hey guys my name is Jason with Mount
Baker mining and metals and on today's
video we're gonna be smelting down some
of these CPUs and trying to recover the
gold out of them so we've got our CPUs
here and I'm sure you guys know a lot
more about these than I do but they're
there's a lot of gold in these I think
they're gold plated pins I think there's
some gold bonding wires inside and we're
gonna try and smelt them down and get
the gold out so I've got four that I'm
gonna use I've weighed them they weigh
105 grams and the first step is we're
gonna crush them down into smaller
pieces so we can mix them in our
crucible with some flux and these are
the four chips we're gonna be doing and
let me know which which of these has the
most gold in and I think these two are
the same but anyway there's the four
we're going to be doing so our first
step here is just going to be crush them
up break them up I'm just gonna hit them
with a hammer
they don't have to be dust but you know
I probably wanted about quarter inch and
smaller there you go that's about as
small as we need I don't know I don't
know what's got gold on here but we're
gonna just melt it all down and see what
we can recover all right here's all our
chips crushed up you can kind of see
them close up here there's that aluminum
piece I'm gonna throw that in there as
well but there's our nourish our chips
so now what makes up our flux and it
consists of three components there's
anhydrous borax lye and silica sand and
these are the same three components I
use for smelting or and I'm just going
to apply them here to smelt in these
CPUs down so I've got them mixed up I
used 100 grams of borax 100 grams Ally
and then 50 grams of silica I've added
30 grams of lead as a collector metal
and I'm just gonna put them in the
furnace melt everything down and hope
all the precious metals go to the bottom
and we can collect them now we got
everything in our crucible here we'll
get her on our furnace heat her up and
melt it all down
right after our poor there was a bunch
of ceramic chips left in the bottom that
crucible so here I'm scraping them out
and we ended up with I don't know maybe
10 20 grams of chips and some slag
leftover so we'll get these all crushed
up and see if we can get them panned out
just with a gold pan and see if there's
any precious metals or lead bb's or
anything left in there that might be a
value you know we had a little
microphone malfunction here but what I'm
trying to tell you is when you pour the
material into this cone mold when it's
molten the very dense material goes down
to the bottom of the cone and all the
slag floats on top but all your precious
metals in your lead collects down the
bottom of the cone here and then only
the glass and the flux and the slag stay
on top so you have two parts you have
the slag on top and then the metal on
the bottom and a little tap of the
hammer separates the metal from the slag
and we have our lead and precious metal
button
so I'm taking our lead button and I'm
just knocking the slag off so here's our
cleaned up button and all the metals
that we got molten are in this button so
the aluminum the copper the tin the
silver gold lead and now we'll take it
over the qpl furnace and we'll cue
pellet and oxidize all those base metals
away and be left with just the precious
metals alright so here's a little cue
pal furnace and here's our magnesia cue
pal I'm gonna take our lead button and
put it right in our magnesia cue pal and
that's gonna heat up to about seventeen
hundred and seventy-five degrees
Fahrenheit the lead will melt the oxides
that are formed also become molten at
about sixteen hundred and fifty degrees
Fahrenheit and once that happens the
oxides will start shedding off that
molten lead button and be absorbed by
the cue pal and all the base metal
oxides will end up being oxidized and
we'll be left with our precious metal
bead at the very bottom
so here's I'll check on our cue pal here
here's our Q pal and the oxides are
floating on top it just came up to
temperature so it's not quite there yet
but we'll check back on in five or ten
minutes and and check and see how it's
doing but I keep the door cracked a
little bit to let the oxygen circulate
in there and we'll just let that
reaction take place for a while we'll
check on our Q pal here and yeah our LED
buttons getting pretty small at this
point I I found out actually there was a
piece of steel that was in our lead and
so when the when the steel was floating
there on top of our lead button when the
lead oxide was touching the steel and
the iron in the piece of steel the lead
oxide was converting back to lead metal
and then it was oxidizing the iron and
then it had formed an iron coating of
rust essentially over our buttons so I
had to pluck that piece of steel out and
