9.6g of pure gold= roughly $621..... I recall at the beginning of the video it's stated $1000 total for all 5 bags of 'trim scrap' ($100 for 2 bags; $400 for 2 bags; $500 for 1 bag)..... $379 loss on purchase of the trim to final yield, and that's IF the gold could be sold at spot price. Include the cost of chemicals for the processing and it's probably closer to a $500 loss on the cash invested in the trim boards. But a truly fascinating process and thank you for sharing (subscriber here). I wish you well and safe travels.
Just think of it like this: they got good money for their scrap. I got a new video for my channel. You get to see how much gold there is, and how to get it. No losers! We all win.
@@sreetips don't get me wrong. It's not lucrative correct, but you are right by creating content that people will watch. I totally enjoyed watching the process because it's interesting and not something I'd go out and do. So thank you, keep up the interesting content, and I wish you well sir.
Just when you think that processing trimmed fingers from electronics is a good way to make money, Sreetips goes to great expense to show you it isn’t. Thanks for the videos, sir.
Agitation is the key. You need to get the fingers rubbing against themselves to break the foils loose. A single bubbler is too passive. You need an aggressive boil by using a tube with multiple air holes in the bottom with air pressure strong enough to move things around. Letting it just sit is like holding you hands in a sink hoping they come clean. You need to scrub them to get them clean. Your soak would likely have been only a few days not weeks. Also, recharge your acid as the reaction weakens the brew.
You need a portable plating barrel, a 6x12 inch and a rectangular tank that it would just fit in. Then put the scrap into the barrel, lock the lid and put it in the tank with the solution, and turn it on. The barrel rotates at approximately 4.5 RPM's and will scrub the gold foils off, which will go through the perforations in the barrel, and drop to the bottom of the tank. This will drastically reduce the time in the acid solution. If you clean the parts with acetone, the acid will attack them much faster. The whole process should be less than 24 hours.
Or, you can use hot dilute nitric to release the foils in a few hours. Drain off the waste solution (it will be full of base metals) then add AR to dissolve the gold.
@@sreetipsYes you could but if there's any kind of organics on the surface the acid, or any acid for that matter won't remove the foils. After watching you check the parts many times and seeing the same ones each time not done or still looking exactly the way they were when you first put them in the acid solution, there's something blocking the acid from removing the foils. The abrasive action of the parts tumbling will cut through the organics with out using any extra chemicals, or increasing waste. The amount of time you are putting into doing these at the high cost to obtain them, can't possibly be very profitable. Is there anyone doing this on a large scale? I use Atlantic Refining for my scrap gold, silver, copper, and nickel, but they won't even take anything that they have to use any chemicals to process. I own an electro plating business and I've seen many different ways to strip gold. I've been using an orosene electrolytic process that I formulated myself. I hang the parts on a titanium wire, then make them anodic in my solution and the gold dissolves into the solution, while simultaneously plating onto titanium cathodes. Its not pretty but can be easily melted off the titanium. It takes about 2 minutes to strip a part with normal thicknesses, and then just melt with a torch. Then I send it to Atlantic to assay it and then they buy it.
That little GOLD button looks so dam Beautiful 😍 I absolutely 💯 love this channel brother..... thank you so much for spending your time teaching us how to do what you do!!!! We all know you don't have to do it but you do anyway! We need more people like you, willing to share your knowledge with us and spending the time to do so!!!!! 🤜🤛
For those who are wondering if there is still nitric acid in your solution but you don't have a small gold nugget for testing, you can use 24k gold leaf. It's relatively cheap for a book of 10 sheets and is an excellent alternative to a small gold nugget.
Very educational. The moral of this story: don’t buy electronic scrap for refining. Hyperinflated prices, laughable yield. Only use that stuff if it was free.
Not really no. There are plenty of lots that are very well priced and there are things that yield better than gold fingers. If you can get it for free then obviously it's best
Loved the vid! Learned a ton! Thank you for showing us how its done even if you lost a bit (you DID tell us these prices of trim were grossly overpriced) so thank you again!
havent watched many videos recently, work getting in t he way, first gold recovery video was this one, as per usual at the end of the video l had only a couple of minor questions to ponder, as per usual every step was as clear as crystal, l genuinely appreciate your relaxed, matter of fact way of teaching very well, cheers mate
Love all your Videos I have learn so much from you I appreciate it much. I’ve been .refining 999 FS for a year now and refining gold as well. I’m a retired Disabled combat Army Veteran can no longer work but I finally found a great hobby thanks to you sir. Thanks you Sir I’ll continue watching your Videos. 👍👍👍
Awesome I'm homeless and having trouble getting hired. So I also play music and searching for all kinds of ways to make money, even if it's finding pennies a gain is a gain!
I may have said this before but, in my opinion it would be far easier and less wasteful to blend such "fingers" to dust which will also contain fine gold dust. Mixing that dust with nitric should extract 10 times faster and with far less acid any unwanted metals in my opinion. Nevertheless it was an interesting episode, as always. Too bad the yield dollarwise was much lower than the acquisition price... but it still makes a very entertaining video to watch :)
Even easier is cooking them in an oven which goes up to 400C, then they can be scraped off pretty easily, basically replicate the conditions that normally cause pads to lift from boards when soldering.
Nitric will cause a BIG problem if there's tin anywhere. You'll end up with the dreaded metastannic acid and insoluble tin oxynitrate. ALWAYS at least clean off the fingers with HCl for a day to get rid of the tin.
He's going to put those bags in his scrap pile, then reduce them down with some HCL and later some piranha solution and suck the .00001g gold from them in another video.
@n n You guys anyway. I was relieved he didn't struggle with trying to open them properly on camera (though doing so, then fast forwarding through would've been fine)
Just looking at this intriguing video on gold recovery. Would not ever contemplate doing this on a small scale due to the cost of procurement, the chemicals and time that is required to get that small amount.
Back in the day my PC broke. So I figured out how to fix it because I couldn't afford to pay someone to fix it. Over the next few years I got really good at it. I started collecting computer parts to fix/upgrade friends and family members computers. I had a huge stock pile of parts. After watching this video I went to see how much I had so I could try this and my wife chucked it. I'm a lot more bummed about it then I should be. lol. You make it look so easy that I want to try it. I don't even really want the gold and I hated science in school. I never would have thought I would spend this much time watching these kinds of videos. Thank you.
Again, I love collaborations! A cross-over vlog with you and Jason, from MBMM, LLC, would be great! He has a video of him running 100s of lbs of this through his crusher and shaker table. It would be interesting to see you two test both of your recovery methods, get an assay, and then maybe add his slag to your stock pots for later... I don't know, just a thought...
@@sreetips I believe his video was more bulk electronics such as entire motherboards. He did one with CPUs as well. I've never seen him do trimmed fingers.
Good looking button. Really appreciate the time and expense you spend to produce these videos. Not much return on the computer fingers (I know you are doing it for the channel ) but as always fascinating and entertaining content. The part where you were using sulphuric to precipitate possible lead gave me an idea for a band name for you. “Three Nines Fine And The Lead Removal”. When will T shirts be available? 🙂
A tip: You can speed up the rinsing of the last remnants of gold foils by putting them in a large plastic detergent bottle, putting the cap on and shaking. You then treat large areas of the fingers at one time. It's also handy to use another cap in which you've drilled some large holes. If you change it after shaking for the closed cap, you can easily pour out the gold particles. In this way you can reuse all the AP without creating too many waste liquids.
@@taxesdeathandtrouble.1886 I was out of work for a few months because I had pneumonia and had to be on oxygen I was in the dang hospital for 12 days. It sucked I’d fall asleep so much that I couldn’t drive anywhere. I’m straight up grateful to God and glad I’m back to normal. I definitely had some crazy dreams tho.
As someone who works in environmental compliance and regulates metal finishers and electroplaters, it's amazing how similar your refining methods are to industrial scale wastewater pretreatment. Same processes on a smaller scale with hobbyist equipment.
Spent $400 on old cards, another $200+ on chemicals, tools, buckets, beakers and supplies, 3 weeks of extraction, got $500 worth of gold. Tha ks for showing the process though, interesting video!
Due to the myth; there a quarter ounce of gold in every scrap PC just waiting for those who can figure out how to get it. The persistence of this myth is astounding.
@@emustorage6769 you missed the first part of the video. it was, 100 + 400 + 500, spent on fingers, which comes out to 1k spent for 629 return at todays price.
