How to Depopulate Small Circuit Boards with a Hot Sand Bath Part 1 Gold Recovery
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 ก.ย. 2024
- Here is part 1 of the hot sand bath mini series. Part two will be using a gas grill do depopulate larger boards, and do it more quickly. For the really small boards, this process takes about a minute to loosen the solder once the sand is up to temp. One of the cons of this method is that these skillets are designed to stop heating once it is up to temp, and then kick back on when it drops a certain amount of degrees.
Sweet. A small propane torch or mapp gas can heat that sand. Use a 2in diameter cast iron pipe, a breakdrum, and two cinder blocks. Cut the pipe to allow the torch to stand on its own while blowing the flame into the pipe(make sure the air holes on torch remain outside the pipe or the flame will die). Drill 3-4 holes near the top of the break drum to allow air flow. Place cookie sheet with sand on drum. To control temp, control the air flow. So the pipe will have an endcap below the entrance of the torch. More air, more heat and vise versa. The cinder blocks are table legs for the drum. If i wasnt mobile id post a link.
I prefer this because it is relatively inexpensive and environemtally cleaner.
Moose, love your videos. I am just beginning to scrap and have learned a lot from you already. Thanks.....JD
sweet! If you have a lot it may be easier to use a gas grill as the temps will be more consistent and hotter, and take less time per board. Thanks!
With fairly low heat like this the fumes are minimal. especially compaired to other methods like torches or chemicals. Using a gas grill outdoors also reduces fumes as well. Thanks for watching!
thats an awesome idea! i wonder if you could add perlite or vermiculite for added absorption
Love your videos, I was wondering if you could make a video, what is worth keeping for scrap off circuit boards and what really not worth messing with.
I have a ton of cell phone and other boards covered with gold but ive learned the hard way about getting my acid full of tin and salts its so frustrating trying to get at the flakes
MOOOOOOSE, i love watching you tear things up! And i have gained lots of info from all the various videos you take the time to make. I feel bad for you when you are out there in the cold. suggestion: why not make yourself a small space with in your work area that would be smaller therefore easy to heat and keep yourself some what comfortable during those cold periods. just a couple sheets of foil faced insulation styro foam board do the trick. thanks for your dedication and hard work here on u tube!
Thanks for watching! I have since moved and now work out of my basement. Its warm in the winter and cool in the summer!
Dude thanks for your efforts. I have learned a lot from you. But I figured a lot over time. Not everything works for me like it does u .not sure what is different. Wish we could discuss by phone .I'm starting to have a lot of mixed acids in reserve. Fail by fail I never did card. But u are cool for being able to learn as u go.
Hi an thanks for watching! Not sure why you are having as many failures as you say you are having. There is a book that really helps, it is by CM Hoke, precious metal recovery and refining. I suggest that anyone who wants to get into this stuff should read that. It is a far better teacher than I am. Thanks!
I like the idea, but might be more helpful to zoom in a bit when cleaning off the board, so folks can see the parts actually come out of the board.
Good point! Will do when I make the next sand bath video using a gas grill. Thanks!
Moose Scrapper I look forward to seeing it!
Moose.....do you know eWaste Ben (Aussie) on TH-cam? Learned three major things from his vids this week. The latest is using a small air hammer with a chisel tip he ground sharper.....genius.
+pacoblancosmith I was sent a link to him just this week by a sub. Some pretty good stuff!
Whats on the inside of credit cards anything good?
Why kind of sand is it?
As it's nearly grilling time, were you up for taking a stab at part 2? :D
Yup, I got some boards that i want to try thi smethod on that are large and want to see how much heat it saps out of the sand.
Thanks for watching and Commenting!
Where's part ii
The temps dropped too quickly here and I wasn't able to make it. The solder was solidifying before I could tap it off!!! lol. Coming spring 2014 to a Tube near you!
Have you every try to depopulate a board with a hot air gun and if so which would you prefer ?
Hi and thanks for watching! I have actually, it takes a lot longer to do it that way. I prefer to use my gas bbq grill for the sand bath. It heats up fast, and I can do larger boards.
thanks Moose. I have a lot of board to do and only tried it once seen to had taken a long time for my sand to reach 400 deg . next time I will use less amount of sand to heat and see how that works . my sand may had beed to deep.
Beach sand and play sand. Why pay for it when i can get it free!! lol
I dont recover gold from board i sell them as scrap to other recovery experts.when you talked about the slimline i removed a board from one it was gold plate just like the video.e waste companies here cantgive me a positive price range on it though.they pay more for DVD boards if you can believe that
Tried this out today and it works nice. Beats the hell out of trying to remove the components with a torch and smelling burning circuit board. Thanks for another informative video.
Thanks! Using a bbq grill is even faster.
Can you scrap my life and I'll give you half what I'm worth?
Should add how long at what temperature as not to burn the plates.
Hey man your videos have helped me get in to doing this but I have been getting some crazy stuff that no one ever has.Should i make some videos on the stuff? I get lots of medical stuff like x-ray machines, hart beat monitors, dialysis machines, magnetic machines and lots of stuff I really dont even know what it is lol.Well I just wanted to say keep the videos coming and do you think that people would like videos on this weird stuff I get?have a good day
i reckon you should! sounds quite interesting
Don't forget the silver in there.....lol
Once again you have should me something priceless and new, thanks from me and my bank account!!!
3% palladium by weight, plus silver...these little guys weight adds up. I would say its worth it. There are plenty of people who buy them for recover.
uh oh....don't tell her I gave you the idea...
Hi watching your video in your new place and you strip heat sinks of boards and keeping $.10c alloy peaces and throwing away all chips with gold and all gold pins and now i don’t get why you even bother doing if you throw all the money away?????? I am giving up watching your shows it pisses me to watch you keep 10c and throw $20 or more each board away if you don’t presses the chips sell them but you lost my viewing
Thanks for the info and the way you break things down. I've been using a hot air gun( I call it Satans blow drier).
keep the garage door open with a fan to remove gas and smoke. I'm trying this sand method tomorrow!
Ran across this video and have some smaller boards that this will work on. I also was given a portable induction cooking station so I can at least heat up the sand a bit more energy efficiently. 😁
Hello Moose. I a pretty new to scrapping. This may be a dumb question, but here it is. Do you depopulate all your boards or do you recycle some intact? I really enjoy your videos!
Hello again today Moose. I'm just learning about hot sand bath. Questions: can you retrieve the solder from the sand? Would you want to? What do you do with the solder and steel pins you remove from boards? I have a lot of it. Of course mine contain a lot of extra steel. You might want to do a video on that whold scene sometime.
Hey moose I'm new to TH-cam and gold recovery love your channel that trick with the sand bath I think is Gona save me a lot of work keep up the good work.
Moose what happens to the ceramic capacitors? Don't you loose the small ones in the sand bath when you repopulate your board's that way? Thanks for the videos. ....
Hi Moose, how do you place the boards in the sand?? solder down? up? both?. and then I see when you take out the boards and scrape them, is that where you collect what your after. ??
Has anyone considered the fact that we're all saving these components for the gold silver ect. yet the used solder we just toss out is mostly silver.
i would of liked to have seen the process carried out completely, for authenticity purposes
Indeeditdoes has a video on processing them and in the comments he explains his findings of 2-3% palladium and he mentions the silver percentage as well.
Do a flat screen TV wondering how much valuable metals you can get from a broken tv
yes lets have a hot-plate next to a GOD DAMMED HAND GRENADE!!!!!
lmao...i had to replay it to see the hand grenade. That looks like the hand grenade that was on "The Scariest Scrap Ever" video and is only a paperweight lol. WTG Moose! Luv your videos!
i always enjoy seeing what your going to do next . i have learn some good scrap info from you
Good now tell us how to get the metals out of each of those things, then wat do we do with the empty green board, can that be refined into a raw material as well?
before sending circuitsboards off to scrap yards is best to completely depopulate the boards?
