Moose Scrapper Thanks!

Depends if your set up to do all boards all the way through like the big boys do and depending on how much material your getting in and what your time is worth. Sorry on the $6.00 should have been $16.00, the price of Ta you quoted is clean vacuum melt Ta, refineries don't pay on Ta, they pay on Cu, Au, Ag, Pt & Pd from PCB's and that's it. That's why with the amount of material I have coming in I take off all the aluminum, steel and plastic I can within reason. For every pound of material I take off the boards that I'm not going to get paid on from the refinery, I'm saving a buck on it. So say I'm taking off all aluminum, extruded, cast and sheet, most heat sinks are extruded and worth the most of the aluminum items, so about $0.65 a lb, when you add the buck you save on processing fee that's $1.65 per lb. on aluminum extrusions. Electrolytic capacitors, the aluminum can type are sold as breakage at about $0.12 per lb., again easy to take off and add the buck per lb. Then there are items I take off to be processed by me ie: fingers, north & south bridge packages and some pins and other surface mount devices. Even if you worked out a better deal with the refinery for the processing fee (that's about $1.00 per pound right now) by telling them you could grind up the material first (and I'm not saying they would do that) your not getting it fine enough for them. When they are done with the grinding process, that stuff is like talcum powder it's so fine. btw, don't grind up any batteries like the button batteries. What you could also do is just like your doing but melt it all with Cu as the collector and make dore or refiner bars and sell them to a refinery based on the assay. But now your going down the EPA regulatory road. Heck even the grinding stage is regulated so don't get caught grinding them up. If nothing else, stop grinding up power supply boards aka: low grade boards. None of the boards in the video that I saw were high grade. The better boards you had were mid grade mother boards. High grade would be telecom type boards covered in chips and or gold plating, or just old highly populated boards pre mid 90's. Also, refineries have a minimum so that was why I said about 5k pounds. If you had 10k lbs. they will usually drop the fee by $0.20 per lb. It's hard seeing all this treasure and finding out how hard it is to get it out. Oh, and the stuff made today don't have near the pm's in it that it once did.

flownder28 WOW! You are a wealth of information, and it sounds like you have some real life experience in processing boards. If you don't mind sending us an email at MBMMLLC@gmail.com or give us a call at 360-595-4445 we would love to pick your brain a little bit and learn how we can improve our process from your experiences. I am really surprised the refinery doesn't pay for more of the metals. I think there is lots of Pb, Sn, Ta (if you don't pick the Ta off), others?. Is your refiner in the US/Canada or international? I have a good friend who has a mill in MT and he is processing a hardrock ore with copper, lead, zinc, and some gold and silver. He is making a concentrate by gravity and flotation. The con assays about 10% copper, 20 oz/t Au, 100+ oz/t Ag, with lead and zinc as well. He couldn't find a refiner in North America to pay him for anything more than the Au and Ag. Right now he is sending his concentrate by rail to the port in Seattle and sending it to a refiner in Korea and they pay for everything, including the Fe and S which is considered waste here in the states (we often times don't even assay for it when looking at ores, and when we do we only use it for an indicator metal, not value added). He is making more money by sending to Korea, even with the extra shipping cost, because he is getting paid for all the metals. I am wondering if you could find a refiner who would pay for more of the metals in the boards if it would be worth while, even with the shipping cost? Good tip on the batteries, I know there is a ton of nasty stuff in there you don't want to be exposed to. Do you grind your boards up and concentrate the metals once you de-populate them or do you just send them to refiner whole? I am re-thinking the whole board grinding process to look something like this: 1.) Boards are pre-sorted into low, med, and high grade piles 2.) Boards that are worth it are de-populated by hand to remove: Ta, IC chips, finger, Al, anything else that is worth/pays to remove. 3.) Boards are then run through hammer mill and onto shaker table to recover mostly Cu, Pb, Sn, etc. and the PM's that were not removed by hand (if any) 4.) #1 hole from table (high grade concentrates) refined in house to remove Au, Pt, etc. 5.) #2 and #3 hole are stored in barrels to be sent off to refiner 6.) Tailings go to waste, or further processing (incinerate?, grind finer? reprocess?) if it pays or is needed. How does that flow sheet sound? I think regardless of if you de-populate the boards or not they still need to be ground up to recover all the copper, etc. because by grinding and concentrating the metals I think you remove about 1/3-1/2 the total weight. I think that means that you can save about 50% (50 cents/lb at your current price) on your refining costs by removing the fiberglass board weight which doesn't pay anything at the refiner. Let me know if this makes sense or I am just wasting time by grinding the boards up in your opinion. Thanks Flownder, I really appreciate all the info and experience you have and I am grateful you are sharing it with us all. The absolute bottom line to this whole project is how to recover the MOST metals, and make the MOST MONEY from processing these things so if there is a way to improve our process we would like to hear about it. Thanks again and look forward to hearing back from you either here on KZfaq, email, or phone. Thanks!

mbmmllc Hi Jason, do you have any reply from flownder28?

Lubomir L I haven't heard any more from Flownder28. I will let you know if I hear anything more. Thanks

mbmmllc we separate monitors, lead glass and the boards but other than that we grind up everything separating out the metals, turning the plastics into fuel, along with the initial process of heating and separating...we're a materials recovery company so focus on every compound to be broken down to a commodity to be resold....the only thing we don't break down is phospor from tubes...we just concentrate that and resell in mass to companies looking for the rare earth elements and the radiological traces we get....you bring a good point of tantalum.....its high mp is a problem for our normal process....but we're working on tweaking our process to pull it out as a by-product of the over all process..let you know what happen...have a nice day...

Hi Chris- Thanks for the tip. It sounds like ram sticks have quite a bit of values in them? I know they are loaded with gold plated pins/connectors. Are the other metals in ram sticks in addition to the gold plated metals? Thanks.

+Laurie Jacques Thanks for the comments! We have actually just started selling our equipment for production of PCB's. We have made some modifications to the system from what you see in this video and have found it also increased our recovery quite a bit. We now have systems on their way to Slovenia, Dubai, and the UK for PCB processing. Please send us an email at MBMMLLC@gmail.com and we can send you all of our information on our equipment and assays showing recoveries from our process. Thanks and look forward to hearing from you.

+Champlainscrap Thanks for the comment. If you are interested in something like this please send us an email at MBMMLLC@gmail.com or give us a call at 360-595-4445 and we can talk about our prices and recovery.

+mbmmllc do you even make money off this or is it just a hobby?

+MooseALot Hi and thanks for your question. We don't process any PCB's here at our facility, we are equipment manufacturers. We have sold many of these systems in the past six months and our customers are very happy with the equipment performance and results. Thanks

Thank you for your comment and for watching our videos!

Great! Thanks!

+christophe leblanc Thanks!

+Frugal Teq Thanks! Check out our newest video on PCB recycling, see the link in the above video. Thanks

Haha, did I actually say that?!

Thanks Elliott!

lowpross11 Thanks low. Its always fun to hear what people think of the vids we make.

Thanks Kevin!

+Erik The hammer mill is powered with a 3 phase electric motor. The power costs are quite reasonable, only about $10-20 per day depending on your cost of electricity.

Drew Peackock Thanks for the comment. You are correct, there is going to be some lead and heavier metals that are mixed with the gold, but the volume will be much, much smaller than whole boards, and easier to refine. We have some assays of our high grade material at over 100 oz/ton in gold so we are concentrating a really high grade product off the table. Thanks again.

+Tizona Amanthia Thanks!

You're more than welcome, I love seeing good ways of managing what we've made, instead of just throwing it away,

My son told me that his video card is worth twice as much as he originally paid for it. because people buy these cards to mine around for those bitcoins.

Patnor- Thanks for the tips and the feedback. It is always good to get some feedback from others who have been through the process before. I think over grinding is something that really needs to be avoided due to over grinding the gold (or other metals) which makes them harder to concentrate by gravity. Flownder (previous commenter) was also talking about cleaning the boards by hand of the more valuable materials before grinding them all up in the hammer mill. This may be the way to go for gold chips and other valuables on the boards? Do you have any experience with hand processing the boards first before grinding? Does it pay to do so? Also do you have any idea about the purity of the gold from the bonding wires? Thanks, your comments are much appreciated!

mbmmllc I would not go that route if I will have some big loads, I mean it is not economically viable in my opinion to do boards by hand. Your approach is somehow better but do have its own challenges which need to be solved. I think that if you achieve successful sorting of material to organics with no value and metals that is the most important thing. It save energy and environment from incineration method. I suggested to separate at least s/n bridge chips from boards before grinding as leaving them there will just mix easy to be recovered gold together with other junk. Gold bonding wires are made from fine gold. I got my hands at couple hundred kilograms of boards and depopulating or cherry picking values from them is a long tedious work which make sense only if you do it as a hobby. Not as a job. It require set up and know-how worth few millions to be able to turn around volumes and make a living out of it.