Great experiment 💛 The bucket with fingers was probably overloaded - dividing the content might have resulted in faster detachment. So, in the U.S. on July 7, that gold button was worth $593.28 (9.6 grams x US$61.80 per gram for 24K gold) Yeah, those fingers were definitely way overpriced. I wonder how the sellers arrived at those prices?
They’re just trying to get as much as they can. If people would look at my videos on this topic and see the yields that I get then they would be less likely to over pay. The sellers would be forced to drop the price if they wanted to sell it. I’ve got some more coming and I’ll repeat this experiment - again. I agree, the bucket was overloaded.
So he paid $1000 for trimmed fingers. He ended up with $600 worth of gold. -$400? Plus, hydrogen peroxide $5. 2 gallons or Hydrochloric $?. Nitic Acid$? other acid? Am I missing something? Oh, labor (love of labor). Amazing and I want to do this, but I can't afford to loose $500-$600 to learn...one day. It is a blessing that he can afford to show us and I will show my students...as well as give him a donation ❤️
I was just doing the math too. I skipped through the video some so I wasn't able to nail down your cost for the fingers but if $1,000.00 is correct and you are yielding $565.00 of gold (10/7/2023 price) then you are $435.00 in the hole not including the cost of the chemicals, equipment, video equipment, computer, video editing software, your labor, etc, etc... However, since your UA-cam channel is monetized (and you are, I have a way of checking through your home page's code), then at best i'm assuming you have earned $ 2,458.00 minus taxes through AdSense based on this video's views as of 10/7/2023. If this figure is correct then was the $ 2,023.00 minus taxes, chemicals, equipment, and your labor worth it? For me, the educational content was priceless, thank you!@@sreetips
the reaction you are seeing that soon is from the solder on the finger boards. They should have been clipped closer to the edge, or resistors / Lead removed first. The seller should be ashamed of himself selling those boards for that much. It's like taking aluminum cans to the recycler filled with junk to increase the weight.
These are also some of my favorite videos of yours Sreetips . I'm happy you got what you were expecting for a yield , and I was wondering if you happen to drill a few small holes in the bubbling tube , would that help the process work any better ? Great content sir . See you soon my friend . Cheers
A Mr Coffee pot, they make the little nylon mesh baskets for those things to hold the grounds in. You can get them cheap at the second hand stores too. They make excellent buckets to hold fine stuff like foils in and rinse to let run thru then rinse back out into a blob to work some more. That way you are not pouring off a few here and there every time you rinse. The surface tension can be a booger sometimes. Granted purity is a thing in the final product but for this stage, use a surfactant. Jet Dri works
This is the meat of my hobby, ram and card fingers. I recently acquired about 110 pounds of ram. Use the same process you used here, and I think your AP solution may have gotten saturated. Could be why it seemed to stall. Your yield was right on the money, about 1.5 to 2 grams per pound of trimmed fingers. Keep up the good videos!
@@sreetips I use Board Sort prices to determine what I'll pay. Right now clean fingers are $40 a lb. Whole ram boards are $20 a pound. I the 60 lbs for $325.
I use to work in a precious metals scrapyard. We granulated the boards via big industrial granulators. The company built the business up from this basic set up like shown in the video. This was at least 35 years ago. I still have a bag of platinum pips somewhere, I’ve always wondered how much they are worth.
Hey Sreetips! Love your videos! I know the computer scrap thing isn't really your jam because the yields are low. Should you upload another trimmed slot card teeth video there is a faster cheaper way to strip the foils you could try. Maybe do a head to head video and see what way is the most cost effective. High acidity vinegar (I used 7.5% because i couldn't find 10%) sea salt and 3% hydrogen peroxide. I found it worked pretty good. Just an idea for you. Take care man!
Great video. Thank you. In case someone tries to do it differently than exactly as you've shown, Might mention that you never pour water into acid, always acid into water.
Hi Sreetips thanks Brother from Alaska I love Gold and can't thank you enough for teaching class on aqua Regia refining and using your head ha ha ha ha thanks alot Brother let's have some fun
Hey Sreetips! I think you already know , but the "chloride" at Minute 11:22 ff is probably to some part Silverchloride. HCl and H2O2 dissolve silver metal like "fizzy cubes" in water. Also, just as a tip: Bubbling air through the solution is not as effective as stirring. When i did pretty much the same as you did, all the foils came completly off after 3 days of stirring.
Yea , cannot see any reason to spend a month dissolving when you could agitate it in some kind of dough making type machine and lik you said it should all be off in two or three days...
Love your videos about to give this process a try myself. Looks like you got a good yield that last batch of fingers had alot of empty board space on them. That seller definitely padded the weight alot. Thought it might've brought your yield below the 9 grams you expected. Would love to see you do a video on IC chips. Been learning alot from your videos thanks for sharing your knowledge with the community.
They are just different types of gold fingered connection pieces. There was a good mix of older and newer fingers there so the wider fingers are generally thicker gold 👍
Hello Someone else might have suggested this? Use a metal paint stirrer propeller blade turning by a drill motor to agitate the computer pieces in the acid bath….to dislodge the foils….instead of using your fingers one by one?!?!
I love your videos,, I'm just scared of the acids and fumes,, can you recommend a good gas mask for working with these kinds of fumes and acids,, Thanks for all your help,,
I appreciate everything in context and the beautiful display of the hard workmanship that you put into retrieving the yield at 9.6 g of gold but even at the best price today it's $65 at best for 1 g of gold at $624 give or take for that yield I say strips and chemicals alone You didn't even make your money back not even to break even so you have to have a love and some pretty strong lungs to absorb the ramifications for the long haul in the end game. Either way you have my respect love and appreciation for teaching someone such complicated and 100% working methods God bless you and keep up the good work May your beautiful work give you a lifetime of happiness Happy New Year my friend😊
@@sreetips I didn't mean it to be disrespectful as a loss I was just pointing out that it was a wonderful video but you can't do this unless you have a love for the chemistry and not just chasing the yield because the beauty of it is the work and utilizing chemistry which is the key to everything metals or not and that is the beauty of it which makes it priceless so I agree
No disrespect. Most people view it as a loss because they want to buy it low, recovery the metal and immediately resell for more than was paid for a “profit.” But I don’t work for paper. I work for gold (and silver). I would have paid more for this scrap. The ad revenue for this video is up over sixteen grand, which I quickly convert to more gold and silver. Plus, I get to keep the gold. I hate to reveal this because it sounds like bragging. So in the end, you get to see the process, and how much this type of scrap actually yields. I get paid for my work. Everybody wins. And that’s a good thing.
Wonderfully informative. Off the top of my head…I suspect you lost value when considering the total cost of the fingers, shipping and chemicals. Thank you again Sir. I learn so much from your videos.
The problem is that people are paying that price. I know sreetips is doing this for the video, and he will make up the lost revenue with that, but it makes it essentially impossible to refine the fingers for a profit. The sellers are selling for the price they are able to get. A few are paying that price, so it just makes the who process unprofitable.
I know it's maddening to think about doing this, but it seems like a lot of those foils are clinging to the fingers just barely and could be dislodged by some sort of scrubbing/abrasion or pressurized liquid washing...would it be worth it to have a simple electric toothbrush to take to each finger as you sort through them one-by-one? Would it increase your yield/shorten processing time by any significant measure? As always, wonderful work and education Mr. Sreetips. Thank you, sir!
@@prestontucker6171 Yes, but as Sreetips said, he wants to minimise the amout of waiste solution. Some vibration mechanism attached to bucked could help too, I will try that with my fingers... I mean gold fingers... not my fingers... you know...
I use the same solution for etching printed circuit boards. If you added more hydrogen peroxide, the etchant would be stronger and would have taken a lot less time.
I did about 25 lbs this week alone. It's a lot of work brother! Save some of the used ap. Just put some in an empty hcl jug. Next time you need ap for something dump the used ap in with your hcl. No H2O2 needed. It won't hurt a thing. It will kick start the process and save you many days. Get two of the same size buckets. One will slide inside the other. Drill holes in the bottom of the top bucket like you did with the smaller one. It will take less solution to cover the materials and you can just use the handle on the top bucket to rotate the fingers around and drop it back down into the bottom bucket. 1 gallon of hcl will do about 10 lbs of fingers. To me the ap process is like silver. It creates a lottt of waste solution from washing.
