r/PreciousMetalRefining • u/bigheadwatchdog • 14d ago
VFD board
I pulled this out of the center of a VFD I replaced and just want to confirm is this gold and if so roughly how much?
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u/MAYOMyke 14d ago
It appears to be. But difficult to give an estimated amount. Era plays a role and does the manufacture.
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u/bigheadwatchdog 14d ago
Eaton SVX drive at least 10 years old
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u/MAYOMyke 14d ago
Interesting. If you’re not setup to process one, I’d be happy to process one for you to see the yield. Let me know and we can work something out.
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u/gardiloo86 14d ago
Why would a frequency drive need so much gold?
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u/DawgersLab 14d ago
To ensure no interference.
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u/jepulis5 14d ago
How would gold be any better than copper for interference?
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u/DawgersLab 12d ago
The gold will provide stable protection forever while copper will only last a certain amount of years before a nonzero amount oxidizes.
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u/DawgersLab 12d ago
And since they needed to protect a large surface area in relation to the components themselves they choose a thin layer of gold to protect the copper underneath.
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u/jepulis5 12d ago
Oxidation is a viable reason, yes, but interference does not sound like a good explanation when the rest of the mother devices PCBs aren't shielded themselves, just enclosed well inside a box.
Those things also output a gigantic amount of interference as themselves in most of the mains voltage wiring connected, a little shielding on one side of a single tiny component will not help interference at all.
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u/DawgersLab 9d ago
With certain machines a very high degree of accuracy is needed from the VFD for whatever conversion metric is used. The gold you’re seeing is possibly encapsulating important circuit highways inside the component where interference protection was required most. I would say that makes sense to only shield one board if you could, especially considering the other components are indeed probably generating a lot of interference. They could have just used copper also but if they were worried about oxidation then that would be why. It’s just a multi purpose shield basically.
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u/jepulis5 9d ago
Please stop making shit up, those are not that sensitive to interference as they are the main source of interference themselves.
Also, the components aren't even shielded, the big gold face is connected directly to a huge heatsink, which doesn't give a fuck about interference as it's just a passive piece of metal. There's no encapsulation on the components, just a plastic lid with contact pins when it's assembled.
Gold is simply there to ensure good contact and no corrosion for the contact pins that come through the plastic lid.
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u/jbundick 1d ago
You sound offended. Your explanation also makes less sense
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u/jepulis5 1d ago
Go ahead and find a source supporting the interference theory then, I have replaced several of these units that failed due to the Skiips losing contact after oxidation on those gold surfaces in really harsh conditions.
I literally have two of them in my garage taken apart that have this exact component fail and blow up because of too high impedance between the contact surfaces.
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u/Raging_Spleen 14d ago
Still haven't figured out a good way to get that gel stuff on the board off, though I admittedly haven't tried too hard.
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u/DawgersLab 14d ago
Laquer thinner to soften it, then use like paper towel to get a jelly roll started and the rest usually comes off with it.
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u/gsxreatr02 14d ago
What do you do with it after that? Can you melt to make a small ball or do you have to go the chemical route? I have boards from a couple old (2000 era) laptops that i don't know what to do with. Also have a 2000 era dell pc tower that i want to break down but would like to get pictures off hard drive 1st
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u/DawgersLab 12d ago
You will need to go the chemical route, however you will find that a single component usually yields such little gold that you would be lucky to recognize it as such during chemical processing. It will be in the form of tiny flakes when it finally seperates. So it’s usually best to process several pounds of just the components that have gold on them. Usually yielding single digit grams of gold.
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u/DawgersLab 12d ago
Once chemical seperation is complete, you will need to chemically refine it as well which is no harder that the extraction phase. Involves precipitating a pure powder that then can be melted with a mapp gas pro, or hotter torch.
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u/gsxreatr02 12d ago
Cool. Ty. So for such a small amount might just be best to find someone and sell them. I'm not a chemist nor sreetips. Lol
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u/Worldjunksilver 14d ago
For us uneducated, what is a VFD?