Laughing Achilles Thanks for the tip. I think that is a good next step for us once we have the system refined a bit more. If we can get the magnetics out with out losing any other metals that will be a big help for the refining process.

mbmmllc Ultimately you're going to run into an impossible barrier with that. You can grind it down as fine as you like but you're going to end up with a gold atom attached to a few iron atoms and it'll be removed with other magnetics. So it becomes a question of acceptable losses. I hope you don't mind me throwing ideas at you it's just that I make my money from scrap but I keep all the boards and process them myself. I'm trying to limit my chemical processes for obvious reasons. Over the years I've drastically reduced the need for chemicals. Although I did separate many components before processing, but now I'm trying to do whole boards like yourself. So I think the most important thing you need to do is grind the material to a finer and more consistent micron size. The hammer mill is obviously brilliant for this sort of work, a secondary mill would produce a finer product, say 50 micron with greater consistency. A tertiary sieve could be installed to further classify the 50 micron product before it hits the table.

Laughing Achilles Thanks for the in depth comment and your good ideas. I don't mind at all you giving suggestions on ways to improve our process. I am a firm believer in more heads are better than a few and KZfaq has a lot of heads! We are trying another approach now and I will give you the highlights. We are using a 1/4" screen in our hammer mill with the idea that keeping the metals larger will reduce the abrasion of gold plating, etc that are very hard if not impossible to separate with gravity. The mill spits out ~1/4" minus material we run across our shaker table. The large metallics separate into the number one and number two ports with mostly free copper with a little bit of contamination ending up in port number three. The tailings are then pumped up to a cyclone and the larger pieces (~30-50 mesh and larger) are re-run through the hammer mill again to liberate any more metallics. The ~50 mesh and smaller is then discharged to the tailings pond where the water is re-circulated. The larger material will re-circulate through the hammer mill until it is small enough to go up and out the cyclone. This way we aren't abrading everything to a certain size to fit through the screen (increases throughput rate too), but we have a classifier to ensure we are liberating a very high percentage of metallics. Your guys thoughts would be appreciated. We hope to have a video of our next R&D revision up soon so stay tuned!

Silverhunter- Thanks for the comment and question. We have some assays out right now that should tell us the amount of each metal in the different table outputs. It will change depending on the types of boards, but at least it will give us a rough idea of the value of processing PCB's. I will post the assay results in the description when I get them so check back soon.

jd- Thanks for the tips and the clarification on the grades of the boards. It sounds like most of my "high grade" boards were actually mid grade boards huh? That is good to know. Also the part about the batteries and other nasty metals is a good one. If going into production precautions should be taken for heavy metals exposure. Thanks again!

+Geoffrey Goins Thanks!

Thank you for your comment and for watching our videos!

+watcher0I0 Thanks for the suggestion. It would be very difficult to do this on a large scale without the proper equipment for both health and environmental protection. By just grinding the boards and separating the dense material from the waste and recycling the water it is a simple, inexpensive, and safe way to process the boards with a high percent recovery. Thanks for your comment.

Great! Thanks!

كام السعر بى المصري

***** Thanks for the tip.

mbmmllc It is very rare to find "whole" golden parts almost everything is currently made from copper plated with telurium-copper coat. For "economical" reasons manufacturers only on rare ocasions using gold plating on PC part.

Lewis Campbell Thanks for the comments. It sounds like you guys are doing some production processing of PCB. Where do you guys send your stuff for refining after grinding? Thanks and good luck.

mbmmllc actually I've designed a magnetic induction process that supports a distillation like process for increased purity....still tweaking the design at the moment...but it seems to be working so far...it'll will take a couple of months of r & d to see what the quality level can be taken...we plan to use a solar farm to provide the current we need for mass processing of e-waste and rendering of the gold, silver and copper etc...thanks for the comments....