@@sreetips Another thing i noticed was it seemed like you didn't have enough air going on there. Though it takes very little air in your waste solutions for cementing and stirring the ap process is different. It thrives and drives on air. The more the better. Air=time. You can get an air stone and use it in solution. It will hold up and not break down. That will give you smaller air bubbles and more surface air for the air to absorb more efficiently.
A great video and one that perfectly illustrates why I sopped dealing with these things. lol The amount of time waiting and the volume of waste really bothered me. AP is an effective and cheap option but so slow and wasteful. If I do get any of these to process (typically I'll stockpile them until I have a lot) I usually resort to a nitric soak (in diluted 20-25% nitric acid). It's more expensive but WAY faster and I can recover much of the nitrate salts and produce more nitric later on. What took weeks of sitting for AP is usually done within 24hrs. Cleanup is much easier too as no precipitate forms when washing. For washing I found that putting all the fingers in a bucket with some water, sealing the lid well, and then just shaking the life out of it (roll on the floor too) does a fantastic job of separating all those stubborn foils.
Great experiment but I was interested to know if it was at least profitable. If you are going to continue to do this then I would suggest building a tumbler or obtaining a cheap cement mixer to release the fingers as then you have mechanical as well as chemical release action which would speed it up a lot. The acid will also dissolve any cement in left in the drum of a cement mixer so that will come up like new. That solid gold nugget at the end sure looked nice. Cheers Stuart 🇦🇺
A small trick to cleaning foils off stuff like circuit boards or gold plated "smaller object" - which will reduce the "soak time" in the acid: Get a metal bucket with a metal lid (kinda sturdy). Here there are two versions. one is to just drill a hole, the other is to install a "power transfer thingy" (no clue what they are called in English. It's basically just a thing with a power drill bit (female part) on each end, with a mounting bracket in the middle so you can permanently use a power drill on one side and attach something else on the other side and having it isolated) In both cases you take a "round" toilet cleaning brush (the sturdier quality the better - they will break occasionally though - so don't get a really expensive one 😀) drill a hole into the shaft of the toilet brush, and then add a drill bit to the hole. I'm personally using a bit which is used for making "bores" for bolts in metal plates. It's good because it fastens into the hole really well and binds well when it bottoms out the pre-drilled hole. Now MAKE SURE to rinse off all the acid before doing this. The metal bucket will not be happy if you don't. dump a few handfuls (the more you add the harder it is to get it all and the more stress on the materials) into the metal bucket and put in some clean water. turn the "toilet brush" around though the hole in the lid slowly at first using a power drill with good speed control- and then go for a while at medium speed. Don't go full power since that will put more stress on the brush. This will make you able to get all the gold off much quicker - and it doesn't really make the cleanup that much dirtier.
I think your solution of ap was saturated hence the length of time taken to remove the foil's. Those sellers should be trimming those fingers a lot closer so you probably have had more copper and mlccs ect for the HCl to tackle. Beautiful foils though 😉👍
Not being a chemist or an engineer I found this very interesting. I would think using a flat rack system would speed up the acid soak process. Meaning all the trimmings laying flat instead of all clustered together. Either way, spending more than the yield is going backwards. But thank you none the less for a really informative vid.
It's his hobby. You dont make money playing golf or camping or whatever you do with your time and money. Plus he gets you tube revenue and sells on eBay for above spot.
This is a very informative video but unless I am missing something, the lesson is that one must be VERY careful when extracting gold from electronic scrap that the cost of the scrap is not too high. If I did my math right, 9.6gm of gold is worth about $534 as of 24 July 2022 and you spent $1000 on the scrap and an additional amount on the chemicals which yields a substantial loss.
I was just thinking the same thing. I know he said grossly over priced but holy crap that's bad. Even to break even would have to be less than 50 dollars a pound in scrap. Not over a 100 lol
Getting the foils off always seemed crazy to me. Surely it'd be easier to dissolve away the PCB material and then just filter out the Copper/Gold and process it normally. The common FR4 PCB material is basically an expoxide, so epoxy solvent from home depot might work. Needs some experiments, of course ;)
The first half of the video I was on my way out to start scrapping used electronics,the second half I said screw that 😂.....Cool content regardless..Thanks
Hey Sreetips! How do you remedy having too much nitric in solution (in aqua regia after dissolving gold) that when you add stump out (like a lot) I keep getting stannous tests showing gold still in solution. Do I need to neutralize the nitric first somehow? Thanks!
First, and most effective, is to add just enough nitric to just dissolve the gold. If done correctly theres no need to denoxx because there won’t be any excess nitric to remove. Second, takes a little longer, evaporate the gold solution down to a syrup until all the fumes disappear, then rehydrate with HCl before adding SMB. Finally, put the gold solution in an extra large beaker to avoid a boil over. Then just keep adding SMB until all the excess nitric gets consumed and the gold stays down and doesn’t try to instantly redissolve, because all the excess nitric is gone from the SMB reaction.
Seems like the more efficient way to make money is to sell the fingers to the refiners…this is way too much work with nasty chemicals. Final calculation has to exclude time spent and chemical disposal costs
not sure about that, could separate fingers from hands no doubt, but foils are connected to base metals very well. I do not see any good way how to insert dynamite between base metal and gold foil. Sounds laborous. May be small explosion near the bucket could give it a stir or burning dynamite could give some needed heat. Other than that is dynamite just overblow...
So $1000 worth of gold plated clip offs yielded a month later about $570 in gold. Also needed several hundred $ in equipment. The muriatic acid fumes and the brown fumes above the nitric acid treatment are quite toxic and the muriatic acid fumes will result in any ferrous metal within 10-20 yds in a closed space rusting solid over weeks.
You remarked on the dark motor oil color of the used AP solution, and I noticed it was exactly the same color as your Stannous Chloride test indicating gold. is there a possibility there is any Tin under those foils that dissolved in your HCl and made a batch of Stannous Chloride which is binding up some of your gold in that dark solution?
thats a question along the same line as my own, i was thinking the black acid would have gold in solution since the peroxide in HCl was used in another video to refine gold... but now you mention the stannous test and for sure there is tin in the solder and the acid provides the chloride so it makes sense that stannous chloride has formed and dropped some gold as black dust, but most of it went thru the filter, only a little got tipped off the top and not filtered... and the filters went in the AR so only a little bit got lost to the process. The big surprise was how stubborn the fingers were to hold onto the boards...
So the goal is to dissolve the base metals off of the gold foils. But the gold protects the base metals from being directly exposed to the acid, and the solder mask is doing the same thing and is also not really bothered by the acid since I think it is polyester. I wonder if some physical damage like smashing them with a hammer/grinding the PCB material up in a garbage paper shredder would allow the acid to get at the base metals quicker. Don't think that incineration is the way, the stuff they make PCB with is pretty bad stuff when burned.
Gold protects base metals from oxidation from normal enviroment and is there for better conductivity. Acid finds the way, as there are cuts in base metals, also whe cutting PCBs they bend and crack (I trimm fingers myself). Acid and bubles just need some time, that is all. Boiling could speed the process from weeks to hours, good for few fingers in oone day, but at this scale is patience better way...
I'm just wondering that if at the step where you cut the fingers off, would it be worth smashing them up at that time. You are already doing physical work to trim off the fingers, if the next step after that is to bash them with a mini-sledge hammer in a cotton bag for a minute or two, but it reduces the time in the bubbler--it might be worth it. An extra minute or two now, saves hours later? Sandpaper would also help, but it might introduce grit into the mix.
@@spokehedz You know, you do not have to blow the bubbles by your mouth, or stand there and spin some wheel by hand. Acid works 24/7. Just wait. If you smash the fingers, then you have bunch of small bits of PCB, hard to divide from gold foils. The less small junk, the better. Patience man, patience...
Listen i know exactly fuck all about chemistry, and even less about practical solutions for extraction of gold. All I know is, you took a bucket full of pcb, and through intelligence and diligence, "turned it into" a fat lil gorgeous nugget of gold. And that, is super fuckin cool to my little pleeb brain.
Wonder if anyone ever tried agitation and friction to help remove the stubborn foils from the fingers after waiting a couple weeks of soaking? Something like a perforated spinning drum to tumble them in to speed up the process. I know it's just an experiment but I'm super impatient with things like that so I can't help but think of ways to make it go faster haha.
