After watching all the time, effort, and materials spent recovering the gold, it doesn't seem that the 14 years it took me to collect that scrap while working at an electronics board house was worth it. Sreetips, I feel so badly that it took so long!! Most of those pins were from military jobs we did so that may explain the yield. Thank you for yet another fascinating videos for all of us to learn from. Best wishes.
I've seen many many of your vids and in this video, you can almost hear the exhaustion in your voice just wanting this process to end. Another great science lesson
Hey Sreetips, over the years of enjoying your videos... I wanted to mention, that your furnace is a different pathway for refining. For instance, you have a furnace, borax and molds to pour your smelt into. The Borax will remove a 'majority' of the base metals, and then if you are willing, you could use your high temperature oven to cupel all the base metals away from your precisous metals. Then taking the precious metal button to your chemical process would have save you days of effort, and all but eliminated the chemical waste solutions. Metal classification has several paths to acheiving the same end. Love the vid, cya next time.
My thoughts exactly although, as he stated, he was following this procedure simply to record the method. It would be really interesting to see a future video processing the e-waste using the method you mentioned. I've watched Jason over at MBMMLC do the first part you mentioned and then thought, "wow, now if he and Sreetips could just get together on this it would be great." Not sure either method is worth the time and effort though.
@@rockbutcher the smelting and cupelling process is basic fire assay, and in my opinion, the easiest way to classify precious metals. Sreetips, over the years keeps expanding his tool bag to add different methods of refining/classifying precous metals. He's made the investment in the additional tools, now, just needs the time to add to the tools the other skills to be effective. Let's let him get there at his own pace.
@@rockbutcher I've also been subed and watching MBMMLC videos for a couple of years now and I've been saying the same thing in his comment's, (but no reply's). They both have damn near perfected their process and if they combined skills & knowledge I believe the results would show that the juice was worth the squeeze.
Yep! Sorry for my bad english...The same thinking, everytime I see Jason's videos, it will be awesome to se sreetips refining one of those genius pyramids! For our knowledge and pleasure, to see all the process, from dust to pure 999 gold bar! ^^ It also was so cool to see sreetips refining some placer gold, made me think about Dan and all those beautiful places he prospect...The wizard, the black smith and the gold digger, we all learn so much thanks to them! Thank you all, and good year!
There are a ton of things I love about your channel, but one my favorite's is the amazing colours that are produced. The brilliant blue of copper nitrate, the yellow and orange of gold in solution, and those filter papers here going from rich bronze to neon green. Just stunning.
Oh man. I’ve gotten impatient so many times trying to filter hot AR just to have the filter let out in my Buchner as well. Best to let it cool as you know, plus the bit of silver and lead will precipitate once fully cooled and can appear even after filtering. Side note, as I started with electronics refining years ago and had my fair share of everything from pins to transistors etc, try this method out: With material like your pins, add HCL as normal, add about 15% sulphuric acid, and add sodium nitrate. What happens is the sulphuric creates a passive layer over the base metals and puts gold into solution right away. Doing this with a hot solution, one gold is fully disso, quickly decant the solution and rinse the pins well with hcl and agitation. If there is some small cementation of gold on the pins, it’ll get rinsed off with the hcl and trapped in the paper filter. Throw that into your second AR with the precipitated gold and you know the rest!
Professional is defined as the following. Being reliable, setting your own high standards, and showing that you care about every aspect of your job or hobby. Setting a high standard, as well as holding yourself accountable through your thoughts, words and actions. So yes you are a professional sir! Don't doubt yourself of the accomplishments that you done!
999 Dusan makes poor mans AR for gold plated pins I believe he uses 3 parts hydrochloric 1 part sulfuric and adds sodium nitrate to dissolve the gold with the sulfuric creating a Barrier on the base metals to keep the gold from cementing on them. He said a small amount still cements but uses a brush collects all the sediment then rerefines. Clever guy you should check his channel out.
I always enjoy watching the experiments. I was gnawing at the bit waiting for you to test some of the solutions you were pouring off. Wondering if there was gold in solution. I enjoyed learning the process of extracting gold from many different sources. Great work Sreetips!
Seems like running the pins in a junk blender for a few seconds would speed up this process. More base metal surface area, etc. Fire assay would be a great addition to your bag of tricks!
Excellent video my friend! WOW!!! 👀 2 grams!!! 👍💪Nice recovery there! Gives me hope for the refine I'm in progress with. I started with 910 grams of vintage gold plated jewelry. Hopefully I get the same results! I'll be happy if I just get a decent R.O.I. Thank you for all you do!!!
I'll be doing a batch of this soon myself. I've dealt with a small batch of very thick old pins before. What I did was a partial dissolve with just a little bit of peroxide in weak roughly 1M HCl. Then I let it sit and break down the peroxide in bright sunshine. What it did was poke holes in the plating, but then redeposit the gold (and even most of the copper) as the weaker acid couldn't hold the metal once the peroxide wore off. Tin from the brass core of the pins displaced the dissolved copper too, I suspect. After a day, I tested the solution for gold, and there was none. I repeated it until the gold foils were loose and all washed off. It worked, but it took a ridiculously long time since the pins were 1/8th inch thick at the bases. It would probably have worked best with thin pins. Gold-plated steel pins, yeah, those would likely work pretty well. Iron and nickel chlorides are very soluble at acid pH. Weak HCl actually works much better against steel than concentrated HCl, because ionic chemistry stuff I can't recall explicitly! And a little peroxide would REALLY destroy the steel with those ROS added to the acid.
Wow unexpected results for sure. Great efforts on your part sir for making this video for us. I thank you for that.. It must have been a happy reward when you looked at the scale. Great show today my friend. See you on the next one
Every body thinks that you get low results when doing PC scrap but it can be an eye opener thank you for sharing this. Now I have an idea of how much I can get from 11 pounds five stars my friend
Heh nearly the same exact scenario I am looking at as far as material. That iron is a PITA. Also noteworthy that it interferes with any HCL/H2O2... Fe+3 catalytically breaks down peroxide, rendering that route all but futile, breaking it down before it can really release the chlorine. I'm looking back more at the sulfuric cell myself for it now... Base metals in chloride solution with gold (except silver) complicates everything. Thanks again for a great video... And glad you got more yield than expected, always a plus. I heard several subliminal "oh come on" in there haha... Glad you pushed on anyway!
I mentioned this before. Dilute Ar will blast right through magnetic and stainless base metals. If by any chance it dissolves some of the Au, it will cement right back out. So as usual it's a good idea to test for Au in the solution. When in doubt dump it in a stock pot. Nice button, add a stud and you have one nice looking ear ring
Eyyyy sreetips is back. I've managed to binge watch all your videos in the past few weeks.. My wife's not to happy though! Think I was calling out your name in my sleep lol.
By now you have probably figured out that you should separate your pins before processing them. Any copper that is dissolved into the acid will plate out onto the Iron pins. That's why most of your pins look like they have a fresh copper coating on them when you pour off your acid. Until all the iron is gone, this will continue to occur. This is the worst way to process pins.
@@sreetips Hi Sreetips, It was obvious that you lost your patience. You did not add a few drops of sulfuric acid and you tried to filter the hot solution… ;-) Nevermind - nice button.
I've seen enough gold pins gold recovery videos and I was hoping you were going to get more than a half gram or people would've said you lost some somewhere. As usual you did not disappoint!!
Thanks for the video, very informative 👍. Now I have something to point my grandson to when he brings me a handful of computer pins and says "let's melt them down".
When at the Atomic Energy testing labs, we sort of verified safety cases, consider this, Ferric chloride and conc HCl was a dam good stock removal etch even for stainless, ferric and HCl also takes out copper....Maybe worth a quiet experiment Mr Sreetips.....and thank you for your time, your patinece and polite replies to everyone, thanks.
@@sreetips It etches copper from circuit boards, strong very dark stuff, a bit like your gold precipitate only ferrous sulphate stuff, buy a bit and try it...but use your common sense, it makes a thick black tea compared to other reagents....start with just a little, and does it work hand in hand with HCl, its very dirty, get some in soln and then add HCl, anyway you know your stuff.....Its the etch that makes damascus kinives gives full contrast on knife blades, ....I keep toying on the idea with on RAM and pins, also, not got round to this yet......AldoFry's reagent is a deep etch, with some interesting properties, well done, keep up the good work and many, thanks again......Ultimately, in full computer parts recovery they are mincing it all up, cyaniding and recovering gold, plat, silver, in a process that is pretty secret.
