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I tore down a Nexus tablet last night and got to thinking about the gold laminate wiring in it.

I played with it trying to get the gold wiring out of the laminate with little to no success.

I got to wondering is there a profitable way to get the wire and laminate separated?

Just to clarify here I am not looking to "home refine" the wire, all I want to get the wire out to sell as scrap.

?
Bulk. Major bulk.

Ok, assuming your sure up front the wire is gold, or gold plate, or gold alloy… etc.
There are two methods I know work, from experience. Both will cost more than the gold in the wires.

The easiest method is heating the laminate and removing the gold. The plastic melts below gold. But not by much.
What you need:
A graphite bowl.
2 Cobalt or titanium tweezers.
Temperature gloves.
Lots of patience.
And either:
A 1600• heat gun or a torch setup. MBP+O2 or MAP (which doesn’t really exist any more).
Gold melts at ​1947.5 •F

The plastic melts somewhat lower in the 1500• range. The goal is to melt the plastic, tweeze out the thin wire, and melt as much extra plastic and glue as you can of the very thin and now very pliable gold.

The other is a chemical bath which would eat/resolve the plastic leaving gold. And a toxic stew.

Using a torch and a large crucible, and enough wire… you could assembly line the process a bit.
In wouldn’t suggest the chemical method.

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O wow not quite what I expected.

Honestly I am not sure enough that the wire it self is gold of any form, nor do I have bulk quantity of it.

What I have may be just gold plated contacts and only a tiny bit I was going to fool with.

I have used liquid Berryman B-12 to dissolve plastic and even glue that holds HDD magnets to permalloy shields.

Well, there’s definitely gold. Not sure much of the wire is though. Likely tin.
The up side is heat treatment, tin melts far below gold so you get the plastic off and tin as a sticky soup and you can tweezer the gold hairs out. ;)

Like I said though, no matter how you go about doing this the cause is in the attempt, not the gold.

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