I was thinking the same (as I'm sure many others), and I do know that jewelry cleaning machines use ultrasound to vibrate things to clean it. I'm sure Sreetips has a jewelry cleaner but not sure if that would work on this scale.
@@ToniThePerkele - that’s funny. Have you ever watched the Canadian show Red Green? Your poor man’s version sounds like something Red Green would try, along with plenty of duct tape.
Depends how you measure "break even". The gold won't pay for the fingers but the views of the video just might. Sreetips is demonstrating a modified process and many viewers will find it interesting. Income from the video may be enough to cover the overpriced fingers.
@@roberthayward9299 exactly. Plus knowing Kevin he's also getting enjoyment out it too and there's a ton of value in that. I don't think it's ever been about the money. Just the joy of doing it and spreading the knowledge 👍
Hi buddy , I have watched your channel four a long time and love it ! However when it comes to computer scrap , I feel you are missing some steps first priories ( stick the scrap in a tin in a fire with holes around the top of the tin ) next a ball mill mine is a rolling gas’s cylinder with steel bolus balls in it . I flush the carbon and fibre from the metal , a magnet removes the steel and I follow you from there. PS this requires more lead stripping . I pickup computer scrap at the local dump for around $ 2 Australian the copper is a important part of the deal , cheers
You don't do that with gold fingers. All it does is creates more hassle. There's nothing to be gained from the milling of the fibre on the fingers. If you are running IC chips then burning and milling is required to free up the gold
Was going to like the video until you hit the sound button 😂 only kidding really enjoyed watching this as there's alot of work but also skill ( as i skipped science classes at school) so cool video 👍
Awesome videos! And great tips! One quick question for me though. When you rinse the gold foils out of the bucket around the 15:30 mark are you just using distilled water or is that another acid solution?
I wondered if you could have chucked an impeller into a drill and use it to agitate the fingers in the acid peroxide solution to release the fingers quicker? Alternatively, putting the finger boards through a blender or crusher to reduce sample sizes may have reduced your processing times and material costs. At the current price of gold I think you probably lost money on raw materials, acids, peroxide and other reagents. Interesting process, thanks for sharing. Cheers
hi @sreetips. thank you for these videos. quick question. if we don't have fumehood and are refining outside with nitric. what kind of protective mask and gloves do you recommend? thanks!
@@sreetips started my first 2 experiments: AMD pins and PBC boards. first batch spilled over lol; used small beaker and too much nitric; spilled over again when i put it on heat; transferred to larger beaker. PCB boards worked perfectly. put pcb's in dilute nitric in large bucket and it removed the foils very nicely over night. no need for messy hcl/peroxide method. the AMD pins are in a thick green solution. trying to figure out how to proceed.
Get a mesh strainer and place the rest of PCB with remaining gold foils, then place it in an ultrasonic cleaning machine with solution and allow to run for a few minutes in order to get the remaining gold foils of the PCB. That should save you considerable time having to manually remove the gold foils from the remaining PCB by hand.
I think this experiment proved thst trying to do very large batches is time intensive as you have to wait a very long time for the acid to release the foils. I think small batches are much faster and its easier to ensure that you recover every single speck of gold possible with less labor and waiting.
9.6g of pure gold= roughly $621..... I recall at the beginning of the video it's stated $1000 total for all 5 bags of 'trim scrap' ($100 for 2 bags; $400 for 2 bags; $500 for 1 bag)..... $379 loss on purchase of the trim to final yield, and that's IF the gold could be sold at spot price. Include the cost of chemicals for the processing and it's probably closer to a $500 loss on the cash invested in the trim boards.
But a truly fascinating process and thank you for sharing (subscriber here). I wish you well and safe travels.
Exactly my point…it’s a losing proposition! And very time consuming. Who on earth would do this process?
Me!
Just think of it like this: they got good money for their scrap. I got a new video for my channel. You get to see how much gold there is, and how to get it. No losers! We all win.
@@sreetips don't get me wrong. It's not lucrative correct, but you are right by creating content that people will watch. I totally enjoyed watching the process because it's interesting and not something I'd go out and do. So thank you, keep up the interesting content, and I wish you well sir.
Who can’t sell gold at spot price lmao
Just when you think that processing trimmed fingers from electronics is a good way to make money, Sreetips goes to great expense to show you it isn’t. Thanks for the videos, sir.
I was thinking the same thing, spent $1000 plus Chemicals to get at Best $700 in gold??
And I'm sure he's being environmentally responsible come time to dispose of hazardous waste.
Using and agitator helps. Like a massage gun pressed onto the side of the bucket from time to time
Agitation is the key. You need to get the fingers rubbing against themselves to break the foils loose. A single bubbler is too passive. You need an aggressive boil by using a tube with multiple air holes in the bottom with air pressure strong enough to move things around. Letting it just sit is like holding you hands in a sink hoping they come clean. You need to scrub them to get them clean. Your soak would likely have been only a few days not weeks. Also, recharge your acid as the reaction weakens the brew.
You need a portable plating barrel, a 6x12 inch and a rectangular tank that it would just fit in. Then put the scrap into the barrel, lock the lid and put it in the tank with the solution, and turn it on. The barrel rotates at approximately 4.5 RPM's and will scrub the gold foils off, which will go through the perforations in the barrel, and drop to the bottom of the tank. This will drastically reduce the time in the acid solution. If you clean the parts with acetone, the acid will attack them much faster. The whole process should be less than 24 hours.
Or, you can use hot dilute nitric to release the foils in a few hours. Drain off the waste solution (it will be full of base metals) then add AR to dissolve the gold.
@@sreetipsYes you could but if there's any kind of organics on the surface the acid, or any acid for that matter won't remove the foils. After watching you check the parts many times and seeing the same ones each time not done or still looking exactly the way they were when you first put them in the acid solution, there's something blocking the acid from removing the foils. The abrasive action of the parts tumbling will cut through the organics with out using any extra chemicals, or increasing waste. The amount of time you are putting into doing these at the high cost to obtain them, can't possibly be very profitable. Is there anyone doing this on a large scale? I use Atlantic Refining for my scrap gold, silver, copper, and nickel, but they won't even take anything that they have to use any chemicals to process. I own an electro plating business and I've seen many different ways to strip gold. I've been using an orosene electrolytic process that I formulated myself. I hang the parts on a titanium wire, then make them anodic in my solution and the gold dissolves into the solution, while simultaneously plating onto titanium cathodes. Its not pretty but can be easily melted off the titanium. It takes about 2 minutes to strip a part with normal thicknesses, and then just melt with a torch. Then I send it to Atlantic to assay it and then they buy it.
I like your editing style. Not fancy, not showing off. But, effective, patient, relaxed. I like. :)
That little GOLD button looks so dam Beautiful 😍
I absolutely 💯 love this channel brother..... thank you so much for spending your time teaching us how to do what you do!!!! We all know you don't have to do it but you do anyway!
We need more people like you, willing to share your knowledge with us and spending the time to do so!!!!! 🤜🤛
Ha ha you could really hear Sreetips go all "my preciousss" once the gold came out! :)
That was quite a journey. Thank you for showing us all the steps together in 1 video. That was a lot of work, very fun to watch!
You have done a great job simplify this. Thanks. I've been collecting foils for 6 years. Can't wait to try this
For those who are wondering if there is still nitric acid in your solution but you don't have a small gold nugget for testing, you can use 24k gold leaf. It's relatively cheap for a book of 10 sheets and is an excellent alternative to a small gold nugget.
Nice idea
Very Dangerous work🇺🇸
Man, the lengths you goto and efforts you make to keep us fans and viewers entertained and educated is MUCH appreciated!
Thank you, Senior Chief! 👊👊👍👍
How many computers does it take to get that amount of gold?
@@josephgarcia676 hundreds if not thousands
Not very profitable though!
Very educational. The moral of this story: don’t buy electronic scrap for refining. Hyperinflated prices, laughable yield. Only use that stuff if it was free.
Not really no.
There are plenty of lots that are very well priced and there are things that yield better than gold fingers.
