Gold Recovery - Mechanical processing of ICs
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- čas přidán 14. 10. 2024
- I know this video is very long! There is no real way to condense the information without losing important parts. This video shows the basic processing of ICs that I do at this point up to before I start the wet chemistry. I recorded this a while ago and felt that it
was becoming too long and was planning on re-doing it, but subscriber Nick Stoyles was having some issues with processing his ICs, so I thought it would be worth uploading at this point. It is still a bit incomplete in parts, but shows the basic process clearly.
What most people do not understand is that key to success in this process is one simple thing. Patience. The more you try to speed up things the more you lose at the end of it.
Nice video.
Agree 100% ,every single time that I have tried a shortcut it has ended up backfiring on me. Getting this process sorted is all about the little details.
very nice video sir...im frm the philipines and i learn a lot frm ur video.. thank you for the time that you spend to teach us like me who love escrap..
Thanks for the comment Khaylie
you can set up a drip system for the blue bowl feed, a stand, funnel & the out let of a silicone tube hole cut to the size you want very small and get bigger
Yeah, I built a hopper-feeder for a sluice in one of my videos, its kinda hard auto feeding a blue-bowl, the water speed varies so much depending on what is already in there that I found I always had to fine tune it constantly. If I were going to take it to the next level I would probably try to measure the water velocity and keep it constant with a controlled valve.
@@successfulengineer this sounds like an interesting project, maybe using an impeller that runs off the surface and a hall switch, a bit like a sealed flowmeter. You'd probably need to run some sort of PID then to calculate how much water to keep introducing but very likely it could maintain it's self once set up and tweaked.. I'm a big fan of using tech to take out as many head aches as possible, it's just often a massive headache to achieve in the first place..
Hello. I also plan to start processing BGA chips and other ICs this year. I really like your procedure, especially the bucket separator and magnetic separation. I would like to ask you if this procedure can be used in case of complete incineration of chips and if the same procedure is the same for BGA chips, or is it possible to skip some steps?
Personally, I want to try using a sluice with a dream mat and then a miller's table instead of a blue bowl. I just don't know if Miller's table is suitable for bonding wires.
Thank you for your reply and have a good time.
Hi there, yes, this procedure shown in this video is what I usually did with Pyrolized + Incinerated ICs. I do not have any personal experience with a Miller table, but as long as you don't throw anything away, you never really loose anything. So you could try with the Miller table, then run the discarded material through another system and see what you missed. I also recommend getting a decent microscope, it makes analysing the captured and discarded material very easy.
Engineer you said it too! at 5:35 you "don't soak in HCl to get rid of the tin anymore'. Just what is meant by 'tin"? is it 'Sn' as in the metal tin or is it solder as in lead/tin solder, or is it something else? Not up with refiner shorthand yet :)
Hi Phill, yeah, by Tin Im referring to the solder. As of the early 2000smost solders have been Lead free, consisting of mostly Rin for consumer electronics. Unfortunate for us since Tin causes most problems when working with Gold !
Do you have any ideas on this. I want to clean the water after chips are run on the blue bowl and reuse the water. I have tried to filter with charcoal, didn't work. I used the material for an air filter for a tractor, with and without charcoal. That didn't work. The water stays the same. I am not expecting crystal clear water to come out. I just want to reuse the water in blue gold. Do you have any ideas on how to clean up the water?
Hey mate, this is actually something that I have pondered many times. For the most part I was just washing Carbon out, so I didn't worry too much about running it out onto the gravel outside my shed, but it would certainly be nice to be able to use the same water continuously. Have you looked into centrifugal separation ? Build a spinning reservoir that pushes anything heavier than water out towards the sides and take your source water from the center somewhere ? Let me know if you have any other ideas, definitely something I am interested in.
Could I do this with cellphone boards. And would you ever tell me what some good sources are for chips?
I never really worked much with cellphone boards due to how long it takes to disassemble the phones and get to the boards. The best source of ICs is networking equipment, cisco routers and stuff like that. Old telecommunications servers are also very good.
if you still plan on making another one it would be really cool to see the weight go from 1kg to 1g when moving from process to process. So weigh after burnibg, weigh discarded heat spreaders, weigh the milled up powder etc
Yeah, great idea Ned, for sure.
