1000 RAM Stick Gold Recovery Challenge

Take 1000 RAM Sticks, Skim off the gold fingers, melt them down into a gold ingot, get tested for purity and sell.

That's what this challenge is all about, But mostly it's to see if we can recover gold from fingers to marketable purity without using any chemicals, just a soldering iron and down time.

So far skimming the fingers off has been fun, something that can be done in spare time although doing 1000 RAM sticks is a big job, the trick is to keep up to date by removing the gold fingers as you get the RAM, that way it will never be a big job and your fingers are ready to process when you are.

[eastbayartist]

Yes. Didnt want to use chemicals and make chemical waste. That's a great method thanks!

[zimmermansworkshop]

White Distilled Vinegar and Hydrogen Peroxide will get rid of the copper. Use an aquarium airpump and some hose to agitate it. Plus when you are done recovering gold, add some aluminum from a Coke can and it will drop the copper out of solution.

[tylerdavis]

I'm glad you shared this, this inspired me to make a ball mill to grind the foils to dust and separate the gold by specific gravity.

[karlbe]

I remove my fingers over a sturdy thick piece of white paper, folded 2 ways to make creases. This allows me to pour the foils into my collection jar easily. 60w soldering kicks but over my old 30watt model!

[dutchscrapper]

Thanks a lot for this video. If this works out well, I will definitely try this myself. Can't wait to see the next vid.

[nicknewberry]

Excellent idea for an experiment. I have refined with chemicals and I can tell you that if the gold was removed the way you are dong it and melted into a bead that the chemistry is much easier to handle. For the people that say it is a waste of time remind them how long they spend rinsing the gold foils off of each piece of pcb. Been there done that it looks like it doesnt take any longer the way you are doing it. And by the way it takes about a week to separate the gold foils from the circuit boards doing the common process of hcl and a long time rinsing depending on how many boards are being done. I really like what you are doing here. Im very interested in what results you get. Please keep me updated

[igor]

Hey Ben, Well done! this and all your videos. Thanks for putting them together. Perfect timing, I was just shopping around for a shear to take off the I tested this last night on Ethernet and sound cards also and it works great. added in using a steel ruler to straight edge a cut with a utility knife along the top edge of the fingers to aid in the removal.

[artisankatstudios]

Just use tin snips and cut a strip containing the gold pins then put them into a hydrochloric acid (27% or so) + 3% hydrogen peroxide to remove the pins. Super cheap and dissolves the copper under the gold fingers. It's also possible to put the whole ram sticks into an oven (Outdoor) and set it to 190c or so (Some sticks took 210c) . This melts the solder. I then used pliers to grab sticks and flick them on to a table stop. This usually knocks all of the memory modules and diodes (I guess they are...) free from the sticks. Also works with motherboards.

[TetraSky]

This video convinced me not to trash my old ram sticks.

[tharealsteven]

Very nice video Ben, I'd consider doing the same as well, getting a soldering iron and getting the gold fingers off RAM sticks and so on. I don't really get a lot of them at the moment, if I do get heaps of them, I'd seriously look into it. Keep up the good work Benny!👍

[pupet]

If anything.. them Aussies know their gold! Great vid!

[bantalee]

Hey..i can't wait to see the results Ben. real cool.

[pureclarityoutfitters]

Nice! Correct not everyone want to use chemicals nor want to chance using it. Awesome vid!

[victoriaharrison-sewell]

I do what you do & use an iron to liberate the gold in my circuits. Cleaner & less dangerous than chemicals.

[hatemhamouda]

I salute you on this idea as it was in my mind couple of days ago 👏

[quagmier]

Hi Ben. Another awesome video. I melt my gold with a map gas and oxygen torch. Small gold like that would melt in less than 5 minutes and the torch only cost around 30 US dollars. You can buy canisters of oxygen and map gas when it runs out but it last a while doing small amounts of gold. Just make sure you use some borax to melt with the gold it makes a glassy layer that covers the gold and it cracks off or melts off with water. Also small gold like that can blow out of the crucible so put a quarter inch or so over the gold so if anything blows out it is borax. You could  start with a couple of ram sticks worth of gold to start and then increase as you get good at it. You could get all this stuff for 50 US dollars or so and then you could challenge yourself to make the biggest blob of gold in a day and then weigh it right on the spot. You can get the torch at a hardware store with extra canisters, the crucible on Ebay and the borax at a grocery store sold as detergent. Make sure you are wearing gloves and goggles and do it in a well ventilated place.

[dr.a]

I’ll admit I’m a dentist and I won’t quit my day job, but somehow I got into scrapping as a side hobby and I love learning from your videos. Maybe it started out collecting scrap dental gold and crowns, which I send to a refiner and I get back cash or bullion. I’ll have to try this and send it to the refiner, with gold plated pins. They assay everything and give me value of the Au, Pt, Pd, Ag. I don’t want to send a bunch of waste and this seems like a simple, clean, chemical-free way of doing this. The porcelain fused to metal and cast gold dental crowns always have waste and impurities anyways that they deal with and melt it all down in a furnace. The porcelain crowns usually have a white gold which appears silver because of Pd, Ag, Pt, but it can be 40% gold sometimes, or worthless Ni-Co base metal alloys, again, I leave that to the refiners to assay. I have 2 years of undergrad chemistry, but I don’t have the money, time, equipment and space to refine my own scrap. I am experimenting with nitric acid and silver contacts though, we’ll see if I can get anything. Thanks Ben!!

[Andy-hjom]

Thank you for all the quality videos. I'm doing some recycling myself, but I mainly going for the precious metals. one thing I would like to know more about is all the platinum and palladium that deferent sources on Internet says are plated on connectors and the pcb. Do you know anything about that? I have read that some pcb can be plated all over or on spots just like gold plating/flashing. Thanks again for quality information :)

[xenaguy]

5:50 You could do that (removing foils) in a cookie pan (nice low sides), and catch all the foils.

[mindofmetal]

Hi Ben, Ive already started processing rams the same way after I saw another video on here doing the same thing. You'll get approx 1 gram for every 6 double sided sticks.
Accounting for minor losses (sometimes those gold fingers ping in every direction!!) you should have about 165 grams from 1000 sticks.
A kilo of gold fingers therefore would take approx 6000 sticks. Bet you've got that much stockpiled:-)
Though I like that you dont need expensive chemicals as this is very quick I'm still going to chemical process further as 8-14k gold is worth a pittance in UK compared to 24k.
I look forward to seeing what you get for the gold from your buyer,