If you can get it for free then obviously it's best
Loved the vid! Learned a ton! Thank you for showing us how its done even if you lost a bit (you DID tell us these prices of trim were grossly overpriced) so thank you again!
havent watched many videos recently, work getting in t he way, first gold recovery video was this one, as per usual at the end of the video l had only a couple of minor questions to ponder, as per usual every step was as clear as crystal, l genuinely appreciate your relaxed, matter of fact way of teaching very well, cheers mate
Love all your Videos I have learn so much from you I appreciate it much. I’ve been .refining 999 FS for a year now and refining gold as well. I’m a retired Disabled combat Army Veteran can no longer work but I finally found a great hobby thanks to you sir. Thanks you Sir I’ll continue watching your Videos. 👍👍👍
Awesome I'm homeless and having trouble getting hired. So I also play music and searching for all kinds of ways to make money, even if it's finding pennies a gain is a gain!
I may have said this before but, in my opinion it would be far easier and less wasteful to blend such "fingers" to dust which will also contain fine gold dust. Mixing that dust with nitric should extract 10 times faster and with far less acid any unwanted metals in my opinion. Nevertheless it was an interesting episode, as always. Too bad the yield dollarwise was much lower than the acquisition price... but it still makes a very entertaining video to watch :)
He makes up for it through ad revenue
I was thinking the exact same thing
Even easier is cooking them in an oven which goes up to 400C, then they can be scraped off pretty easily, basically replicate the conditions that normally cause pads to lift from boards when soldering.
The dust is a fairly dangerous mess, i'd rather have the plastic turned to fuel, then metals extracted from the pcbs.
Nitric will cause a BIG problem if there's tin anywhere. You'll end up with the dreaded metastannic acid and insoluble tin oxynitrate.
ALWAYS at least clean off the fingers with HCl for a day to get rid of the tin.
You know man, that you're an incredibly patient person!
Respect 👍
Ouch! The beautiful vintage Blue Cornflower Corningware used under the beakers. It hurts to see them used that way.
There are very tough. You can get them to glow red.
Agreed - they are extremely tough!
I like how the fingers are in ziplock bags but he just is like f these bags and slices them open
He's going to put those bags in his scrap pile, then reduce them down with some HCL and later some piranha solution and suck the .00001g gold from them in another video.
@n n You guys anyway. I was relieved he didn't struggle with trying to open them properly on camera (though doing so, then fast forwarding through would've been fine)
He was like " f these zip bags" it was pretty gangster
These are exothermic reactions. Fast reaction can be a problem. I know, I know. Who cares if it explodes. So much must first be removed before a
Kinda' confusing, seeing as how the video is about Recycling gold from old chips.
Ironic.
You were right on with projected yield I think you did a smarter more practical approach then previous fingerboard video, what a button
Just looking at this intriguing video on gold recovery. Would not ever contemplate doing this on a small scale due to the cost of procurement, the chemicals and time that is required to get that small amount.
Back in the day my PC broke. So I figured out how to fix it because I couldn't afford to pay someone to fix it. Over the next few years I got really good at it. I started collecting computer parts to fix/upgrade friends and family members computers. I had a huge stock pile of parts. After watching this video I went to see how much I had so I could try this and my wife chucked it. I'm a lot more bummed about it then I should be. lol. You make it look so easy that I want to try it. I don't even really want the gold and I hated science in school. I never would have thought I would spend this much time watching these kinds of videos. Thank you.
STUPID WIFE!
women...
You have to throw away some stuff that means something to her to make things even. Tell that broad to leave your stuff alone.
SOUNDS LIKE...
YOU GOT TERRIBLE !
communication skills.
No Common Sense.
And A LOT OF
Broken Dreams...
Don't Blame The Wife.
Great educational tutorial. The gold is back to the way it should be and it’s all yours! Thank you Sir! 👍👍
You're right they are I find his videos so soothing relaxing and entertaining
Again, I love collaborations! A cross-over vlog with you and Jason, from MBMM, LLC, would be great! He has a video of him running 100s of lbs of this through his crusher and shaker table. It would be interesting to see you two test both of your recovery methods, get an assay, and then maybe add his slag to your stock pots for later... I don't know, just a thought...
He has a video on trimmed fingers? I didn’t know that.
@@sreetips I believe his video was more bulk electronics such as entire motherboards. He did one with CPUs as well. I've never seen him do trimmed fingers.
They certainly do approach their respective refining methods quite differently
@@themakerken3453 I'm not going to say that Jason doesn't know his onions but I'd like to see Sreetips have a go at Jasons slag.
What’s the name of this Jason guys channel?
Watching your videos are like watching a mystery. I can hardly wait for the finale. Video was long but not boring. 🐎✌️
Thanks for making the video. Been looking for a video of this type for a while.
Good looking button. Really appreciate the time and expense you spend to produce these videos. Not much return on the computer fingers (I know you are doing it for the channel ) but as always fascinating and entertaining content. The part where you were using sulphuric to precipitate possible lead gave me an idea for a band name for you. “Three Nines Fine And The Lead Removal”. When will T shirts be available? 🙂
Dead head who likes a good colt?
A tip: You can speed up the rinsing of the last remnants of gold foils by putting them in a large plastic detergent bottle, putting the cap on and shaking. You then treat large areas of the fingers at one time.
It's also handy to use another cap in which you've drilled some large holes. If you change it after shaking for the closed cap, you can easily pour out the gold particles. In this way you can reuse all the AP without creating too many waste liquids.
A tight lid on the bucket and shake sounds like the simplest solution.
@@sreetips Your right. Even better!
Oh man. That's quite a journey. It's take lots of patience for the precious metal. And you did it. Best of health & good luck.
Great video.
Kudos to you and your chemistry skills.
I really enjoyed this.
You just gained another follower.
Keep up the good work.
Thank you, and welcome to my channel!
I like this channel!
It’s so intriguing to me that I actually had a dream about pulling gold out of old iPhones. I’m not even joking
@@taxesdeathandtrouble.1886 I’m good lol
@@taxesdeathandtrouble.1886 I was out of work for a few months because I had pneumonia and had to be on oxygen I was in the dang hospital for 12 days. It sucked I’d fall asleep so much that I couldn’t drive anywhere.
I’m straight up grateful to God and glad I’m back to normal. I definitely had some crazy dreams tho.
Thank you Taxes:) fr
I think that is why you see used phones and diabetic test strips purchased.
As someone who works in environmental compliance and regulates metal finishers and electroplaters, it's amazing how similar your refining methods are to industrial scale wastewater pretreatment. Same processes on a smaller scale with hobbyist equipment.
Spent $400 on old cards, another $200+ on chemicals, tools, buckets, beakers and supplies, 3 weeks of extraction, got $500 worth of gold. Tha ks for showing the process though, interesting video!
Do you do anything to fumigate or do you just let the fumes go into the atmosphere? Idk if it would make the air unhealthy?
How can sellers be selling 233 grams for 40.00 on ebay?
Due to the myth; there a quarter ounce of gold in every scrap PC just waiting for those who can figure out how to get it. The persistence of this myth is astounding.
@@emustorage6769 you missed the first part of the video. it was, 100 + 400 + 500, spent on fingers, which comes out to 1k spent for 629 return at todays price.
Great experiment 💛
The bucket with fingers was probably overloaded - dividing the content might have resulted in faster detachment.
So, in the U.S. on July 7, that gold button was worth $593.28
(9.6 grams x US$61.80 per gram for 24K gold)
Yeah, those fingers were definitely way overpriced. I wonder how the sellers arrived at those prices?
They’re just trying to get as much as they can. If people would look at my videos on this topic and see the yields that I get then they would be less likely to over pay. The sellers would be forced to drop the price if they wanted to sell it. I’ve got some more coming and I’ll repeat this experiment - again. I agree, the bucket was overloaded.
So he paid $1000 for trimmed fingers. He ended up with $600 worth of gold. -$400? Plus, hydrogen peroxide $5. 2 gallons or Hydrochloric $?. Nitic Acid$? other acid? Am I missing something? Oh, labor (love of labor). Amazing and I want to do this, but I can't afford to loose $500-$600 to learn...one day. It is a blessing that he can afford to show us and I will show my students...as well as give him a donation ❤️
Here’s what’s missing: the value is in the video, not in the gold that I recovered. That was just a bonus.
I was just doing the math too. I skipped through the video some so I wasn't able to nail down your cost for the fingers but if $1,000.00 is correct and you are yielding $565.00 of gold (10/7/2023 price) then you are $435.00 in the hole not including the cost of the chemicals, equipment, video equipment, computer, video editing software, your labor, etc, etc... However, since your UA-cam channel is monetized (and you are, I have a way of checking through your home page's code), then at best i'm assuming you have earned $ 2,458.00 minus taxes through AdSense based on this video's views as of 10/7/2023. If this figure is correct then was the $ 2,023.00 minus taxes, chemicals, equipment, and your labor worth it? For me, the educational content was priceless, thank you!@@sreetips
@@sreetips The moment you mentioned the expected recovery it was quite clear you weren't looking to turn a profit.