S.E how have you changed the burner for the furnace? I ordered one the same from china but it has no caps or any way to alter the airflow into the gas mix.
Do you have any tips on how to alter the T joint openings for a safe and consistent flame?
Lol 😂 I have literally thirty seconds after posting seen your part about altering airflow 🤦♂️
Haha yeah, you pretty much have to control the airflow to get good combustion! My setup also had an adjustable gas regulator to control the gas flow too.
@@successfulengineer yea I have a reglator and a valve on the burner itself but bot sides of the the T joint are open permanently.
I can't believe i forgot about the king of randoms (rest in peace to him) video on making a burner lol
@@scrappydoo7887 Yeah, sounds like what you have should be fairly easy to modify if you need to anyway. Then just adjust until you get the perfect even burn. I also found that the 9kg gas bottles caused some problems by icing up, the large 45kg house size bottles had no problem going continuously.
@@successfulengineer ah thats very useful thank you 👍 im going to be ordering gas in the next few days so thats perfectly timed lol
Hey there friend long time no talk since you left the group. I've worked on my methods and pyrolize in a can with a turkey fryer then spread chips on a pan and use a roofing torch works great at completely ash white material I then use a blender and sieve with course strainer again grind with coffee grinder and again sieve with finer concentrater a lot but not all metal gets trapped and removed I then put in dish add jet dry and fill half up with water about 4 inches using the hard drive magnets I skim saturated material getting out metallics the washing I use is a thought by geo metals it uses a piece of drain pipe with ribs about 10 foot long cut in half and at a slope angle spoon material in with hose running slightly and it washes out carbon silca etc.. Trapping bond wires in each rib its very effective when doing large amounts like 10 -20 plus pounds chips I remember you helping me threw my first process and thank you today I've been doing bigger amounts and process regularly have even successfully wetashed with sulfuric acid several times with amazing results but that process is to dangerous. And I've stopped completely from that method but again buddy great video.....
Hi Sonny! great to hear from you again. I really miss the group, but facebook was not interested in having me there if I didn't display my real name.
I am happy to hear that you are doing well and getting the Gold, you learned very very quickly that first time, I always enjoy it when people have success!
Yes, I have started over the past month to run my material over a sluice box before running the blue bowl, just to get rid quickly of most of the light stuff. I just purchased a cheap plastic molded sluice box, will probably show it in a video at some point.
the rougemillenial I am an admistrater on the same gold page I can admit him any time no problem..and others we ask that a question is answered before admittance..
Are you a member
Hey guys. Im new to this. I have been saving up my cleaned e waste and have been watching thouroughly for a month or so my only concern is the legal viewpoints of this. Is this all legal? Or is there ways i could accedentally stray from the legal path and not know it? Thought i would ask after seeing the name thing lol
Learning all the time, thanks!
my big question ? do bonding wires realy stay attached to anything after that kind of heat & thrashing & mashing ? iv seen small bga dies with gold wire still stuck to them.
The bond wire will almost always break off, but will usually leave a small solder ball attached to the die which is obviously also Gold.
@@successfulengineer thats kinda what i thought, 3 different times i put the bigger trash wires that wouldnt go through the sieve into nitric acid & zip , nadda, i here some guys talk about dealing with them later ? must be talking about junk box. thanx , woody.
@@spotlobac7694 Yeah, there certainly could be a tiny bit of Gold on those legs, but I don't think its worth recovering for the hassle of having to somehow remove all the metal in those big legs. Certainly not something that I ever bothered with.
@@successfulengineer right on , if we were closer i would send you some stuff i find / needs a microscope kind a stuff.
Great video! I have a simple question, after pyrolysis is it possible to use directly aqua regia or is it really necessary to wash the ash and carbon out?
Hi there, technically it is possible . . . but . . . there is a chance that you will lose a little bit of your Gold that trapped by the Carbon. (Much like how Gold is recovered from Cyanide by pumping it through Activated Carbon)
The bigger problem is actually that you have more mass of material to deal with, which means generally using more acid. It always also seems to take much longer, even though in theory it sounds like it should be faster.
I have tried this on a few occasions and have always ended up deciding that I should have taken a bit more time with the pre-processing.