I will do the sand bath for the cell phones I have to scrap looks like it works good . thanks
Hey Moose. I tried the hot sand bath on some boards. Works great.
How do u get the gold and silver off that and what else needs to do to b able to sell tge gold and silver
Components side down? Also if you have enough room why couldn't you use this on larger boards?
Moose, Me again Jimmy. Does the hot sand method work on depopulating good mother boards? Second, can I use the bubbler method to lift the foils? Or should I just salvage the goodies and forget about the boards? I cant believe I threw so much out years ago when I first tried.Thanks much.
James Johnson Hi there, the hot sand bath does not work well on larger boards. IT will work, but take s a lot longer to heat up the larger surface. The air bubbler can be used to remove the foils. Are you referring to mother boards though? There are no foils on mother boards.
Hey moose. Enjoy the videos very much...Any thoughts on getting silver etc. out of the ceramic capacitors? Maybe nitric acid or HCL bath. Can't find any videos on processing them.
+Josh Garland indeeditdoes has a video on that very thing though it is for more advanced practices and does involve nitric acid as well as several steps.
Moses, can I check with you. At what temperature do the PCB dissolve? Can I use a molten salt bath machine that have a heat of 220 degree C , to dissolve the pcb board and extract the gold out? Thanks a lot of you can answer my question.
Necholas Ong Hi there, I do not know what temp the board dissolves at and have never heard of a molten salt bath. It is generally not a good idea to try to melt it all together and then try to get the gold out. Metals tend to alloy when melted and that makes the process a lot harder.
Good video. Do you which sands work best? What is the white sand you have there? I tried West Texas blow sand and after a few minutes I gave up because it didn't get hot enough. Could have been the skillet...a scrap job, no cord and control knob broken off, so I can't change the setting for heat. I will try again in the day time and let it set for longer.
I just use beach sand. I think the gas grill will work best though. These skillets do not have a very consistent heat. They tend to warm up then shut off until the temps go down and they max out right around the temp needed. Thanks for watching!
I think you are doing great! I have watched several channels and only watch a couple of people. You are one of them that I keep up with. I have collected a lot of material and have what Is needed to start using the AP method. I have some memory IC's from memory sticks. Could you do a video of using the AP method on memory chips?
Hi and thanks for watching! I already have videos on trimmed fingers and ic chips. Two separate processes. thanks!
Moose - Love your videos! How do you tell brass from bronze? And are those brass-colored electrical contacts really brass? Thanks -- Mitch
It can be hard to tell brass from bronze. Bronze for the most part is more reddish than brass, The contacts here are not brass they are gold.
Can I depopulate the whole board by soaking it all in HCI
This is great, so much cleaner, thanks for the tip! Hey Moose, where do you send your capacitors? Boardsort doesn't take them. Thanks.
The monolithics I am saving up in a really big jar, and the tantalum in a large flat rate box. Once those are full I will try them on ebay first to see if I can get the price I am looking for and then I will search around the web, I am an active member in certain groups that will buy these items however you have to be an active contributing member or you kind of get shunned.... Not my policies....
Hi I'm newish to this gold recovery and I just ran into a problem. I had an old remote from a cd player with lots of gold under a green thick film. It's been sitting for two days in muriatic acid and peroxide. The water has a light teal tint but no progress. I did notice if I scrape it the gold appears but sticks to my knife. Any suggestions
Anthony Holbrook Yup...patience. The green color is due to the copper layer under the gold being dissolved freeing the gold from the board. It can take a week easily depending on how far the AP has to eat under the gold foil. The green film on the board is called a solder mask. THat can be removed with hot water and Lye, soak for 10-20 minutes and it should brush off. Also, please note that the gold from just one remote will be hard to keep track of. Best to process things in quantity. Best of luck to you!
