I would have to agree. Unless the fixtures have 150,000 gold pins and the dis-assembly and gold stripping process can be automated, I don't see any payback. There are too many questions to say for sure, such as how many pins, how many fixtures are we talking about, what is the thickness of gold on the pins, what is the geometry of the pins, then what is the amount of gold per pin and its purity after removal, what is the process for removing the gold and the cost, etc., etc.

Now, RECYCLING of the gold pins may be a viable option, but again you would need to know the answers as to how many pin penetrations can be done before the pins don't work anymore, cost of removing and re-using pins on new test fixtures versus using new pins, pin wear rate, reliability loss and cost of false opens, and so on and so forth.



-----Original Message-----

From: TechNet [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Louis Hart

Sent: Wednesday, January 04, 2017 10:11 AM

To: [log in to unmask]

Subject: Re: [TN] Recycling ICT fixtures



Blair, I am guessing the gold is electroplated.  Based on what I've seen for recycling ENIG in scrapped PCBs, my wild guess is an ICT fixture might have a few dozen to upwards of 100 $ worth of gold. So it may not be worth the de-pinning time and paperwork.  I'm curious to hear what others might think. Louis Hart



-----Original Message-----

From: TechNet [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Blair Hogg

Sent: Wednesday, January 04, 2017 10:10 AM

To: [log in to unmask]

Subject: [TN] Recycling ICT fixtures



Happy New Year, Technetters!



I've been asked if there is much value in recycling old ICT fixtures for the gold content on the probes. I personally don't think that it's worth the effort, and we simply let the recycler do whatever they do. Have any of you had this come up, is there enough there to worry about it?



Thanks,

Blair