Welcome to Boardsort™ - Learn - Sell - Profit -

Learn to properly Sort, Sell, and Profit from your electronic scrap material.
It is currently Thu Mar 28, 2024 4:38 pm


Post new topic Reply to topic  [ 7 posts ] 
Author Message
PostPosted: Fri Jun 12, 2020 3:02 pm 
Site Admin
User avatar

Joined: Tue Feb 03, 2015 6:57 pm
Posts: 9752
Location: Low DOS
This is the only time I will cover this extensively. This will be the only thread post I allow a general discussion for refining.

i will not help. Period. Full stop. I will assume you understand the risks involved in refining. Acids. Bases. How to neutralise one or the other. Electricity. Chemical bonding. Etc. I simply accept if you try anything you do so at your own risk.
In fact I intend to go through and purge any instructions on refining over the coming future. Refining can be dangerous. You can get hurt. You can die. You can cause damage that makes you wish you were dead!


your stuck with it after refining. Chris doesn’t want anything treated with any acids or bases. He will not pay for any such items. You may be charged for disposal of such items. Do NOT send them to Boardsort.

First the obvious and most talked about on the internet. The ceramic Pentium Pro. Uh, NO.
The value is in the cap and pins. And honestly I’d take a single K5 over three P-Pros any day. If your after gold the pentium pro is a joke. There’s other materials in the pro that are expensive and keep its recycling value up there but gold is only one aspect of it. As always: YouTube is full of it. You can not get rich refining pentium pros for gold.

Where’s the gold?
We’ll start at the low end to keep the suspense up.
Pinless LGA chips.
Oh, fun. Seriously! These are so easy to refine the gold from! Just drop them in acid and wait. Lol.

Gold pins. Gold pin CPUs. Same thing. Quick and easy.

Caps. Again, quick and easy. Also more gold than pins. Popping caps takes practice but once you get the hang of it it’s a quick process. Top caps are easy. Flip chip caps, not so much. Cut the pins and then treat them like LGAs.

CPUs. Generally a hard task. You need to mill them to get high end results. A step commonly left out of the YouTube videos. The numbers they tell you to make sponsors happy and hook you are for milled refining; but the process they often show is simply cracking and breaking, if anything at all. Same thing do all gold containing components.

Grail points:
Starting on the low end: Pentium pro, k62 gold cap, original Winchip flip chip.

K5, K6 from AMD. Thick heavy nickel and tungsten caps with a heavy gold plate. Despite the bright colour (the lighter the colour the les gold in general) these are actually fairly expensive. The colour comes from the plating process. These aren’t electroplated like most caps. They are sprayed in multiple layers. Each thin layer on top of the previous.


Intel 80486, AM386, IBM PowerPC, last 80s Motorola long dip gold caps. All have easily removable caps.

DIP chips with gold caps. 8080, 8086, 8065, AM 2650, Motorola 2k and 4K series etc. Heavy plated pins. Gold caps. Easy access.

4000 series Intel chips. 300 series bell chips. Old B&W ICs. Hammond organ controllers.
Mill the chips. Lots of gold

Pre late 80s tripod capacitors and resistors. Look like the alien things from War of the Worlds. The oils are a problem. But major gold to weight ratios.

Gold fuses. Gold vacuum tubes. Obviously glass is an issue. But nearly pure gold. No refining required. You’ll only find this at a reasonable price still installed in equipment. Don’t buy them alone for the gold. You will overpay for it.

The real holy grail!
Soviet pre 1985 dip ICs.
It’s hit or miss but many were made with the pins being a bent (l shaped) gold plated wedge. The gold, having no real value (comparatively) to the Soviet society, was not a cost factor in this design. So, they plated the entire pin; thickly. The inferior die manufacturing makes these real easy to split with experience.
Split the chip. Remove the pins. Scoop out the internals. Refine.
White and purple are the easiest to break.
Black ceramics are a different design where the top sits over and around the bottom.
Grey ceramics are one piece. And need to be milled. They are baked wet powder to make a solid ceramic package.

