Welcome to Boardsortâ„¢ - Learn - Sell - Profit -

Learn to properly Sort, Sell, and Profit from your electronic scrap material.
It is currently Tue Mar 19, 2024 5:21 am


Post new topic Reply to topic  [ 5 posts ] 
Author Message
PostPosted: Thu Feb 09, 2017 3:15 pm 

Joined: Fri Feb 21, 2014 12:30 pm
Posts: 3
I have heard that the key board printed circuit are stamped in silver and sandwiched in between two plastic layers
Has anyone tested to find out ?


Top
 Profile  
 
PostPosted: Thu Feb 09, 2017 9:45 pm 
Site Admin
User avatar

Joined: Tue Feb 03, 2015 6:57 pm
Posts: 9748
Location: Low DOS
If you're talking about the thin film layers yes they are commonly silver or nickel. Some gaming and specialist boards will have gold Mylar.

If your talking about the plastic circle cups in in cell phones the same as above only the design is different, small pressed beads instead of printed wiring trace.

So yes in the vast majority of cases there is nickel silver or gold. But it's not worth home refining. Many scrap buyers will accept it as a laminate wire or mixed low grade wire.

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


Top
 Profile  
 
PostPosted: Thu Feb 09, 2017 11:58 pm 

Joined: Fri Jan 31, 2014 12:53 pm
Posts: 467
I have never seen gold traces on keyboard mylars, but I have also never torn apart any gaming keyboards either :p

I can tell you that they silver trace ones contain about 1/4 of a gram of silver (about 15cents worth of silver) per sheet... they are not particularly easy to refine for profit on a small scale.

Last time I checked, boardsort did not buy them, but that was 4+ years ago... has anyone checked with them recently?


Top
 Profile  
 
PostPosted: Fri Feb 10, 2017 4:02 am 
Site Admin
User avatar

Joined: Tue Feb 03, 2015 6:57 pm
Posts: 9748
Location: Low DOS
Here's my totally random from nothing idea
98% of wire Mylar I've actually had tested that was grey was nickel.
1.9% was silver. And I've actually found a few silver palladium Mylars from razor and Logitech.
Both of those as well have had gold. But, most of their equipment is switched silver nickel cherry switches or not quite as good mtsb switches anyway so, ...

If you throw one or two in a giant pile of 5-10 lbs of wire nobody is going to complain, boardsort included. Reality is nobody is going to pay you silver content even if it is silver because it's expensive, selectively, to recover on these. There is only one way any major refinery uses to recover metal from flat wire, including LCD films, X-rays, and keyboard plastics. Hydro acidic distillation. That 15 cents MLS stated (today's base rate it's probably about 12) costs them about 10 cents to get to.
Nobody is going to flip out over one or two, and nobody is going to flip out over fake glass diamonds in a 995 palladium ring either. But your not going to get actual recovery for it.
If you strip insulated silver wire you'll get $15 per ounce for the 875 silver core. If you pull the silver out of laminate you'll get $15 per ounce for the 875 silver. If you hand someone an ounce of silver in a 2 lb block Of lucite your get $2 per lb. this flat laminate is the same thing.

There's a note up top here stickied that covers gold laminate. It's the same issue
Boardsort doesn't want 20 lbs of keyboard sheets. Nor do they want 20 lbs of gold laminate, nickel, silver. ...
Bottom line. If you have one and you're sending/bringing in, wire toss it in with the wire. No you're not getting paid anything (worthwhile) for it nor is anyone else going to pay you for it. It WILL however get properly recycled.

The inside scoop here. When I have lots (lbs) in a single batch I bring them in with my plastics to a local plastics company who buys my plastics (a long story posted elsewhere). I get 9 cents per lb. reason being they make custom displays with glossy sides (silveride aka Ag+Al) and they simply cut and melt and mold the bare silver plastic in (no idea how it works, they pay I smile). How many keyboards does it take to get one lb? Apx 250 80 key. 100-150 full size keyboards and over 500 base notebook laptops.

So that's as detailed as i can get on this overall.

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


Top
 Profile  
 
PostPosted: Mon Feb 13, 2017 12:14 pm 

Joined: Fri Feb 21, 2014 12:30 pm
Posts: 3
Thanks for the info Just what I wanted to find out


Top
 Profile  
 
Display posts from previous:  Sort by  
Post new topic Reply to topic  [ 5 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: