Gold and silver from computers

[John1397]

The ad says Dell will use gold and silver to make jewelry from computers where is the silver besides in the soldier which recyclers say is to small to be reclaimed

[patio]

See Here...

Not a pretty site...

Also...

[DaveLembke]

Computers ages ago, some of the 4000 and 7400 series chips legs were tinned in a silver rich tinning process. But modern computers there is a very very small amount of silver in leadless solders. It would take a great amount of processing to get the silver separated out of it. I can see gold reclaimation being a money maker with the right arrangement since gold is $1337 an ounce but silver is just $17.21 an ounce and the amount of leadless solder to process to get an ounce to me just seems like the cost of this far exceeds the small profit to be made.

[BC_Programmer]

Tantalum Capacitors use a silver-plated cathode, from what I can find. It's also (allegedly, from what I can find) used sparingly for traces where it won't be exposed to corrosion. It's also sometimes a component of Thermal Pastes and Thermal Pads.

[John1397]

The now outdated crt tv and monitors usually yield $10 a little copper a little aluminum some screws, diodes for your spare parts box. Ten degassing coils unwind the tape unwind the wire has around 250' cut in to five pieces gives you 50' do this ten times you get a nice heavy piece of copper wire rewind the old tape back on you now have a 50' 12 gauge copper wire with insulation. Downfall it takes two hours to do.

[DaveLembke]

Downfall it takes two hours to do.

And dumps these days charge for the darn CRT tube disposal. Doesn't matter if complete TV or just a picture tube, they have a flat fee that they get people on. I have 2 picture tubes in loft of my barn, was able to scrap the rest of 2 TV sets for free but the tubes cost to get rid of properly. I dont mind 2 picture tubes in storage that dont take up much space to avoid a $40 fee. But the 27" TV's were the old monsters. One of them I gutted and gave the TV cabinet that the RCA TV was in to a friend who wanted that 70s early 80s look with a modern flat screen mounted in the space where the picture tube use to be. Square CRT vs WideScreen TV though made for a not so perfect fit but some carpentry work and the right color stain and it looks like it belongs vs gaps.