So there you have it Boardsort users! The true holy grail.
If you have questions hit like or subs... oh... sorry.
Lol!
;)
Seriously. This will be an open discussion as long as you DO NOT ask me about the actual refining process. Did I miss something? Want to know more ?
CUS!

_________________
42 6F 61 72 64 73 6F 72 74 2E 63 6F 6D


Top
 Profile  
 
PostPosted: Sat Jun 13, 2020 7:45 am 

Joined: Mon Sep 02, 2019 12:00 am
Posts: 197
Thanks for the overview. It helps explain why the price Boardsort pays for the chips they buy is so varied. I have a question about an old Pentium ceramic I have. It is a monster. Measures about three inches square, has a gold cap, and originally had gold legs, which have all fallen off. I did not sell it for scrap, as I am amazed at the size and weight (3.5 oz) Guess I didn't have a question after all.


Top
 Profile  
 
PostPosted: Sat Jun 13, 2020 7:52 am 

Joined: Mon Sep 02, 2019 12:00 am
Posts: 197
I had to think hard and long, but I do have a question. Since the gold caps are not for electrical conduction, what is it for? Just to show a high quality chip, or as a metallic shield against outside radio interference, or to help dissipate the chip internal heat?


Top
 Profile  
 
PostPosted: Sat Jun 13, 2020 1:26 pm 
Site Admin
User avatar

Joined: Tue Feb 03, 2015 6:57 pm
Posts: 9752
Location: Low DOS
All the above.
The “cap” is actually a shield. It both protects the core and offers rf shielding.
Putting a shiny gold cap on top makes people fawn too!

As for your pentium: yes that was a beast of a chip. You think that’s heavy pick up a double sided gold K5.
IBM and DEC are the kings of custom heavy though.
IBM made a power 2 chip in the 80s for their minicomputers that was over two lbs. 400 series machines I believe but it’s been a while. I worked on one once. Wat a beast to replace. It was so heavy you had one chance to line up the processor correct. Putting it on a table pins down bent all the pins.

DEC had a 4+ pound MCC that had 12 processors. The package was a 5X5 square.

Sadly in both cases 90-some percent of the weight is ceramic. But they quickly make the wtf category of collectibles.

_________________
42 6F 61 72 64 73 6F 72 74 2E 63 6F 6D


Top
 Profile  
 
PostPosted: Sun Jun 14, 2020 10:48 am 
User avatar

Joined: Fri Feb 07, 2020 3:25 pm
Posts: 156
I had a question, I think it was sort of covered in the business section thread how to start an escrap business

What does BoardSort do with the material it buys, I used to think they refined material but I've gotten the impression through the forum they don't, so do they just broker material through their public purchasing to private buying firms or refiner?

_________________
Representin otown, central FL


Top
 Profile  
 
PostPosted: Sun Jun 14, 2020 1:05 pm 
Site Admin
User avatar

Joined: Tue Feb 03, 2015 6:57 pm
Posts: 9752
Location: Low DOS
Short and most accurate answer is I don’t know. Other than they are NOT a refiner.

I can make some guesses based on circumstantial information.
I know they are very high on the scrap business pyramid. Also known as the pre-sort pyramid.
I don’t know exactly how high but high enough that the demand for their buys is sorted. I can also tell they are not selling to a refinery directly either. At least not all of it. There’s a missing step between board and refining that it doesn’t sound like boardsort is doing. Boardsort buys 10 lbs from me, 30 lbs from you, 5000 lbs from him and her...! They then turn around and sell 50,000 pound truck-loads a dozen trailers or rail cars at a time. That sort of thing. Those next companies do the specialised selective depopulation for recovery, recycling, and refining.

_________________
42 6F 61 72 64 73 6F 72 74 2E 63 6F 6D


Top
 Profile  
 
PostPosted: Mon Jul 13, 2020 11:55 am 

Joined: Sun Oct 27, 2019 6:04 am
Posts: 44
Location: Casper, WY
I will never become a refiner. I figure there are others that are better equipped than myself to even get started.


Top
 Profile  
 
Display posts from previous:  Sort by  
Post new topic Reply to topic  [ 7 posts ] 

All times are UTC - 5 hours [ DST ]


You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot post attachments in this forum

Jump to: