Alondro77

This test compares the silver content in monolithic ceramic capacitors from 2006 and upward. I don't test for palladium in these, because by 2006, palladium prices were very high and it simply wasn't used for MLCCs anymore. But, I figured silver MIGHT be... at least in SOME boards. Surprisingly enough, the most modern ones had some silver! Enough from 5 grams of MLCCs to make processing a bunch of them worthwhile. As I mention in the vid, those MLCCs came from high-end sound boards. They were Sony and Panasonic, each with several gold-containing BGA cards. So they were of MUCH higher quality than the boards I took the older MLCCs from, which were mostly hard drive motherboards. The lesson: Sort your boards by PRODUCTION QUALITY, not necessarily just by age! If you have aerospace or military-grade stuff, don't look down on it just because it's newer!

The foil that came off this one part when I removed the base metals off a bunch of parts was thicker than aluminum foil and I could actually detect a little heft to it when it was in my hand! That one foil could have been as much as half a gram! You never know what you'll find when you get a batch of old parts from industrial equipment.

I'm showing the simple method to recover copper from e-waste solutions. Take your concentrated copper-containing waste and dilute with water 1 unit of concentrate to 4 units of water. Let sit in a warm spot until it turns clear blue and solids settle out. Take your jar and make a bimetal setup as you see in the video, with a wire connecting the iron and copper pieces which remains outside the solution. Then pour the copper solution into the jar and let the reaction run! It usually takes 4 days to complete the reduction into copper crystals. If left in there after the copper is reduced, other metals can begin to reduce, such as cobalt, tantalum, and others less reactive than iron; which will form a dark black powder on the iron.

Here we see that not only do these weakly-magnetic MLCCs contain silver, they're also STRONGLY positive for PALLADIUM!!! So, yeah, don't throw them out! You could be trashing a fortune! Pay attention to the magnets you use, and try to pick the best ones for the job. Discerning between those with SOME PMs, vs those that have just nickel electrodes is incredibly important! And then there are the crucial processing steps and pitfalls to avoid, such as not cleaning out all the chlorides before adding nitric acid to the solids. Study a lot, and then: Practice, practice, practice!!! Don't do a big batch until you perfectly run a small batch!

Some people toss the MLCCs that are somewhat magnetic. DON'T DO THAT! Some of them have SERIOUS value in them! In this and the follow-up video, I show that both silver and palladium are present in a small sample of weakly-magnetic MLCCs. First I dissolved the base metals with HCl, washed the solids twice with hot distilled water to remove all traces of chlorine, then added a little dilute nitric until all visible metal had dissolved. I let the 'dust' settle out (mostly titanium oxide from the MLCC ceramic), and drew out some aliquots of the clear solution for testing. Behold the results!

Many people scrapping ewaste end up with GALLONS of concentrated acid-metal liquid waste. Here's a simple method to swiftly clean out the copper and traces of other metals less reactive than iron. You basically turn it into a simple battery, and power its own cleanup!

This is probably the last pin recovery vid for a while, unless I run into some other tricky types of arrays. The motherboard processing won't be for a while. I've still got lots of high-grade 80's-90's telecom boards to strip down! Those take priority, with their larger components that are easy to remove.

Tips for getting the best bits of another type of pin you'll find on old boards. There are a couple more types to demonstrate after this, including the tiny pins and contacts you'll find on motherboards for laptops.

More tips on another type of pin array you'll encounter in your electronics scrapping!

In this little series I give some tips on how to easily remove some of the various types of gold-plated pins and contacts one will encounter when scrapping e-waste. Some are tricky and developing a good method will speed up the process dramatically to get a result of clean pins ready for processing. Here I show the tools I use, demonstrate the methods, and even show a tip on minimizing the material you'll have to process to get the best yield from lower-grade pins.

Tantalum capacitors are a semi-valuable component with both tantalum AND silver! Here's what they look like outside and on the INSIDE, so you can see where the valuable metals are and what they look like. Tantalum is one metal you stock up on and watch the price. It can vary wildly, so look at the price history and wait for a peak! Oh, also like and subscribe. I guess I should start reminding people to do that. :]

A few simple tips on getting those tiny capacitors off the circuit boards without damaging the electrodes, which is where all your precious metals will be located

Here I show a small test of dissolving silver-plated electronics pieces with Rooto sulfuric acid-based drain cleaner. I include some of the important points to consider when using this method to dissolve metals. Keep the volume low in the beaker, have as much ventilation as possible, avoid the fumes when it begins to bubble, and don't overheat it. The reaction starts at 80C (176F), and there's no need to heat it much above that. Use ONLY glassware made for high temperatures. Oven-safe glass will withstand it, though I have plenty of formal Pyrex lab glassware. I'm testing how well sulfuric works with these plated bits, since nitric is double the price or sulfuric, and hydrochloric can cause loss of some silver as silver chloride stuck in the bottom gunk of the initial reaction vessel. It would be far more economical to process silver plated components with sulfuric. Alternatively, I can melt the plated bits into a bar and use a copper sulfate electrolysis cell to remove the copper and other metals (silver and palladium will form 'slimes' under the anode)... but it'll be a while before I can make a place to set that apparatus up!