Thank you I will try both methods. I thought it would be faster. My idea is first to eliminate the base metals with nitric acid and after this washing. The next step is aqua regia. I hope to save a bit time because I get chemicals for very good conditions. (nitric 0,75€/0,90$), HCL (0,28€/0,35$)
Yeah, no problem with that, the only issue would be if you have Tin in the material, it forms Metastannic acid with Nitric which makes filtering a pain. Give it a try, would love to hear your opinion. I would recommend trying it on a smallish sample, say 0.5kg of ICs or so.
In every case I will give you information about my experience. Thank you
Hi there big fan and like you I made my own blue bowl but my question is do you sell the upside down funnel as I noticed on one for your vids you re designed it with lips on the inside and was hoping I could get you to make one for me
Hi Ben, thanks for the comment, the .stl file for the cone is available in a link in the writeup section of this video: czcams.com/video/lHaleY3yXBs/video.html You should be able to give that file to anyone with a 3D printer and get it printed. Should be relatively cheap and easy.
Hello again and thank you for your kind response. Can you say what the final weight of gold was after this process. Also could you use the same process for plated jewellery or other plated parts of a circuit board? Have you done a video to follow on from where this video left off? Very clear instructions and good to watch ,thanks again
Hi Ken, the yield will vary massively depending on what kind of chips are being processed, what particular type would you like to know the yield for ? Plated items are almost always better to do with a process or leach that only dissolves the Gold and ignores the base metals. Apart from fingers, the plated parts of circuit boards are almost never worth recovering. Plated jewellery would be much better suited to a reverse electroplating cell, but there is much much less Gold on plated jewellery than you expect.
Have you ever tried to use a sluice to process these before ?
Hi there, yeah, have a quick scroll through the videoa, there is one somewhere where I built a sluice with automatic hopper feeder, had reasonable success from memory
I'll have to go look again, that is how I planned on doing mine I've build up pounds and pounds of chips the sluice seems to be the best way. But in your opinion which would you say is better as far as accuracy, a blue bowl (after classification of course) or a sluice ?
Very interesting and informative. Thank you.
Thanks for the comment Sergio
Wow dude that is a nice setup.... of course if your losing any it is min... I like to pan my concentrates like 3 times just a safety measure.. is there a reason you do not sieve in water wet? Gold has a tendency to try to stick to bigger items I would personally wash bigger item and scrap iron. With that said I really love the setup! Love the square pan sluice that would be awesome in the field!
Yeah, that little square pan has come in quite handy a few times! I have tried panning the bond wires from ICs, but without much luck. I think it is quite difficult because bond wires can be long and tangly, so they don't really settle nicely like alluvial Gold. This method is not super fast, but I have microscoped the discard material and it is relatively bond-wire free.
Successful Engineer awesome good to know panning will not work as well with bond wires at least the square pan and blue bowl is cheaper then a gold hog 😊 great stuff thanks for replying
What microspocus do you use?
What parameters does it have?
Hi, this video shows my microscope, link to the supplier in the description: czcams.com/video/acOUDvCYrlY/video.html
Do you still like this way the best for gold recovery of ic chips?
Have a GREAT Day My Friend!!!
Yes, if you are after a high percentage of the Gold, these steps are very good. The biggest issue is time, these steps take forever! This means you really want to focus on high-yield ICs, so that it is worth the time.
thanks for posting this video, I found it really informative. I currently incinerate my ic chips, then shake it in a jar, followed by crushing them with a rolling pin on a granite chopping board. It's probably not as good as your ball mill, but I honestly don't think my neighbours would appreciate me using one. I do have a question though. Should I do the pre wash if I'm completely incinerating my ic's?
Hey Nick, I would definitely 100% prewash the ICs, if you don't the blue bowl gets clogged with tons of micro particles which crash into heavier particles and make them move when they really shouldn't, and you also can't see what is happening with too many small particles. The bucket wash + sluice setup shown in this video is the best pre-was type setup I have tried. I am currently working on a 3-step process, where I bucket wash, then run the remaining material over a longer sluice, the only blue-bowl the stuff caught by the sluice.