That e-scrap sure makes a bright button. I wonder what took so long from the time the teaser came out and the video. I was hoping you and ms Sreetips were not down with any of that nasty virus but I see what took all that time. Thanks for the video Sreetips I enjoyed watching.
Yeah just using HCL washes is pretty slow, and takes a lot of acid. I enjoy acetic+H2O2 which is similar to AP but uses vinegar for base metals. I was thinking about just making a AP bath along with dipping material into it to strip the gold away rather than processing the whole lot. Great example, and processing as usual friend, and happy new years!
I watched all of this again.....Hats off to you!....And you show people how to make money, Sulphuric acid cell for pins, I have a kilo of pins. So, that was a nice yield and you showed everyone that pins can make a nice yield in a cost effective sulphuric cell......So you know your next step like me is, thinking about Sodium Cyanide and Zinc, BTW unless you /us plan to drink it, it ain't that toxic as the MSDS shows......Many thanks again for your time, trouble and persistence, persitance set's you apart from other RU-vidrs....stay safe my friend.
Another great video and I completely understand why you don't do this type of material. I stopped doing it about a year ago myself. I find it just isn't worth the time I have to spend on it where I can better spend the time on other pursuits. The only way to speed things up adds (in my opinion) far too much expense to justify and even then it doesn't really speed it up enough to justify. But time can also be free so when I do get this type of material I do one of 2 things: either soak in HCl and let sit with an air bubbler until everything dissolves. or I just toss them into the stockpot and let it do all the work for me. I tend to do the latter. With these kinds of pins. I really don't care about the specific yield and just take whatever they give me so whatever they dump into the stockpot is a freebie for me. Any foils or plating collects in the sludge along with any Pd that occasionally is part of the plating. I just treat it like copper and any PM is a bonus. But this whole video really outlines why some of us say "no thank you" to this stuff. :)
I'm grateful I don't need to replicate this on my own. The amount of time, energy, and materials exceeded my expectations greatly. Sometimes an off the shelf minimalist approach pays.
Nice vid sreetips. I've seen many videos on this kind of material and most of the time it has about 4 grams of Gold per kilogram of scrap. I think it also has to do with the production date of the scrap. The older the PC's it came from the more Gold it has. Loads of folks these days just dissolve it all in AR and then refine the percipitate a second time. Guess your rmethod is more safe when there is Tin in the batch and uses less Nitric.
I just had a thought!! How about reverse electroplating with aqua regia or HCL or Nitric Acid or Sulfuric Acid with your all tubes set-up? 1st use just reverse electroplating by itself to get your barometer.
The initial batch I did with completely plated pins yielded a bit over 1 gram of gold from 100 grams of pins. The partial-plate ones will clearly be much less, so those I'll do with sulfate electrolysis after melting them into a rod anode, to save on reagents.
Hi mr Sreetips. I would like to recommend you to dissolve base magnetic metals a mix of nitric acid and water solution of sulphuric acid (0.4 of sulphuric acid in 1liter water)
I too have been waiting for this one :) BTW these pins and contacts are not just plated gold. Gold doesn't do to well over pure copper or iron so there is usually a barrier layer of nickel or nickel and palladium, which is often quite a bit thicker than the gold layer (I can provide a link if you want). The solution you had at the end was too green, suggesting there might have been some pd in there with the nickel, but that might just be the camera. If there is a next time it might be fun to test for pd too.
@@anthonyrstrawbridge It really depends on the process and purpose of the pins. Pins from connectors that are meant for RF frequencies such as those from the backplane of a network switch, will have very little nickel in them, as the magnetic properties of nickel can cause problems. Those will have a Pd layer of up to several microns with a gold layer that is less than a micro (and some cobalt mixed in). Cheep ENIG (Electroless nickel immersion gold) plating, which you are right is almost certainly what these are, will have a 1-10 micron layer of nickel with a 0.1-0.5 micron layer of gold, with everything else at trace or contaminant levels. ...... it was just that the solution was soooo green, I immediately thought 'ooooo .. palladium!' :)
@@brianhbinesh you need to see some of the stuff I buy off ebay. I make a killing. 50 pounds of fully plated military radar boards from the 70s for $79. 13boardswith103 white ceramic gold cap gold leg chip for $39.99 that doesn't included the fingers gold tracing etc on the boards. That is only a small sample of the auctions I buy and it doesn't matter if I pay twice the amount in aicd I would still make a good profit but I use the cheapest way possible in most cases to make more money even though I have plenty of nitric
Sreetips - I'm seeing a lot of precious metal bullion channels having a discussion about a new type of fractional bullion called Goldbacks. I think it would make for an interesting video if you were to refine some of these Goldbacks and verify the stated gold weight/content.
