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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;fatima, post: 848580, member: 22143&quot;]You will find gold in varying amounts in connectors and some microprocessors.&nbsp; Obviously gold is a premium material so they will use it as sparingly as possible.&nbsp;&nbsp; The preferred material is a tin/lead material due to the cost savings over gold, but it&#039;s not suitable for harsh environments or where there is vibration present.&nbsp;&nbsp; So for devices designed for those environments you will most likely find gold used in the connectors.&nbsp; Printers are an example.&nbsp; As mentioned above you will also find gold in older computers but not always.&nbsp; The original IBM PC used tin/lead on it&#039;s card edge connectors.&nbsp; It will take some homework to find out what is good and what isn&#039;t.&nbsp;&nbsp; </p><p><br /></p><p>Keep in mind however we are talking about gold plating where its measured by thickness of atoms needed to do the job.&nbsp; The biggest challenge will first an efficient method to separate the metal bits from the plastics, resins and ceramics used in electronics.&nbsp; Once that part is done it&#039;s then a matter of refining the gold out of the other metals.&nbsp; You will be dealing mostly with tin/lead, copper and aluminum for the most part. </p><p><br /></p><p>With gold at $1100/oz, it&#039;s probably worth it, but you will have to set yourself up for something large scale to make it worth while.&nbsp; Interestingly, I saw a recycling operation for old Ma Bell telephones.&nbsp; 10s of millions of these very well built phones were turned in when people found out they didn&#039;t have to rent them. They recovered the materials from theses phones by tossing them in a pulverizer that reduced the phone down to small particles then a number of mechanical and chemical processes were used to separate out the various metals.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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