Successful Engineer ok I'll start doing it in my process. I Can get a bucket and tap attachments easy enough but I'll have to shop around for a sluice box. What kind of length are you thinking of making yours? I've also now got a plastic pipe so I can start work on the metallic pin catching device that you use. I will also be re running the material I processed in my blue bowl from the weekend. I know I won't get all the gold back that I potentially lost, but it will still be good practice for any future runs that I do.
As long as you kept all the discharge material from the blue-bowl, you should not have permanently lost any bond wires. I don't think the sluice length will be critical, but I'm probably going for about 0.8 meters (3 feet), I think the riffle depth may affect things, but I will have to experiment to figure it all out. Good luck and let me know how you go.
Successful Engineer well there is two bits of good news. First is that I haven't lost the bond wires, I can clearly see a heavy fine material being left on the trailing edges in my blue bowl. Second is I know why I was losing my gold. Because I haven't done the pre wash and I have only used a fine flour sieve I am left with large pieces of debris in my blue bowl. When I ran it at the weekend I was turning the water pressure up high to remove the larger pieces of debris. This was also washing my the gold down the centre hole. I did a couple of test runs earlier and I could clearly see this happening. I've ordered a 60 mesh sieve so I can dry out my material and re sieve it. I'll also get a pre wash system in place before I run it through the blue bowl again. I'd like to thank you once more for all of your help in getting me on the right track!
Hi Nick, that sounds great. Sounds like you have got the hang of it now, I think the changes you have suggested will dramatically improve your recovery. Look forward to hearing your progress.
Hi, how can we get rid of the tin/lead solder during the process?
Normal procedure is to start with a hot HCl treatment to remove Lead and Tin. But definitely try to avoid Tin as far as you possibly can!
@@successfulengineer I'm not trying to be lazy but can I just put hcl on to all my mother board with everythings still solder on the board, then remove all ic chip, capacitor, resistors, mlcc and all bits and pieces. Dry them all including the board, smash all and put them in the ball mill, then put them in the blue bowl to get all metal, then use AR to get all precious metal back including copper. Is it possible?
Hi Pierre, that is technically possible, but a pretty bad idea overall. The problem is that Gold is very concentrated in some parts, once you have harvested the ICs, the rest of the components on an average PCB have almost no Gold, so if you proceeded with what you have suggested, you would be creating a LOT of waste acid and a lot of chopped up PCB without much Gold. You really want to work with your Gold in the most concentrated way possible. Dropping whole boards in HCl is usually a recipe for disaster.
@@successfulengineer ok, thank for your info, very clear and helpful
Are you going to be featured on Gold Rush 2017? It would be cool to see you teach Hoffman how to mine gold.
LOL, I think I should do weekly shows where I slowly drizzle the week's refined powder onto scale with some dramatic music playing in the background. Then you can have a good laugh at how hard I work for many hours to make $100 :)
hahah...this guy is mineing
Robonza, hmmm from you watching you come with conclusion!? And question off course, so, when I read your comment I came with question, ARE YOU DIRECTOR???
hoffmans a pig farmer.
Hoffman was an idiot! He made all of the wrong decisions. I feel sorry for his crew.
Hello can you explain a bit more about the type of gringing machine and what horsepower and limitations, what attachments needed to grind to powder. Or even name of manufacturer . V good video thanks for your help
Hi Ken, when processing any type of ICs, the objective is to get the crushed ICs down to under 60 mesh, some people say 100 mesh is better, but I found too many bond wires get caught up in a 100 mesh sieve. Personally I just do what I showed in this video, pyrolize the ICs, then run them in the little crushing mill that I built for a day or so. This video here -> czcams.com/video/8Z9j7_t4qlU/video.html has a bit more info on how I built the crushing mill. A hammer mill would be much faster, but a bit harder to build. Many people also have very good success with traditional ball mills, Cody (Cody's lab) built a very good hexagonal ball mill that he used in his 'Thermite' video. i hope that answers the question ? Feel free to ask if anything is not quite clear enough.
when these are incinerated like most people do , doesnt the gold braizing burn away?
Not really, you are not even reaching the melting point of Gold, let alone the boiling point.