Fascinating but time consuming. You learn things anew every day on the net. Imagine I didn't have to pay for college this semester lol. Great job
the reaction you are seeing that soon is from the solder on the finger boards. They should have been clipped closer to the edge, or resistors / Lead removed first. The seller should be ashamed of himself selling those boards for that much. It's like taking aluminum cans to the recycler filled with junk to increase the weight.
you know that famous saying "a sucker is born every minute."
@@Alex-kp3hr Sreetips was born, re-born and re-born etc....
Give him a pass.
P.T. Barnum
These are also some of my favorite videos of yours Sreetips . I'm happy you got what you were expecting for a yield , and I was wondering if you happen to drill a few small holes in the bubbling tube , would that help the process work any better ? Great content sir . See you soon my friend . Cheers
Would find the path of least resistance
Nope, the air would just go through the highest holes
The ultimate alchemist. Respect for your efforts and patience.
A Mr Coffee pot, they make the little nylon mesh baskets for those things to hold the grounds in. You can get them cheap at the second hand stores too. They make excellent buckets to hold fine stuff like foils in and rinse to let run thru then rinse back out into a blob to work some more. That way you are not pouring off a few here and there every time you rinse. The surface tension can be a booger sometimes. Granted purity is a thing in the final product but for this stage, use a surfactant. Jet Dri works
This is the meat of my hobby, ram and card fingers. I recently acquired about 110 pounds of ram. Use the same process you used here, and I think your AP solution may have gotten saturated. Could be why it seemed to stall. Your yield was right on the money, about 1.5 to 2 grams per pound of trimmed fingers. Keep up the good videos!
The four pound bag was a total rip-off. They were the tiny gold foils with extra fiber board.
@@sreetips I use Board Sort prices to determine what I'll pay. Right now clean fingers are $40 a lb. Whole ram boards are $20 a pound. I the 60 lbs for $325.
They are getting hard to find in large groups.
Dude I have a lot of gold from a huge server
I use to work in a precious metals scrapyard. We granulated the boards via big industrial granulators. The company built the business up from this basic set up like shown in the video. This was at least 35 years ago. I still have a bag of platinum pips somewhere, I’ve always wondered how much they are worth.
Right now the price of scrap is way up. Every morning I see huge trucks of scrap going to the yard.
Theybare worth hundŕeds of thousands
@@justingallant8558 I better find them and decide what’s the best way to get the platinum off the pips. Thanks for the reply.
@@justingallant8558 haha hundreds of thousands huh
Why do you think our Catalytic converter’s are being stolen right and left, lol
This is really amazing work! I love how relaxing your content is as well, you’re doing awesome content, keep up the good work man!💚
Very nicely done video showing the process from start to finish thanks for sharing 👍
Hey Sreetips! Love your videos! I know the computer scrap thing isn't really your jam because the yields are low. Should you upload another trimmed slot card teeth video there is a faster cheaper way to strip the foils you could try. Maybe do a head to head video and see what way is the most cost effective. High acidity vinegar (I used 7.5% because i couldn't find 10%) sea salt and 3% hydrogen peroxide. I found it worked pretty good. Just an idea for you.
Take care man!
I did a video on fingers using salt and vinegar a long time ago. It’s posted on my channel.
Add more h2o2 and it will work harder. 3 week? Also put bucket on a shaker table. { I use 25% and wet the well trimmed fingers, then into HCl}
Great video. Thank you. In case someone tries to do it differently than exactly as you've shown, Might mention that you never pour water into acid, always acid into water.
Hi Sreetips thanks Brother from Alaska I love Gold and can't thank you enough for teaching class on aqua Regia refining and using your head ha ha ha ha thanks alot Brother let's have some fun
Hey Sreetips! I think you already know , but the "chloride" at Minute 11:22 ff is probably to some part Silverchloride. HCl and H2O2 dissolve silver metal like "fizzy cubes" in water. Also, just as a tip: Bubbling air through the solution is not as effective as stirring. When i did pretty much the same as you did, all the foils came completly off after 3 days of stirring.
I notice the chlorinated tap water produced that precipitate. After sitting, and the chlorine was gone, no more precipitated formed.
How effective would it be to put the bucket on a vibrating plate and just vibrate the mix for who knows how long?
@@byrdmania4895 I was thinking the same thing. Fill a bucket and hook it to a paint shaker 😆
Yea , cannot see any reason to spend a month dissolving when you could agitate it in some kind of dough making type machine and lik you said it should all be off in two or three days...
Love your videos about to give this process a try myself. Looks like you got a good yield that last batch of fingers had alot of empty board space on them. That seller definitely padded the weight alot. Thought it might've brought your yield below the 9 grams you expected. Would love to see you do a video on IC chips. Been learning alot from your videos thanks for sharing your knowledge with the community.
They are just different types of gold fingered connection pieces.
There was a good mix of older and newer fingers there so the wider fingers are generally thicker gold 👍
Hello
Someone else might have suggested this?
Use a metal paint stirrer propeller blade turning by a drill motor to agitate the computer pieces in the acid bath….to dislodge the foils….instead of using your fingers one by one?!?!
I love your videos,, I'm just scared of the acids and fumes,, can you recommend a good gas mask for working with these kinds of fumes and acids,,
Thanks for all your help,,
Yes,
No gas mask, must have a fume hood.
I saw this video, your smart guy!!! Thanks for doing this.
I appreciate everything in context and the beautiful display of the hard workmanship that you put into retrieving the yield at 9.6 g of gold but even at the best price today it's $65 at best for 1 g of gold at $624 give or take for that yield I say strips and chemicals alone You didn't even make your money back not even to break even so you have to have a love and some pretty strong lungs to absorb the ramifications for the long haul in the end game. Either way you have my respect love and appreciation for teaching someone such complicated and 100% working methods God bless you and keep up the good work May your beautiful work give you a lifetime of happiness Happy New Year my friend😊
I know it looks like a loss. But this video is very valuable.
@@sreetips I didn't mean it to be disrespectful as a loss I was just pointing out that it was a wonderful video but you can't do this unless you have a love for the chemistry and not just chasing the yield because the beauty of it is the work and utilizing chemistry which is the key to everything metals or not and that is the beauty of it which makes it priceless so I agree
No disrespect. Most people view it as a loss because they want to buy it low, recovery the metal and immediately resell for more than was paid for a “profit.” But I don’t work for paper. I work for gold (and silver). I would have paid more for this scrap. The ad revenue for this video is up over sixteen grand, which I quickly convert to more gold and silver. Plus, I get to keep the gold. I hate to reveal this because it sounds like bragging. So in the end, you get to see the process, and how much this type of scrap actually yields. I get paid for my work. Everybody wins. And that’s a good thing.
Not sure if it will work but you should try to use your ultrasonic cleaner to separate the foils from the boards after the acid/peroxide treatment
Wonderfully informative. Off the top of my head…I suspect you lost value when considering the total cost of the fingers, shipping and chemicals.
Thank you again Sir. I learn so much from your videos.
You can buy 10 grams of gold for far less than what he spent on the fingers and chemicals
I really appreciate you and This video. You are awesome man
Thank you for making this video for us. It was very educational and I am very much looking forward to seeing more of your video's in the future.
Thank you
I’m shocked at how much they charge for the circuit board fingers! I enjoyed watching this refining process.
The problem is that people are paying that price. I know sreetips is doing this for the video, and he will make up the lost revenue with that, but it makes it essentially impossible to refine the fingers for a profit. The sellers are selling for the price they are able to get. A few are paying that price, so it just makes the who process unprofitable.
Well, at least folks have a place to check before spending their hard-earned fake paper dollars on the over-priced scrap.
@@sreetips true true. I appreciate the work you do. Have you thought about setting up a patreon page?
No
I know it's maddening to think about doing this, but it seems like a lot of those foils are clinging to the fingers just barely and could be dislodged by some sort of scrubbing/abrasion or pressurized liquid washing...would it be worth it to have a simple electric toothbrush to take to each finger as you sort through them one-by-one? Would it increase your yield/shorten processing time by any significant measure?
