Interesting TV Board

[Sabby]

I had pulled this board from an old tv several weeks ago and just now got around to removing the componets. I turned the board over and to my suprise, it appeared to be gold. I have taken apart several tv's and never had one that looked like this. I was wondering if anyone else has ever found a tv board similiar to this.

[Bear]

what kind of tv was it ?

[AuburnEwaste]

I have found a bunch of weird boards like that in projection tv's and wondered the same thing. It can be pretty difficult to distinguish Gold plating from Copper plating. Gold is often alloyed with copper, and you would have to guess in 9 or 10 karat gold plating there is a decent amount of it. To me, that looks too "red" to be gold if that makes sense.

[Sabby]

I can't remember, but the outer casing of the tv is still at an old dump site on land owned by my wife's family. I'll try to go back and see what kind of tv it was in the next few weeks. It had a plastic casing, so I know the tv wasn't that old.

This dump site had several old items, including what appeared to be an old coal mining cart. I plan on removing the cart sometime in the spring when I can get my truck to the area. If everything goes good, I'm going to restore the cart as much as possible.

[Sabby]

You may be right about the board not being gold, but the picture doesn't do it justice. The board is very yellow in natural sun light. I guess the only way to be sure is to test and see. I think I'll just put it back until I have more time.

[Bear]

I recently found an old TV with channel changing knobs, saved the changer units(one each for UHF, VHF), some thread not long ago someone said there were either gold or silver contacts in them?
Haven't really even thought about watching the boards too close though

[billygoat]

More likely than not, it's a copper trace.

[Sabby]

More likely than not, it's a copper trace.

I'm sure your right, but a guy can dream every now and then.

[Pnutfarmer]

Sabby, don't discount that board too quickly. Stranger things have happened. Have you scraped the gold-appearing trace? If you put light scratches on it and they show bright gold, it is probably gold. If it just dulls up, it could be a coating of some sort. A deep scratch should show the copper trace under the plating so you can see a contrast.

[Mechanic688]

I'm sure your right, but a guy can dream every now and then.

On them older boards of TV's and stereo and others check the boards for these lil transistors; could be worth your time pulling them.



Sorry for the blurry pic but you get the idea;

[Sabby]

I gently scraped the top layer to reveal the copper trace. Tell me what you think now after seeing the difference.

[projectnz]

ive seen these bords but cant remmber if it was a german brand or an old phillips tv

[DiamondN]

I recently found an old TV with channel changing knobs, saved the changer units(one each for UHF, VHF), some thread not long ago someone said there were either gold or silver contacts in them?
Haven't really even thought about watching the boards too close though

When I worked for Zenith Corp years ago, we were informed that the tuners did have gold on the contacts.

[Mechanic688]

looks like gold flash plating to me,

[Pnutfarmer]

It's so hard to tell in pictures. It could be just a yellowed coating but it sure looks gold. Most electronics that I've found that look gold in person are gold (plated that is).

[Jeremiah]

Had one just like it. Even did a post with a pic about a year ago. I took it to my yard and had them test it. It was copper on mine.

[happyscraper]

I don't know, could be gold but it's still low grade. I've seen lots of low grade boards with some gold on them.

[Hurrikane]

Just did a test on the same type of board by scraping with a blade and got the same result of copper color underneath. Interesting thing though was that the scrapings were green in color. I was careful and scraped lightly and only on the gold part. I'm thinking that I scraped into the copper which was oxidizing. I didn't see any gold color in there at all. More questions than answers now.

[Mechanic688]

I guess it could be a gold colored varnish. The mfr. varnishes the bare traces so nothing will short out on them, and it's easy to scrape thru the varnish.

[theelectronrecycler]

I scrap a lot of CRT monitors and TVs. I have never seen a CRT type board with gold on it, other than in switch components. I can tell you, the TV that your board came from was much older than what you see everyday. Most of the older TVs (10 or more years older) that I get have that same beige on one side green on the other side CB in them. I just process the boards for their transformers, heat sinks, E-proms and or flat packs, copper transducers, copper wire and any tantalum bearing capacitors \ diodes. Then I toss the remaining bits of board into the C grade bin.

Every time I thought I had found gold on a CRT CB, it was always just the varnish color covering the copper trace in the board.