What do you do with the waste? ie: the carbon that comes out of the bucket wash, metals from the magnetic filtering, etc? (Copper heat spreaders is easy - throw it in with your recycled copper, etc). A lot of people show these home-brew processes but rarely mention anything about proper waste disposal. I'm interested because I see this kind of process in my future, and this is one of my concerns that I will need to research a lot more before I get started.
Hi Todd, yep, great question. The only waste in this process worth thinking about is the carbon that is washed out in the bucket. At this stage there is no metal in solution, so I discard the water on my lawn after using a basic sand-filter to filter out most of the carbon particles. I don't think that the carbon would cause any damage, but I like to play it safe. When the sand filter stops working, I bag up the sand and it goes in the general rubbish. Your problems really start once you start dissolving metals with acids, I have been meaning for a while to make a video about my waste treatment process. As you say, it is not mentioned often enough or strongly enough.
i thought theyre meant to go completely white ? . wouldnt the carbon on most of them absorb gold ?
Hi Pete, nope, not if you wash the carbon out before you dissolve the Gold. You definitely don't want Carbon in there when the Gold is dissolved.
@@successfulengineer oh ok , thanks
Yeah they're supposed to be burnt until white ash but in this video he definitely does a good enough job at recovering the gold that's there
Can you update with a full length video
Very nice
Thanks mate, all the best for 2019!
just about everyone can run heavy equipment! but this guy here he's down right smart! brilliant! amazing....... you cant just put him in a class with them hill billy's! no offence gold rush people. gold rush robots. example. point-a point-b point-c a-b-c-a-b-c? yea none of them point exist when it comes to au. chemistry. ag-47.co-27.ir-77.pd-46.pt-78.ta-73. ok how about i make it easy .cu-copper! atomic number 29 .. no driveing or digging in this line of work. nothing but brains you have to be smart and know your chemistry. anyone can digg it up but can thay make it from scrap eletronicsand ect. turn gold a solid to a liquid back into a solid? make it 99.95% pure thers a lot to it and alot more to learn. them boys study on where the gold runs .weather in quartz vains old river or creek beds high up on a stinking mountain. dam sure gota give it to them. they sure get the gold! maybe thay should call the show easy pickens or gold hoarders! lol. three years of busting my rear end and i only got a few pound's refined au. that is. and want ever sale it! IT'S MY PRECIOUS!!!
BUT YOU SKIPED QUITE A FEW SPOTS LIKE MELTING YOUR DUST TO THE BUTTON? AND HOW PURE IS THE GOLD ? 18K OR 24K??
Like I said in the beginning of the video and in the description, this video was uploaded to show a particular viewer that was having some trouble with his process my procedure for mechanical processing before I start the wet chemistry. The actual refining part and also melting of the refined power is dealt with in lots of detail in some of my earlier videos.
Bom trabalho
Obrigado
You sound like a Scandinavian down under. :D
More like a South African that has spent a long time living in New Zealand!
@@successfulengineer lol Sounded like a Swede in NZ to me hahaha
:) funny you say that when i first watched some videos i thought AHH G'DAY MATE! then after a couple I thought he's clearly South African and couldn't hear the Australian any more.
Muito bom gostei do video
Muito obrigado, agradeço o comentário.
The value of those chemicals can be reduced considerably if you know how to make them yourself.
Sure, but making something like 68% nitric acid from scratch is above the capability of most hobby refiners and the cost of chemicals is the least of their worries by far.
@@successfulengineer but then the question becomes 'does the hobby refiner need anything over say, 20% nitric acid?
that good if u want take copper
try shorting your video the 35 min can be done in less then 5 min. by sticking to the important stuff?
I find that short videos showing the clever bits are great for people who already know and do the things the video shows, but the people who have never done it really appreciate lots and lots of detail. It is very difficult to cover all the critical parts while keeping videos super short, but I will certainly be keeping it in mind as I go. Thanks for the feedback.
Great video but it would be nice to see the actual processes rather than just hearing you talk about it in between. :-)
Hey Frank, yep, it's that old problem of trying to have enough detail without making the video crazy long!
Perhaps time-lapse the process and do a voiceover afterwards?
Don't get me wrong, I am getting a lot out of your videos. Some I am watching a second time.
