process. Ty.
Just watch out, some of those old CPU's are worth much more on the secondary market then the gold content in them. The Motorola CPU you smashed probably is. Some CPU's are really expensive and hard to find. So look them up before smashing them. :)
Yeah it was sad seeing the 68040 go.
all worth squat
The silver probably comes from silver loaded epoxy die attach, which glues the silicon die to to the ceramic carrier, prior to wire bonding, the bond wires will be either gold or aluminium depending upon the finishes of the carrier and the die. some carriers will use silver within the plating as well. If its gold wire bonds they will be pretty pure gold. Also once the silicon die is attached to its carrier and the wire bonding has been completed, almost all finishing processes will use "Non-Conductive" materials the pins which are gold plated have only a few microns of gold, purity of the pin plating will largely depend upon the quality of the chip.
That silver in your pan was silver plated gold!
That was surprising I thought CPUs were high karat plate.Jason do you sell your steel cone molds? If not you might try marketing them I can't find anything like them anywhere to buy one.i know they are fairly easy to make if you have equipment and skills but many of us don't.I would buy one new or used and pay shipping.thanks for all your great info and involved testing.
It seems like a losing prospect when you account for electricity and reagents and tools. I enjoyed watching though, thanks for sharing your knowledge.
It would be a losing prospect if only doing 4. The people who do this to make money do thousands at a time and take extra steps to reduce the waste material before smelting.
My thinking is that you could get rid of some of the flux. Borate is only needed when there's oxidation; so not sure how lead would work with borate since it doesn't oxidize Maybe try it with just the silica; it might remove the silicone better. Also, removing any steel, aluminum or magnetic pieces with a magnet first would help. I've also seen videos of treating the chips with acid first...
Pretty cool process. I'd call the nugget e-waste electrum.
Remember when we were young and could just JUMP off a table 😂
lol
Now there's a price to pay when jumping. And ya hope there's no pop or tearing sound. Fak! Ouch...😥
Remember the cup of molten metal? I don't think jumping around that would be a good idea.
what ya talking bout? i still do and i,m 56, the thing i,m haveing problems with is getting up there
Remember when we were smart and would put the burning things on the ground instead of the table?
I'm just making an educated guess here semi, I would say that the wires were gold-plated silver. I know the chip wafer itself is just layers of silica chemically etched as far as the circuitry inside the chip. When you watch them manufacture the round discs that they cut the chips out of it is just pure silica substance with no wires in it. 👍🏻
Maybe there's enough Zr there to make some zircon encrusted tweezers?
I'm Ready to move to Montana soon. Tires of being a prisoner in my home in the San Francisco bay area!
If you are wondering where the silver came from I might have an answer. The ceramic cases are not solid ceramic all the way trough. They are multilayerd circuit boards where the substrate is ceramic and the conductor is made of silver. Look up the cofired ceramics process and thick film technology here on the tube if you are interested. The caseing of those chips are probably aluminium oxide or nitrite. Maybe you could flux the aluminium oxide with the addition of cryolite? I have no idea how adding a fluoride would interact with the other components.
How would you separate the silver and gold from there?
Thanks for sharing valuable information about Gold Smelting .
Does your company make a small grinder that would grind up the chips.
also need a good one
Be aware that the total precious metal value that was recovered is only about $23. The cost of the cupels alone is around that.
@@Malaphor That's what I was thinking, but he was only smelting 1 CPU. Imagine 10 CPUs, then the price drops. But regardless, for the amount of gold retrieved for the amount of effort, it's probably not worth it, unless you have a 1,000 CPUs.
Hammer mill
In the 90s missiles had gold wiring and some computer's but after the price of gold got above $500 that all changed to silver has very good conductivity ,wiring mostly
Wouldn't you lose gold plating in the grinder by it smearing onto the grinder plates? That 1.07g pellet could just go into acid to remove the other metals, once seperated, the silver etc could be saved by electrolysis.
Yes, that’s right..... but that’s not the purpose of this vid at all. We all know chemical refining is better.
The Silver comes from the bond wires that connect the terminals on the Silicon chip die to the CPU package internal terminals. The CPU package external terminals (pins) are gold coated.
you have an XRF? those things are pretty expensive.
I have tons of alarm panels and keypad. Gaming systems even some computers.
you mean there’s gold and silver in all those components?
there is but its only a TINY amount, you would make more money selling those things on ebay
@@VashStarwind yessir i posted them already lol
@@VashStarwind i appreciate your reply
.1g gold and .2g silver per cpu for the 3 is about right. The metal cap cpu is much less.
Can you put Portland cement in a small terracotta pot (the type that is used for pot plants) and use it for cupelling in an electric furnace instead of a flame furnace?
Oy i have wandered the same
That's how most of the "gold bars" are made which are sold on Ebay.
Well yeah, I mean it's the same shopping website where people could buy a single cheeto for millions of dollars, and probably end up eating it anyway
I wish I can send you all the CPUs so you can do your experiment. Cool video, thanks for explaining.
Feel free to contact me if you are interested in recovering the previous metals from your ceramic CPUs