Some scrap merchants pay good money for gold plated boards, if there's a lot of gold plated chips; throw the whole board in the sack - if only the edge connectors are gold, shear them off with tinsnips and keep the rest of the board for component harvesting.found a bunch of boards with "Gold" pin etc. what do I need to do with these??
You can etch the copper tracks out from under the gold plating - but it takes weeks, even months and it'll cost more in ferric-chloride than the gold is worth.I have wondered how much effort is required to scavenge some 50 micron thick gold plating, as in, how could that possibly be profitable? I guess it is profitable, but not for half a dozen boards. Too much up-front investment to earn it back in a day. Sell them to somebody that is running a large batch.
A few decades ago I gave about 1/2 dozen boards that had all the copper area overplated with gold, to a local bloke who frequently weighs in scrap - about a week later he came up to me and handed me nearly 10GBP - in those days that would pay for a pretty good ****-up, 2 nights running.depending on how many boards you have its not worth the time/gas,etc... just throw them in the trash (depending on what country you are in) and move on.
Our "scrapper" wants at least a few 50 Gallon drums filled to the brim with PCB's before they even look at it.. We keep all our scrap and once or twice a year fill up a semi trailer with it. (our scrap consists of PCB's/copper wire/fabricated aluminum and steel/copper bus bars,etc..)
You can dissolve the gold off the copper tracks (if you can remove the solder resist without abrading away most of the gold!) with mercury - again, probably not economically viable, and mercury is very toxic - especially when you have to boil it off with a blowtorch!Gold has a density of 19 grams/cc and, at a plating thickness of just 50 microns, a 10 cm x 10 cm plated will take 0.5cc of gold and weigh 9.5 grams. That is 1/3 ounce or $400 at todays rates.
I am surprised so I would appreciate that someone checks my math.
I have no idea how much it will cost to recover (remove) the gold from a PCB or separated it from the tin solder.
The answer is "substantially less then the reclaimed gold is worth."I have no idea how much it will cost to recover (remove) the gold from a PCB or separated it from the tin solder.
by Jake Hertz
by Aaron Carman
by Duane Benson
by Duane Benson