Lewis Campbell Thanks for your input. It sounds like you have a cool project going on there. Let us know how it turns out!

mbmmllc thanks....the military has me out training for the week...will be back in the office mon....will call then...hope your week goes well....

+Jesse Bowers Thanks!

Hi Magpie- We do plan to run more tests with our table and mill. We are trying to find a good reliable source of boards as they are kind of hard to come by here. We will post some more vids as we take them. I have a really cool vid of incinerated IC chips I am going to post later this afternoon so check back soon. Thanks

have you though about trying computer repair or tv repair shops for dead boards im sure they come accross lots or the do on uk anyways. regards

Magpies Recycling Thanks for the tip. I will try that and see if I can get a good reliable source of boards.

Thanks, that is a good tip!

For sure...

Great, thanks for the tip!

Hi Fotm- Thanks for the comment. The tantalum and Niobium will be captured by the table and then can be recovered through the refining process. I am not sure they can be separated individually by gravity methods because they are quite close to the same density as the other metals. Thanks!

Hi Dennis- Thanks a bunch for the comment and the encouragement. We are having a blast trying to develop this process and we are really glad that guys like you enjoy watching our progress. Thanks again and stay tuned for more vids and experiments!

Alex C We build them from scratch here in the USA. Here is another video going over the maintenance and operation. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/f6qoZJCgxN6-k30.html Thanks for asking.

+Eric Alderson That is correct. There is actually a gold line that does appear on the table which can be captured and melted down directly into dore. The remaining gold is still plated to other metals and needs further refining. Thanks for your comment.

Hi Mymuse- I will be very interested to hear how your project goes. Please keep us informed. I would look into getting a small shaker table, because they are fairly simple to operate and they do a great job. The total amount of free gold recovered was 4.8 grains or .3 grams. This was the clean up at the end of the entire test, however we didn't see any gold on the shaker table until the last two bins, so we figured that the gold was from ~20-25 lbs of the high grade boards. Thanks and look froward to hearing how your project goes.

how did you depopulate the boards ? by hand ?

Magpies Recycling We actually didn't depopulate the boards at all, we ran them whole as our first experiment. For the next couple of runs we are going to depopulate the IC chips to run separately and maybe the tantalum capacitors too. We are trying to find the best way to get the most recovery for the least amount of work. If you can run them whole with a little bit of loss but still make it worth while (determined by the operator) then this will cut down the labor cost tremendously. If depopulating gets a higher recovery and can pay for the extra labor cost then that may be the best way. I think everyone will have their own unique spin on how to operate a system like this. Thanks for the comments and stay tuned for more vids.

JakaronoOhno Thanks for the comment and funny you should ask. We have a customer who is sending out some incinerated boards this week We are going to run the incinerated and pulverized boards on the table and take a video. We will post it on KZfaq when we are finished. Thanks, and stay tuned.

Arq- Thanks for the suggestion. We have some assays out right now that will give us a "point on the graph" for the recovery with the grind size we are working with. I think there are some other companies out there that are using ball mills to grind the boards, but ball/rod mills are so expensive to buy and run. We have visually inspected the tailings with a microscope and we hardly see any metal left in the tailings at all. The assays will tell us for sure. I will post the results of the assays so we can get an idea of the recovery. Thanks!

Getting that info will be very useful going forward. Ive been toying with the idea of simply grinding the boards up as you did but I always thought a hammer mill would not make the material fine enough, but looks like I couldve been wrong on that. If a hammer mill and a shaker table are all you need this might be a feasible setup even for a smaller scale operation especially since the startup cost seems quite modest. Id love to know how much it would cost to set this up and what the running costs are per hour. How long do you think the hammers would last running the sort of material that was used in this test? Id imagine removing heatsinks would make a significant difference. Thanks Arq

Arq I will certainly let you know the results of the assays when I get them back. I will post them in the vid description. As for the running costs and the cost of the equipment please send us an email at MBMMLLC@gmail.com and I can send you a full price list with different sized hammer mills with various power options, shaker tables, as well as the cost of replacement parts. The hammers should last for a very long time. We get about 30-40 running hours out of a set of hammers with hard, abrasive quartz ore so I think the hammers will last many times longer than that with boards. Thanks and look forward to hearing from you.

cường nguyễn phú Hello. I didn't quite understand your message, but I think you are asking about electrolysis to recover the precious metals. This would be a good way of recovering the precious metals from the number 1 and number 2 ports. Thanks

+David Howard Thanks for the tip!

laxwork Thanks for the comment. I would agree the water and the tailings needs to be disposed of properly. The water can be recirculated through the system so the overall water usage is very low.

