3 part gold pins question

The quality of the plating of the contacts in the ribbon connectors has been going downhill. At one time there might have been a full,rich, coating on the whole contact. Then it went to a lighter coating on half the contact. Now it's just a scant right where the electrical contact is made. Many have none at all.

For the most part i don't bother with em' anymore. For what little you get out of it ... it's not worth doing now.



The good news is that there are all kinds of other places you can find gold plated contacts. Follow the circuits ! There are some for power and others for data transmission. For data transmission at least half of that connection needs to be gold plated so that it doesn't corrode.

ie: Check the wire that leads from the USB ports on the front of a tower to the main board. Those connectors usually have some kind of gold plating on them. Some SVGA,printer, and coaxial connectors are gold plated as well. Gold plating is used in a lot of different places where electrical contacts are made. You have to hunt for it.

I tend to lump all of the plated stuff together in the same container. It should be the same process to recover the gold plating later on shouldn't it ?

As for maintaining quality : I've started snipping off only that part of the pin that has the plating on it. If it's just a scant on the very tip then so be it .....