now the
action is is continuing in the LEDs
almost gone so we should have a button
here before too long so here's those
little chips and stuff that we had and
we're going to run it through this
little Beco pulverizer and the material
feeds down here into these between these
two discs and just this back disc goes
around and the material grinds up till
it can come out that little slot between
the disks and you can pull these off so
you can kind of see material feeds in
here and this disc goes around and it
just grinds up on these hardened discs
until it can come out that little
between the two plates
[Applause]
all right so here's our ground-up chips
from the crucible and I'm just going to
pay on these a little bit here just just
to check and see if we have any precious
metals pins or or little lead bb's or
whatever that didn't come out with our
lead collector metal and so let me just
get these panned down a little bit and
we'll check and see what we got well I
got a little cow magnet here and on the
back of one of those CPUs there was a
chunk of steel and I just threw it in
the pot not really thinking and it came
back and bit us in the end but there's a
bunch of the little steel pieces and
bb's and junk
probably ground up from the grinder as
well but I'm not seeing hard I'm not
seeing anything exciting in the pan go
pan down here again so it
nothing in therefore for gold so I think
all that shiny stuff is some of those
little silicon chips or what are the oil
silicon those little chips in the middle
and and you know the rest is just little
bits of ceramic and stuff so hopefully
all our gold in our led button in the
cue pail furnace and we'll see what we
can recover all right I think our
buttons froze here so we'll just take it
let it cool down some and see what color
it is you can see some of that iron
oxide junk around the edge of the cue
pail and so what I might do is I might
wait till this cools pull it out and get
a brand new cue pail and then riku
pellet just make sure it's all nice and
precious metal at that point so there's
there's our button it's real silvery
actually surprisingly I was hoping for
gold but we may have enough base metals
in there that I'm gonna get it weighed
and then riku pellet again with about
another 20 grams of lead just to see if
we can pull out some more those
impurities and and see if it really is
silver in there or if we got gold in
there that just being hidden by base
metals and there's our bead it weighs
1.07 grams so I've got just about 20
grams of lead here I'm gonna put that in
a fresh cue pail put our little bead in
there and see if we can recover a gold
looking button instead of a silver
looking button all right here we're
pulling her out for the second time let
that cool down and see what color we got
and here's our button after the second
cue pal it's still silver in color and
weighs 1.07 grams so it's exactly the
same weight that it was so we'll take it
over and get it
XR effed and see if we can figure out
what's in this thing
so there you have it according to the
XRF it's about two-thirds silver and
about 1/3 gold so that was a real
surprise to me I was not expecting to
have any silver I was hoping for pretty
much a pure gold bead so what do you
guys think where did all that silver
come from where those pins silver with
gold plating or was there silver inside
the CPU somewhere so let me know what
you think on that the other thing that I
would do differently next time
is I would take off that little steel
top piece that I thought was aluminum I
call it aluminum early in the video but
get that out of there that's just junk
that we don't want in our smelt and it
caused some problems for us but I would
also take our chips and I'd crush them
up with a hammer but then I'd grind them
through that little beak oh I don't know
what I was thinking I was you know
slipped my mind so if we can get them to
a powder form it might dissolve those
those ceramic chips a little bit better
so we can get a complete decomposition
of the smelt and recover more metal that
being said when I pan it out I didn't
see a whole lot of metal in there it was
mostly just the ceramic stuff and so I
don't think we lost a whole lot of
precious metals but it's always good to
have a complete decomposition of your
smelt so those are the things I would do
differently but all that being said we
still recovered a little over three
tenths of a gram of gold so it a ver
ajiz out to be about 1/10 of a gram per
CPU of those four I did I hope you guys
enjoyed the video thanks for watching
please let me know what you think and
what I could do better next time or
differently and if you guys have any
questions or comments please leave them
in the description below so thanks for
watching and we'll see on the next video
you