I wonder if more physical destruction--even just whacking the pins with a hammer for a bunch--would help the initial dissolve of the base metals into solution. My reasoning is that the actual gold is extremely thin, but it is covering a LOT of the metal. Making it hard for the acid to get at the base metals. Kind of like how you inquart with silver, but just physically opening up tiny cracks through the gold and into the base metal.
If you ever attempt this process again. Try this method. Dissolve all the pins in AR. But use a Nitrate substitute like Potassium Nitrate "found as a Stump Remover at Tractor Supply or High Yields Nitrate of Soda". This will save you time and money for the cost of Nitric Acid. Then use Iron Sulphate to drop the Gold out of solution. Next refine as usual..
Exactly! I learned to use Copper-Sulfate electrolysis from @akgoldbear7669 and he likes to make his own chemicals. He makes Iron-Sulfate easily and cheaply. I am so glad to learn this gold making stuff with you all.
I wonder if grinding the pins down and rusting out the iron, and or melting the pins down with possibly adding more metals and make small flakes from the melted pins to then treat with acids. Just ideas, I really don't know anything about this. Or is it possible to dissolve the pins whole and just have gold + a slight bit of junk come out of solution.
probably much better to dissolve the gold because there is so much less of it. Otherwise you want to grind it up to give the acid as much contact with the metals as possible. The gold is acting as a protective coating and only where the gold layer is broken can the acid reach the metals.
Hey Sreetips! Love these videos man, keep it up. I have a question though; I'm watching your 01/10/2022 video about refining gold plated computer scrap, and understand that in order to recover the gold you must first use H3O to eat away all the base metal that the plating is adhered too. Would it not make sense to first cut all the plated material in order to present the maximum possible area of exposed base metal? Watching those huge long gold plated pieces ever so slowly have their innards eaten away has me thinking that you could just throw it all in a blender first to chop through the plating in a bunch of spots and shorten the work of the H3O. What do you think?
Boiling HCl for dissolving Copper is slowing it down. The compound that does dissolve the copper is the Copper(II)Chloride + Cu => 2 Copper(I)Chloride. This explaines why it takes so long to take off. Because the most active compound must first be created. Feeding forward some solution from a previous batch helps a lot. To convert the Copper(I) to Copper(II) you need HCl and Oxygen from the air. By boiling you basicly drive all the Oxygen out of your solution. So the generation of the necessary compound is stuck.
I think most try and go for dissolving the gold. The pins just take too long to dissolve. A plating rig might be a solution for the amount on the pins. Then again I think I seen a few try and do a melting to separate the gold and copper off the pins and then separate out the copper.
@@sreetips thank you. this guy uses nitric by itself to remove the foils and it looks to be much easier and faster ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-VXXVsLVz5fE.html think you can do a video on recovering and refining the foils using this method please?
I’ve watched many, many of your videos at this point. Yet I still, kinda hold my breath when you pour acid into a boiling beaker. I guess I’ve seen too many movies where someone pours something into a beaker and it explodes or something… 🤦♂️😂😂
Every now and then I’ll experience some serious pucker factor. Usually when I’m alloying silver with the karat gold and pouring it into water. If the alloy gets too hot, it will tend to explode on contact with the water. Scares the day lights out of me. You can actually see my jump when it happens.
I enjoy watching your show it's amazing what you can do with a few liquids and some heat thank you for all the wonderful education you give away for free
Why did you try straight HCl for so long? You already know that there's a lot of copper in pins and that Cu doesn't like to go into solution without an oxidizer present. Were you just experimenting to see how well it would work on the iron? I will say that more of it went into solution than I was expecting before you started adding the nitric, so that was pretty cool.
I would use an iodine/iodide process for plated items. Iodine doesn't get enough attention. In my experience, reverse-plating is messy and labor intensive (and dangerous) and produces a lot of colloidal gold. Cupric Chloride works best if the pins are chopped up and free of solder.
Is your waste-treatment bucket also a stock pot? Or do you not deem some liquid waste or used filters worthy of keeping due to large amounts of copper or iron which may cause issues recovering gold and other precious metals?