As always, wonderful work and education Mr. Sreetips. Thank you, sir!
Another option might be to use a product called a "waterpik", which is normally used as an alternative to dental floss.
@@prestontucker6171 Yes, but as Sreetips said, he wants to minimise the amout of waiste solution. Some vibration mechanism attached to bucked could help too, I will try that with my fingers... I mean gold fingers... not my fingers... you know...
Maybe something like this?
ua-cam.com/video/82HSuyH2iX8/v-deo.html
My thought was putting the acid solution bucket into a concrete mixer so the fingers tumble themselves
A viewer recommended a tight lid and shake the bucket with the A/P and fingers inside.
I really like your videos! Great job!
I use the same solution for etching printed circuit boards. If you added more hydrogen peroxide, the etchant would be stronger and would have taken a lot less time.
I did about 25 lbs this week alone. It's a lot of work brother! Save some of the used ap. Just put some in an empty hcl jug. Next time you need ap for something dump the used ap in with your hcl. No H2O2 needed. It won't hurt a thing. It will kick start the process and save you many days. Get two of the same size buckets. One will slide inside the other. Drill holes in the bottom of the top bucket like you did with the smaller one. It will take less solution to cover the materials and you can just use the handle on the top bucket to rotate the fingers around and drop it back down into the bottom bucket. 1 gallon of hcl will do about 10 lbs of fingers. To me the ap process is like silver. It creates a lottt of waste solution from washing.
That’s a good one. Thank you
Yes it's like adding a bit of burnt copper wire into fresh HCl to kick-start the solution 👍
@@sreetips Another thing i noticed was it seemed like you didn't have enough air going on there. Though it takes very little air in your waste solutions for cementing and stirring the ap process is different. It thrives and drives on air. The more the better. Air=time. You can get an air stone and use it in solution. It will hold up and not break down. That will give you smaller air bubbles and more surface air for the air to absorb more efficiently.
I’ll do it!
A great video and one that perfectly illustrates why I sopped dealing with these things. lol
The amount of time waiting and the volume of waste really bothered me. AP is an effective and cheap option but so slow and wasteful. If I do get any of these to process (typically I'll stockpile them until I have a lot) I usually resort to a nitric soak (in diluted 20-25% nitric acid). It's more expensive but WAY faster and I can recover much of the nitrate salts and produce more nitric later on. What took weeks of sitting for AP is usually done within 24hrs. Cleanup is much easier too as no precipitate forms when washing. For washing I found that putting all the fingers in a bucket with some water, sealing the lid well, and then just shaking the life out of it (roll on the floor too) does a fantastic job of separating all those stubborn foils.
That’s a great idea, thank you
On this video have all the step we want to follow ? I also have idea to follow this process brother,
Incredibly detailed, thank you.
Great experiment but I was interested to know if it was at least profitable. If you are going to continue to do this then I would suggest building a tumbler or obtaining a cheap cement mixer to release the fingers as then you have mechanical as well as chemical release action which would speed it up a lot. The acid will also dissolve any cement in left in the drum of a cement mixer so that will come up like new. That solid gold nugget at the end sure looked nice. Cheers Stuart 🇦🇺
Stuart, I normally don’t process much escrap because the yields are low and the amount of waste is high. I did this so I could create the video.
@@sreetips OK thanks for your reply and it was worthwhile as is was an excellent video 👍👍
By today's price of 63.79 per gram. He lost a few hundred dollars.
A small trick to cleaning foils off stuff like circuit boards or gold plated "smaller object" - which will reduce the "soak time" in the acid: Get a metal bucket with a metal lid (kinda sturdy). Here there are two versions. one is to just drill a hole, the other is to install a "power transfer thingy" (no clue what they are called in English. It's basically just a thing with a power drill bit (female part) on each end, with a mounting bracket in the middle so you can permanently use a power drill on one side and attach something else on the other side and having it isolated)
In both cases you take a "round" toilet cleaning brush (the sturdier quality the better - they will break occasionally though - so don't get a really expensive one 😀) drill a hole into the shaft of the toilet brush, and then add a drill bit to the hole. I'm personally using a bit which is used for making "bores" for bolts in metal plates. It's good because it fastens into the hole really well and binds well when it bottoms out the pre-drilled hole.
Now MAKE SURE to rinse off all the acid before doing this. The metal bucket will not be happy if you don't. dump a few handfuls (the more you add the harder it is to get it all and the more stress on the materials) into the metal bucket and put in some clean water. turn the "toilet brush" around though the hole in the lid slowly at first using a power drill with good speed control- and then go for a while at medium speed. Don't go full power since that will put more stress on the brush. This will make you able to get all the gold off much quicker - and it doesn't really make the cleanup that much dirtier.
I think your solution of ap was saturated hence the length of time taken to remove the foil's.
Those sellers should be trimming those fingers a lot closer so you probably have had more copper and mlccs ect for the HCl to tackle.
Beautiful foils though 😉👍
Yes, I think so too, just some water could speed the process...
I love how.you use vintage corningware. I love it!😊
I buy the Corning ware at yard sales.
Not being a chemist or an engineer I found this very interesting. I would think using a flat rack system would speed up the acid soak process. Meaning all the trimmings laying flat instead of all clustered together. Either way, spending more than the yield is going backwards. But thank you none the less for a really informative vid.
Recently, I used hot dilute nitric. Got those foils off in a day.
$1000 (excluding time, materials, equipment, etc.) for 9.6 grams of gold currently valued at ~$560 OUCH
I just commented the same exact thing!
Yes, I'd like it if he included the cost of chemicals and other consumables in the process along with his total hours labor at the end.
Where do you get $1000? He said the first two bags were $100, altogether and the other two bags were $400 together, not each.
He paid $500.
@@insolentjaguar With the cost of two gallons of muriatic acid and the four bags he just about broke even.
It's his hobby. You dont make money playing golf or camping or whatever you do with your time and money. Plus he gets you tube revenue and sells on eBay for above spot.
Man kinda nailed your estimated yield.
Big time KUDOS to you bro. You've got the patience of an Oyster.
Thank you for finally rubbing them off by hand! I was getting anxiety! I would have done that at 24 hours, lol.
You the man 👍👍
This is a very informative video but unless I am missing something, the lesson is that one must be VERY careful when extracting gold from electronic scrap that the cost of the scrap is not too high. If I did my math right, 9.6gm of gold is worth about $534 as of 24 July 2022 and you spent $1000 on the scrap and an additional amount on the chemicals which yields a substantial loss.
I was just thinking the same thing. I know he said grossly over priced but holy crap that's bad. Even to break even would have to be less than 50 dollars a pound in scrap. Not over a 100 lol
Now you know the truth about how much this scrap will yield and how much it’s actually really worth.
Getting the foils off always seemed crazy to me.
Surely it'd be easier to dissolve away the PCB material and then just filter out the Copper/Gold and process it normally.
The common FR4 PCB material is basically an expoxide, so epoxy solvent from home depot might work.
Needs some experiments, of course ;)
The first half of the video I was on my way out to start scrapping used electronics,the second half I said screw that 😂.....Cool content regardless..Thanks
Hey Sreetips!
How do you remedy having too much nitric in solution (in aqua regia after dissolving gold) that when you add stump out (like a lot) I keep getting stannous tests showing gold still in solution. Do I need to neutralize the nitric first somehow?
Thanks!
First, and most effective, is to add just enough nitric to just dissolve the gold. If done correctly theres no need to denoxx because there won’t be any excess nitric to remove. Second, takes a little longer, evaporate the gold solution down to a syrup until all the fumes disappear, then rehydrate with HCl before adding SMB. Finally, put the gold solution in an extra large beaker to avoid a boil over. Then just keep adding SMB until all the excess nitric gets consumed and the gold stays down and doesn’t try to instantly redissolve, because all the excess nitric is gone from the SMB reaction.
Ever try urea before smb? Seems to work
No, I don’t have any urea.
Yessir this comment was before you enlightened me that was old outdated tek...sure appreciate you being here
Seems like the more efficient way to make money is to sell the fingers to the refiners…this is way too much work with nasty chemicals. Final calculation has to exclude time spent and chemical disposal costs
Have you tried dynamite? I'm fairly certain that would separate the foil from the boards. Don't try it in the fume hood.
not sure about that, could separate fingers from hands no doubt, but foils are connected to base metals very well. I do not see any good way how to insert dynamite between base metal and gold foil. Sounds laborous. May be small explosion near the bucket could give it a stir or burning dynamite could give some needed heat. Other than that is dynamite just overblow...