Its one of our 16"x12" hammer mills. Thanks

For pricing, please send us an email at Info@mbmmllc.com or call 360-595-4445 You can also visit our website here: mbmmllc.com/

Good idea!

Great! Thanks!

Hi Jason- Thanks for contacting us about running boards on a percentage basis. Right now we are too busy with other projects to take on a custom milling project, but maybe you start your own custom milling business with some of our equipment. Or try and strike up that same deal with someone else who is processing boards? Good luck. Thanks!

+Sebastian Ramadan Thanks for the tips

+meabn007 Please send me an email at MBMMLLC@gmail.com and I can send you a full report on the results. Thanks

Thanks for watching! Make sure to watch out for our next video!

skooba steve Thanks Skooba

+MooseALot Thanks for the tips

Blue 414 Hi and thanks for your interest. We have sent some info off you through email. Thanks again.

Hi jdeluisa- We did have them assayed, but the total weights of each bag was not measured before had. We really need the weight of each cut to find the true amount of metals captured in each cut. We are going to re-run the test and get the dry weights of each cut before sending them off for assay this time. We are just slightly delayed. Thanks

Hi QC- Thanks for the tips! We are always looking for ways to make more money. Thanks again.

+jackfoo2 Thanks for your expertise. Right now we are just selling equipment and don't do any processing our selves. We have really advanced the process since this video and we are going to put out a new video soon showing our new system. Thanks.

I agree, and this is not what we are trying to do. There is a lot of gold in these boards that is not plated such as fine gold wires in chips, etc. This gold can be separated using a shaker table. The rest of the metal including silver, copper, platinum, palladium, etc. is cleanly separated from the boards, plastic, and fiberglass and concentrated. The gold plated metals will be in this concentrate as well. The metal concentrate is worth much more to a refiner than whole boards and this is where most of the value of a system like this comes from. Thanks for your question.

I'm afraid when it comes to plating it may be simply washed away with plastic and fiber glass. Speaking about bonding wires, it is "trapped" inside epoxy. To free it nicely incineration is one of possible options. Other ways bonding wires are somewhere 5-30 micron in diameter and "trapped" in epoxy. While you milling them just up 5 mil. I'm afraid the most of it will be washed away. If you could mechanically separate chips from the boards at first then to incinerate them, then to crush them and only then run them on a shaker table it would significantly increase your your yield. Well, this is just me :))))

Thanks for your further comments. The bonding wires being trapped in the epoxy were also a concern of ours. Here is our newest video: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/iciiZK98l7Svimg.html This has a hydrocyclone that is still in development. The concept is the epoxy and other metal bearing material will go back into the hammer mill for further grinding. Once the epoxy is ground so small that it is carried up in the water column and out the top of the cyclone is the only way for it to escape the system and by doing this it is free of gold bonding wires. We have done some extensive assay work on our tailings (waste from hydrocyclone) and have found we are capturing around 85% of the gold with this system. With our newest revision (video coming soon) we hope to have about a 95% capture rate of the gold and other precious metals. Stay tuned for more vids. Thanks again.

I would of use some acid on mlcc retrieve gold ,silver and Palladium and some of the other I would electrolytes the gold to recover it

@@blessbless5648 while that is an option, the title clearly states "without using chemicals ". This is just another way to release all the metals from PCB boards and not just the PM's. Per ton of PCB's you probably get more copper value than gold, so the gold recovery is the sprinkles on top of everything else..

+jackfoo2 Thanks for the tips. There are many different approaches to PCB recycling and selling complete boards may be a good way to go for some people. We just needed something to grind up, lol.

PS so it needs to have aqua regia done anyway

+Tim Ellison Hi Tim, thanks for the questions. Actually there is a line of free metallic gold that develops on the table from the small gold bonding wires, etc. There is actually some free gold in that stuff. I can be separated from the other metals fairly easily by screening and re-running on the table again. There is a lot of gold plated materials as well that will need to be further refined to recover the gold/copper/silver/etc. but a huge percentage of the volume has been removed and sending pure metal to a refiner is worth much more than boards themselves. Thanks

yes cool i do aqua regia myself ,mate that setup looks like it would be great with a bigger screen for rock bearing gold too ,have you tried that ? .i built a rock crusher and a sluice for that works great .

+Tim Ellison That is actually how we got started was in the mining sector. Check out this video for our current turn key system: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/hNJxi7l3q6zNdX0.html

Cheers ,:) im a miner to we have a tenement in W.A goldfields .

Ben Jia Thanks Ben!

+Javi's Hair Thanks for the tip

+MrStevetmq Thanks for the tips.

👍

+Bartosz Kubicki The Al is hard to separate by gravity, even though it is not very dense. Our strategy is to concentrate all the metals from the waste and then refine them later. Thanks for the comment.

Great, thanks for the tip!

I can provide pricing for you if you would please email info@mbmmllc.com or fill out our contact submission form here: www.mbmmllc.com/contact/

vatarants Hi and thanks for the questions. We are in the final stages of perfecting these machines and we are finding we can get between 85-90% recovery of the precious metals and even higher recovery of the base metals (95-97% for copper). On average PCB have about 3-5 oz/ton gold, 50-100 oz/ton silver, 5-10 oz/ton palladium, 20% copper, some lead zinc and tin, tantalum, etc. So from a mining perspective this is some of the richest ore on the planet. If you have a source for PCB then this process will be well worth your investment. It probably doesn't make sense if you only get 100-200 lbs of boards per month though. Thanks for the questions.

oh my goodness thank you very much! : )

Hi. I can't give you a straight price for the exact equipment in this video because we don't offer exactly this equipment any more. We have improved the process and equipment. It will really depend on exactly what you want to accomplish with the equipment and what you want to do with the final product that will determine the equipment you need. Please give us a call to discuss 360-595-4445

Well you can look at there site and see that you would probably have to pay a little over $20,000

Thank you for your comment and for watching our videos!

Please send me an email at MBMMLLC@gmail.com or call 360-595-4445. Thanks

i have contacted you guys but they have sent me an application. i didnt want to complete an application i dont have a business of a business license and i dont have the input and output value. im just curious of the price of this mill to do the exact same thing as this video for e waste

Send us an email directly to MBMMLLC@gmail.com there is no form or application to fill out. I can send you back a full price list and info sheet on all our products and equipment. Thanks

0MoTheG Thanks for the tip. We are working on a different screen and classifying system for the hammer mill and we should have a new video up soon. With this new screen we are able to capture the aluminum in the #3 port. Thanks for your comments.

Hi Lubomir- We have had a couple of other requests for VCR/DVD/CD etc. We are working on getting one of our larger hammer mills set up so we can feed a whole VRC etc. into it. Thanks for the suggestion. stay tuned and we should have something up shortly.

mbmmllc Thank you for your answer. I'll keep my fingers crossed for you. I like your ideas and videos very much!

+nikkolaus Thanks for the info!

+mbmmllc Those corners are also not made out of gold. Generally speaking older boards will have more gold than newer ones and newer motherboards tend to have metals like platinum more than the older ones. All in all your grading is, well.... Very inaccurate. But not that it really matters considering how it's being processed.

+Eric Nielsen Thanks Eric for the info. I have both sides about the gold corners. Some guys say that means there is gold wiring in there for sure, and other guys say those don't have any gold in them. Can you elaborate a little bit about what the gold corner means, if anything?

+mbmmllc they are just there to line up in the right direction during manufacturing. The highest concentration of gold will likely be on the bottom of processors. those are the brains of the computer.

+Eric Nielsen Thanks Eric

The system is a closed loop system so the water is being re-circulated. You will eventually need to treat the water and have it properly removed once the settling pond becomes full of waste.

What's required to dispose of the waste water? Do you have to bring the lot to a hazardous waste facility, is so what's the cost of the disposal. I just want to figure out if it's a feasible option for me or if I'll just end up paying a ton to get rid of the water.

The water can be recirculated for a long time before needing to be replaced. The water does not need to be perfectly clean in order for the shaker table to work effectively. On site treatment is another option. I would recommend looking into the rules and regulations for disposal in your area.