Sweet. A small propane torch or mapp gas can heat that sand. Use a 2in diameter cast iron pipe, a breakdrum, and two cinder blocks. Cut the pipe to allow the torch to stand on its own while blowing the flame into the pipe(make sure the air holes on torch remain outside the pipe or the flame will die). Drill 3-4 holes near the top of the break drum to allow air flow. Place cookie sheet with sand on drum. To control temp, control the air flow. So the pipe will have an endcap below the entrance of the torch. More air, more heat and vise versa. The cinder blocks are table legs for the drum. If i wasnt mobile id post a link.
lol nice! I love seeing home creations or solutions to problems. Thanks!
Mr. Scrapper, I pulled a brown board today that has silver lines running all over it. I've seen the gold lines and yellow lines before but not the silver colored. Do you know if this in fact silver?
it is very possible. One of the big reasons I do not do too much silver refining though is that it is only worth about $20 per ounce. Similar to gold, which is MUCH more dense, it takes a LOT of silver to make an ounce. I am just not sure that it would be worth it. I could be completely wrong though.
hey 'morning moose, great video, i'm using a heat gun but it takes more time and i'm doing cell phones only, is it worth to recover the monolithic ceramic capacitors>?
How much sand did you use in your electric skillet at 400 F and how long did it take to remove the small capacitors? Where you able to remove the larger components at the 400 F also?
I had about a half inch on the bottom. The skiletts temp is a lot lower than a gas grill or heat gun so for some items it can take longer. I had one piece in there for fiv eminutes and nothing budged.
good to know!! thanx
I have a couple heat sinks from LGA 755 socket motherboards where the fins are aluminum and the center of the heat sink is #2 copper that was hollowed out from the top. At the base is some steel that appears to be soldered to the aluminum and some copper in the center that makes contact with the CPU chip. Would a sand bath work here to allow me to separate the metals?
Likely not but not sure. If they are in one piece you will get more for selling them on ebay or you can sell I as a copper radiator. I find the ones that look like they have a copper bar at the bottom, you can separate with a chisel and a vice. Thanks for watching!
How long should it take to melt the solder? My skillet is at 400, full of sand, with the lid on and 15 minutes later, nothing's coming off
brotherbosco THe solder melts between 400-600 F so your skillet may not get hot enough.
Some pieces may fall in the sand but for the most part you are scraping them off with a blade or something else on a cookie sheet. you can shake, but not recommended as there will be scalding hot droplets of solder flying around if you do...lol
I was wondering about the gold motherboards. Do those actually have gold in them. If so could this methid be used to clean them up for an acid bath?
jorge montoya Hi and Thanks for watching! Gold mother boards are like bigfoot. Lots of people talk about them but I have never seen one, and I have scrapped 1000's of computers, There are mother boards, usually HP, that look gold in color but that is just a solder mask, a kind of silk screen or paint. Its not actual gold. As for the sand bath, you can depopulate a mother board with a sand bath however because the board is so big it draws a lot of heat out of the sand and takes a lot longer. It is faster to use other methods for large boards like a desoldering iron, air chisel, or heat gun and scraper.
nice job" im going out to buy a hot skillet i have some nice boards to clean up hay moose : what about the gold it looks like it stays on the board ? if so how would i get the gold off let me know in sure glade i found this site fred from san diego
fredie w Hi and thanks for watching! The gold plate does stay on the board. I have a video on gold recovery using A/P, or acid peroxide, both of which are bought at any hardware store. That will take the gold off.
Moose Your the best. You give the little guy some hope!
How do you process the square black boards tht look like they have silver in them . What are they and what is in them. Thanks.
Anthony Holbrook can you post a link to a picture?
I see this vid is older, but thanks man. Sooo much better! You DID do something great today!
lol.. thanks!
For beginners, what's a good way to tell the difference between gold and brass on boards? Thanks in advance
gold is most often where two things connect. brass is not often visible on boards accept for larger wire connectors and base metals under gold plated things like pins. After a while you become more able to tell the difference just by looking at it.