My cat Sarah loves to play with her little toy mouse on the stairs after she eats. Then she gets tired and goes to sleep. That's her morning routine every day!

Another little vid with an easy way to tell these common caps from the nice relay switches on old circuit boards. Relay switches are GREAT for silver and gold recovery, since the precious metal is conveniently concentrated on the contact buttons. Also good for copper. The coil is usually easy to pop out and the steel rod removed with pliers. Now, if you have the proper testing equipment, and can remove them intact, the foil capacitors can be potentially valuable. Some of those ARE desirable for resale... but you have to be able to test their capacitance. They can degrade from heavy use, so no one will buy them if you can't confirm they still work well. They're not valuable enough to go out and buy all the equipment for that if you don't already have it. But if you have it already, you can make a few bucks apiece on those caps.

I show the differences between various types of tantalum capacitors scrappers may encounter in more 'modern' electronics, roughly from the late 70's to mid-1990's, in high-grade electronics. And I also show a few little capacitors with the same yellow epoxy resin/ceramic which are NOT tantalum caps, but could be worth saving for other metals... such as silver and palladium.

A quick look at some circa-1980's boards from old tube TVs. These are great for scrappers who also like to recover base metals. They often have thick coils of copper wire and big aluminum heat sinks, which are easy to yank apart. There are also tidbits of other things worth recovering in them, and here I go over roughly what you can expect to find on the typical boards of that bygone era of electronics. As I mention, they're not all the same. Some will be richer than others, so always pay close attention to what's present, and see if you can find where they were made. USSR-made stuff had a lot more PMs than devices made elsewhere. Capacitors from there frequently contained huge amounts of silver and palladium!

I'm documenting some simple methods of dealing with common circuit board components which LOOK the same, but often contain very different materials depending upon when and where they were made. Some, like the monolithic ceramic capacitors (MLCCs) can have electrodes that are palladium, silver, nickel, or a combination. Here's a simple way to sort them into rough categories of value.

Here is one of the SCARY DANGEROUS Dr. Seuss books that is SO OFFENSIVE it had to be BANNED FROM EXISTENCE!! .... Because of a single little image of a Chinese boy eating with chopsticks... But these same A-holes want 'kiddie diddling' books in schools, and now even overt pornography... they're going out of their way to slip these perverse highly graphic things into schools, because I'm going to just assume they're ALL 'Epsteins'. But Dr. Seuss is 'too offensive'... there is no reasoning with such insanity. STOP LISTENING TO THESE LUNATICS, PEOPLE!!!

This was my last time in Argentina, and the Lujan Zoo, hanging out with lovable old Allan. I got to spend quite a bit of time with him, fortunately. I can only describe the experience as absolute joy and contentment. There was also a big old tigress there who was very friendly as well. I need to sort out and convert the rest of the video clips I have, one of these days, but there's always too much else to do.

From 2018, Allan the lion is very fond of a type of lemon grass that grows around the zoo. When the keepers picked a bunch of it, he was very excited and followed them around until they gave him some. Some lions and tigers also love catnip, while others could care less! Allan's a gentle old fellow, who I came to know quite well. There are a couple longer vids I have of him from the same visit, which I need to covert from MTS (used a different camera because it had better video quality) but apparently Rumble doesn't like that format.

A fantastic experience in Argentina with an amiable lion! A couple years ago, you could still walk in with some of the lions and tigers at the zoo. I went to Argentina a total of 5 times just for this! The penultimate visit was in 2018, and I got to spend nearly 20 minutes total with big old Alan (the walking lion here), who was 16 years old at the time. Nothing has ever brought me more happiness than those times.

The rushing water sound in the video is a brief heavy rainshower that was happening while I was petting Allan the lion. I picked that day to visit specifically because of the cloudy and rainy weather, and during the day of the week most people were working! It meant no lines and a long time to spend with the lions! I got to hang out with Allan and his two sons for a full half-hour, and it was the most wonderful time of my life. I cannot emphasize enough how absolute the joy is to be accepted by a lion as a trusted friend. Allan knew me by voice after having visited there every year and taking as much time as I could with him each time, and as you can see, he was very relaxed. The only time I ever saw him 'excited' was when he was watching his keepers getting a bundle of lemon grass (in another clip I posted, he's chewing on some), which he really loves. And he was pacing about rapidly until they gave him some of it. Lion's manes aren't as rough as some people say. I'd actually say it's a little less course than horse hair.

Another from my 2017 visit to the Lujan Zoo. The tigers were more interested in their visitors than the lions. Lions tend to ignore you if they don't know you well, while tigers are curious about everyone new. This young one stayed put after hopping up on the stand, while the others roamed around, an adult tigress gave me a nuzzle and their friendly 'puffing' greeting while I was heading over.