No
So $1000 worth of gold plated clip offs yielded a month later about $570 in gold. Also needed several hundred $ in equipment. The muriatic acid fumes and the brown fumes above the nitric acid treatment are quite toxic and the muriatic acid fumes will result in any ferrous metal within 10-20 yds in a closed space rusting solid over weeks.
Yup, getting pure gold, from any source, is never quick, easy, or cheap.
That is a lot of work. I thank you my friend this is an interesting process.
You remarked on the dark motor oil color of the used AP solution, and I noticed it was exactly the same color as your Stannous Chloride test indicating gold. is there a possibility there is any Tin under those foils that dissolved in your HCl and made a batch of Stannous Chloride which is binding up some of your gold in that dark solution?
thats a question along the same line as my own, i was thinking the black acid would have gold in solution since the peroxide in HCl was used in another video to refine gold... but now you mention the stannous test and for sure there is tin in the solder and the acid provides the chloride so it makes sense that stannous chloride has formed and dropped some gold as black dust, but most of it went thru the filter, only a little got tipped off the top and not filtered... and the filters went in the AR so only a little bit got lost to the process. The big surprise was how stubborn the fingers were to hold onto the boards...
@@m3sca1 I am sure some of the gold went into solution, it is correct to use car battery electrolyte instead of HCL ..
@@hugglv8090 "car battery electrolyte" is just sulfuric acid and deionised water. It won't work
@@scrappydoo7887 works great with H2O2
@@hugglv8090 that's because you are making piranha solutions. It's extremely dangerous and not fit for this purpose
So the goal is to dissolve the base metals off of the gold foils. But the gold protects the base metals from being directly exposed to the acid, and the solder mask is doing the same thing and is also not really bothered by the acid since I think it is polyester. I wonder if some physical damage like smashing them with a hammer/grinding the PCB material up in a garbage paper shredder would allow the acid to get at the base metals quicker. Don't think that incineration is the way, the stuff they make PCB with is pretty bad stuff when burned.
Gold protects base metals from oxidation from normal enviroment and is there for better conductivity. Acid finds the way, as there are cuts in base metals, also whe cutting PCBs they bend and crack (I trimm fingers myself). Acid and bubles just need some time, that is all. Boiling could speed the process from weeks to hours, good for few fingers in oone day, but at this scale is patience better way...
I'm just wondering that if at the step where you cut the fingers off, would it be worth smashing them up at that time. You are already doing physical work to trim off the fingers, if the next step after that is to bash them with a mini-sledge hammer in a cotton bag for a minute or two, but it reduces the time in the bubbler--it might be worth it. An extra minute or two now, saves hours later? Sandpaper would also help, but it might introduce grit into the mix.
@@spokehedz You know, you do not have to blow the bubbles by your mouth, or stand there and spin some wheel by hand. Acid works 24/7. Just wait. If you smash the fingers, then you have bunch of small bits of PCB, hard to divide from gold foils. The less small junk, the better. Patience man, patience...
No computers were harmed in the making of this video... They were already dead.
Listen i know exactly fuck all about chemistry, and even less about practical solutions for extraction of gold.
All I know is, you took a bucket full of pcb, and through intelligence and diligence, "turned it into" a fat lil gorgeous nugget of gold.
And that, is super fuckin cool to my little pleeb brain.
Wonder if anyone ever tried agitation and friction to help remove the stubborn foils from the fingers after waiting a couple weeks of soaking? Something like a perforated spinning drum to tumble them in to speed up the process. I know it's just an experiment but I'm super impatient with things like that so I can't help but think of ways to make it go faster haha.
I was thinking the same (as I'm sure many others), and I do know that jewelry cleaning machines use ultrasound to vibrate things to clean it. I'm sure Sreetips has a jewelry cleaner but not sure if that would work on this scale.
poormans version would be woodsander with bungee cords outside the bucket..
A gold recovery washing machine :D
@@ToniThePerkele - that’s funny. Have you ever watched the Canadian show Red Green? Your poor man’s version sounds like something Red Green would try, along with plenty of duct tape.
Exactly what I was thinking. A tumbler would make short work out of this
I pause the video once you weigh the fingers. You may not brake even. And my guess would 7 to 9 grams of gold. Thumbs up👍
Depends how you measure "break even". The gold won't pay for the fingers but the views of the video just might. Sreetips is demonstrating a modified process and many viewers will find it interesting. Income from the video may be enough to cover the overpriced fingers.
@@roberthayward9299 exactly. Plus knowing Kevin he's also getting enjoyment out it too and there's a ton of value in that. I don't think it's ever been about the money. Just the joy of doing it and spreading the knowledge 👍
Very interesting. Not something that I would do, but thanks for sharing I really enjoyed watching it 👍🏻
That was fascinating to watch, thanks very much.👍👍👍
Hi buddy , I have watched your channel four a long time and love it ! However when it comes to computer scrap , I feel you are missing some steps first priories ( stick the scrap in a tin in a fire with holes around the top of the tin ) next a ball mill mine is a rolling gas’s cylinder with steel bolus balls in it . I flush the carbon and fibre from the metal , a magnet removes the steel and I follow you from there. PS this requires more lead stripping . I pickup computer scrap at the local dump for around $ 2 Australian the copper is a important part of the deal , cheers
You don't do that with gold fingers. All it does is creates more hassle.
There's nothing to be gained from the milling of the fibre on the fingers.
If you are running IC chips then burning and milling is required to free up the gold
Bama
Lol let’s go gentleman
both of you gentlemen are amazing
@@rickydona919 hey 💪👍
@@VendettaProspecting hey 💪💪
Might I suggest some sort of tumbler like a rock tumbler or concrete mixer. Would shorten the leaf removal dramatically.
Agitation is the key
Great video!
I like how you cut the bags open while telling it's overpriced.
You deserved a better price man💪🏻
Very interesting video. Wonder if u could use a wire bush t scrap off the big pieces ?
Possibly
Was going to like the video until you hit the sound button 😂 only kidding really enjoyed watching this as there's alot of work but also skill ( as i skipped science classes at school) so cool video 👍
I always wondered how that was done, thanks for sharing.
there is gold in the green and dark colored water, it can be extracted also, and silver
This is fascinating, what a cool process!!❤
Awesome videos! And great tips! One quick question for me though. When you rinse the gold foils out of the bucket around the 15:30 mark are you just using distilled water or is that another acid solution?
Nevermind. You answered my question five minutes later. lol
I wondered if you could have chucked an impeller into a drill and use it to agitate the fingers in the acid peroxide solution to release the fingers quicker? Alternatively, putting the finger boards through a blender or crusher to reduce sample sizes may have reduced your processing times and material costs. At the current price of gold I think you probably lost money on raw materials, acids, peroxide and other reagents.
Interesting process, thanks for sharing. Cheers
hi @sreetips. thank you for these videos. quick question. if we don't have fumehood and are refining outside with nitric. what kind of protective mask and gloves do you recommend? thanks!
I use 3M P95 mask and nitrile gloves.
@@sreetips started my first 2 experiments: AMD pins and PBC boards. first batch spilled over lol; used small beaker and too much nitric; spilled over again when i put it on heat; transferred to larger beaker. PCB boards worked perfectly. put pcb's in dilute nitric in large bucket and it removed the foils very nicely over night. no need for messy hcl/peroxide method. the AMD pins are in a thick green solution. trying to figure out how to proceed.
Thanks for your hard work. I thoroughly enjoyed the video. Too bad the gold can't won't fall off using gold deplating.
Get a mesh strainer and place the rest of PCB with remaining gold foils, then place it in an ultrasonic cleaning machine with solution and allow to run for a few minutes in order to get the remaining gold foils of the PCB. That should save you considerable time having to manually remove the gold foils from the remaining PCB by hand.
Dave, Al here. Interrsting to finally see you doing this after 34 years... I will get back to you
pool pH minus - NaHSO4 and any nitrate should form nitric acid, this diluted can work well for scrapping electronics
I think this experiment proved thst trying to do very large batches is time intensive as you have to wait a very long time for the acid to release the foils. I think small batches are much faster and its easier to ensure that you recover every single speck of gold possible with less labor and waiting.