I really liked your video. To me, level of detail was spot on. If someone is attempting this advanced type of recovery, they should be able to fill in the gaps. If they can’t, they should probably be working on much simpler methods of recovery. Line upon line, precept upon precept...
HEY DUDE, THAT LOOKS LIKE A LOT OF WORK. OF COURSE IF YOU WERE DOING ABOVE 20 OR 30 POUNDS IT MIGHT PAY FOR ITSELF. MY POINT IS YOU'RE WORKING FOR MINIMUM WAGES BY THE TIME YOU'RE DONE. YOU WOULD BE BETTER OFF BEING A BUSBOY IN A RESTAURANT BECAUSE THEY AT LEAST GIVE YOU A MEAL. I THINK PANNING FOR GOLD WOULD BE MUCH MORE PROFITABLE. SORRY.
Yeah, I actually make that point fairly regularly when I'm doing this stuff, it's obviously not my day-job. You certainly can make good money out of this, but it is all down to the material you process and how much you can automate the process.
A little advice. Show the process, instead of just talking about it. We want to see what happens, and not just the endproduct
Hi there, thanks for the feedback, it's a constant struggle to find the sweet spot of showing enough, without having too many people complain about wasting too much time showing stuff. A few of my other videos show most of these steps in much more detail. The purpose to this video was really showing the sequence that works best, rather than detail about the individual steps.
Hey, Sir!
I have neither propper knowledge of chemical processes (from a safety point) nor will to study it. And moreover, i do not want to use chemicals cause i am afraid. Oh, yeah, in Ukraine many acids , ever in very low concentrations, are handled as precursors... So i alwasys sold my sorted evaist (from depopulating boards) through Ebay. But shipping kills all the point. So this mechanical treatment makes selling the processed material much tastier. The only thing needed is a trusty partner to sell to. Cause nobody will buy this black sand . Some kind of post-payment system with yield -based pricing is needed...
Hi Vladimir, yes, it would be difficult to sell the black-powder without evidence of the Gold content. Most large refineries probably have minimum numbers, so it would be difficult to deal with a large refinery unless you have big volume. It shouldn't be too hard to find someone who will refine the material and pay you based on the Gold content, you would just need to build up trust with them over some time.
Your Accent though?
Why waste time with a ball mill, just get an old blender and be done in several minutes.
Mostly because a blender is just not able to get the material fine enough, to ensure all bond wires are freed you need to get the material down to minus 100 mesh. I tried a blender once upon a time, killed the blender quickly and didn't get the material anywhere near fine enough.
Successful Engineer OK, but it should make a head start for the ball mill. The Blendtec blender ( www.willitblend.com/ ) might be robust enough to hold up. The demonstration he's done show phones, computers, etc being reduced to a powder.
example czcams.com/video/lBUJcD6Ws6s/video.html
Yeah, definitely a case for doing some pre smashing in a blender, would likely cut a fair bit of time out of the milling stage! If you incinerated the ICs well enough, a blender would probably work OK by itself anyway. At that point the ICs are very soft, so unlikely to damage a blender much. You would just run it for a while, sieve the material, then keep running the material that doesn't go through the sieve until it all goes.
Unless you have a free supply of blenders and blades it's not cost effective. The blades get worn extremely fast. And the brass sleeve bearing gets destroyed because of how abrasive the copper and other small metal bits are. I tried running the material dry, wet, and with the blender half full of water. Ball Mill is the best way to go. Less mess and way less dust while in operation. Just wanted to share my experience.
Dude you talk to much. keep the video simple.
With this kind of thing, I found early on the devil was in the detail. There were lots of quick videos showing processes and glossing over the important details. Comments on my videos often fall into the two categories, either "Dude you talk too much" or 'Thank you very much for sharing, this is fantastic"
@@successfulengineer I thnak you for the video but I think you still talk to much. and if you go back and watch it you repeat your self.
Hey been trying to contact you mate, please check your email!
Hey, replied to your message with my email a few days ago, check your private messages, or shoot through your email address in a comment and I will remove the comment once I grab it.
Bu ecnebiler çok konuşuyor az iş yapıyor göster arkadaş ne konusuyon
Ну и чё ,на хлеб намажеш .
Ха-ха, він має подібний вигляд!