U never finished what u were saying lol
So, is the purpose of the sand bath to just remove things on the board or does it remove the gold as well and if so where does the gold go...in the sand?
the golden is so we're good to go
Tamara Reyna The sand bath is just to remove soldered things from the board.
i heard the mlcc are 35%. thats what my refiner has told me. I minght of got it wrong.
Is there a particular type of white sand to use?
This is how i do it too ,, nice and clean and almost no fumes . good vid Moose.
Oh, and couple of additional questions. What happens to the gold on the boards when you treat them with the hot sand bath (HSB)? And once you've HSB'd the boards, are they worth anything? Or should you just trashem? (Actually, that's three questions.) Thanks again -- Mitch
Gold stays on the board, then use a/p to get gold off the board. When done the board is worthless.
Moose Scrapper What if I already processed the boards but didn't know that I had to take off all the circuit board chips, capacitors, etc, Can i still go back and remove em or are they completely lost? I'll be posting a short video so u can see what I mean, thanx
Not sure, I think it varies depending on how much of the MCC you pull off the board, the size, etc. Originalfeets has a video on just the makeup of an MCC. I think it may have onfo on the silver percentage. Thanks for watching!
I have few questions/concerns:
1) when you cover the board in hot sand, wouldn't some of the Monolithic Ceramic capacitors come off and go into sand? What do you do to get them out?
2) How do you sort these things? I've heard of Ceramic capacitors and resistors on gold forums. how do you separate these from other electrical components(once you have a big container mix of everything)?
3) what do you do with the depopulated board? Can you sell it anywhere for the copper in it?
Thanks for sharing :)
great questions! 1- you can easily sift the sand with screen from like a screen door or window once the sand is cooled. You will also find that MCC's are magnetic so you can pull them out of the sand with a hard drive magnet or something. 2- I sort things out once they are on the cookie sheet and cooled. There are just a few categories that I sort into so its not that bad and anything really tiny I try not to fuss over. 3-The depopulated boards can be sold if your scrap yard takes low grade boards, just throw them in that pile. Otherwise I do not know of any places that will buy them if they are not gold plated. Thanks!
Thank you :)
Just found your channel. Subscribed Immediately. You rock.
Thanks!
How did u. Go about removing the gold plating from the circuit bored ??
By using tha acid peroxide method, You can also use the air bubbler method. I have videos on both. THanks!
Do they fall off in the sand or do u have to shake them out??
So... the reason for depopulating a board is to gain access to the gold or silver circuitry printed on it? (I'm new atthis if you couldn't tell).. Do I need to depopulate a board if I'm going to sell it by the pound? Does this change the scrap value of the board? Before chemically processing to remove gold, do I need to crush the board?
Hi Gene, welcome to the wide world of scrapping! The resons for depopping the board is so that the chemical processes used do not get contaminated with other metals. If you are going to sell it, do not depop the board, they will either not buy it or pay very little for it. Crushing the board is not generaly required unless you are using a pulverizer and shaker table (pretty expensive set up)
Moose Scrapper What if you crushed the boards with a hammer between old t-shirts or rags so as not to lose any content and then further blended the heck out of them in a heavy duty coffee grinder or industrial blender? Then perhaps your expensive shaker table could be a simple gold pan like they used in the days of '49? After that one could possibly take what gold flake separated from said pan and perhaps use a torch and crucible in order to melt it down into pourable gold? Then maybe melt it down again a few times and re-pour in order to remove as many impurities that may still be present? I don't know, I'm just thinking out loud! Great videos by the way and largely due to you I've entered the scrapping world with the help of some of the fellow scrappers out there.
How long should small boards be in hot sand ?
Thanks Moosescrapper. I think what you are doing is awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Roh ray Relma! Ranks!
Great job with the video. I am about to attempt my first gold recovery experiment, thank you for this tip because I was struggling with removing the components from ~100 various motherboards. (I picked up somewhere, that you don't want to put everything in the acid bath- "garbage in, garbage out") I am halfway inclined to record my experiment and where it stands now, just to verify I have my ducks in a row and I am on the right track before I get to the point-of-no-return. :)
Great video.... I will try that if i can swipe tha better halfs pan
Moose.... you are a copious of knowledge. I love the ways you demonstrate the scrapping venue. Keep it up, pay no attention to the fools. Do you know if there is gold in the ICC, large and small that seem to have stitching on the backs connected to green boards?
can you send a pic or a link to a pic?
suninitup@cebridge.net there I can send you pics.
Definitely a good way to go, there should be very minimal lead fumes, although I still hav a mask rated for them because hey why take a chance when you're doing a couple hundred motherboards?
I like chucking a load of ram sticks in and by the time I pick out the last one the next batch is ready, continual setup in a very small area. Quickly separate the monolithics from the ICs, then pyrolyse the ICs and grind. The monolithics are straight in the ball mill.
Sounds like you have a really sweet set up!
Moose Scrapper
I mainly deal with standard scrap (copper, steel aluminium etc) however I also have a small side line in e-scrap. I spend months saving it all up and processing it in one big go. So yeah I wear a mask, just got a new full face mask rather than the half face mask.
thanks. i must of heard it wrong. 30% less than i thought. dam.lol
Thank you for the video! It's much easier than I thought it would be. Personally, I would wear my multi-purpose respirator when scrapping with heat. If you don't have one, buy one a.s.a.p.! It's great for all sorts of projects. I even use mine when emptying a bag of lawn trimmings, and once I used it while waiting in line behind an old diesel car. Mine is a MSA Safety Works 817663 Multi-Purpose Respirator, currently $30 on Amazon. 3M makes a good one too, but it's more expensive.
Good stuff. I am not so discouraged in continuing my scrapping venture. Thank you for sharing. your knowledge, It really is a gold mine.
Thanks for watching!
Moose: Nice video. Sand bathes are the way to clean those boards.
Great Video. Gonna try it for all my bins of cell phone boards.
good idea I'm sorry I did'nt
think of it
Thanks for watching!
I love this method !!! I don't know much about e-scrap and have trying to learn alot more ! it's fascinating what figure out , thank you sir !!!!
Hi Moose! First of all, thanks for sharing your knowledge and answering my questions in one of your other vids! Much appreciated, Sir! My question here is: Do you think this is the best way to depopulate boards, if I want to recover precious metals from ist parts? Will there be much solder left on the gold plated pins and stuff? Thanks so much again..
Nice. But what now. What do you do with the parts and the clean board?
Hi and thanks for watching! There really is no one answer or video for that. To understand gold recovery from electronics is to understand that there are many different types of gold bearing materials and they often each have very different methods required to get the gold out. Once these boards are depopulated, it is important that you separate these items out by type, ie, monolithic ceramic capacitors on onr jar, flat packs in another, gold plated pins, tantalum capacitors, etc. Once you have a large enough quantity then you can start to process things or sell as is. In this case, the clean board can now be processed with the Acid Peroxide method to remove the gold foils from it. Keep in mind though that you need a lot of material to make it worth it. Check out videos from indeeditdoes, originalfeets, drew metalsmith, and geo for steps on further sorting and processing. Thanks!
Moose ...Have you processed any cell phone boards for the refinement of gold ? It seems that the hot sand bath should help in the process...Thanks rick
forgot to ask does the hot sand bath affect the mask on the boards ?
dixiespinner Hi and thanks fo watching! The hot sand bath is perfect for cell phone boards as they are small, heat up quick and there is typically not much solder on them. The hot sand bath does not affect the green solder mask on boards but a ten minute bath in hot water and lye makes it wipe off like syrop off glass. I don't do too many phone boards because I usually end up selling the phones whole for more money than there is gold in them.
This guys good I like how in all of your videos you break things down nice and easy ive just started with this hobby with my fresh batch of hcl coming tomorrow and as for the safety aspect wel im using a military chemical biological nuclear suit and respirator for the processes no chances taken. Keep up the good work my friend