Push-Button Switches on PCB

**SWMcCaig** · 05-10-2021, 04:26 PM

I have heard that these have a small amount of silver in them. Does anyone here remove these items for silver recovery? Or is it a waste of time?

**JJinLV** · 05-11-2021, 12:33 AM

If you're doing it for the science or for fun and can do it safely then have fun! If your goal is to maximize your $ returns then spending time finding more material to sell as is will always be more valuable than home refining.

**SWMcCaig** · 05-13-2021, 08:12 AM

I don’t do refining myself and was more curious if others take these apart to stack the silver to sell to refiners, etc, or if this is considered a waste of time. I personally don’t do refining and don’t ever plan on starting. Just new to the ewaste game and trying to learn what items are considered important to depop from boards.

**Flinthills** · 05-19-2021, 11:23 PM

If the Silver is in the form of round buttons stuck to a small circuit board, it would definitely be a waste of time. A former member here, Mechanic used to like to collect those buttons. However, once I figured out for him that it took upwards of 20,000 of them to equal an ounce he gave it up. May he rest in peace.

**CopperMine** · 05-20-2021, 03:52 PM

Originally Posted by SWMcCaig

I have heard that these have a small amount of silver in them. Does anyone here remove these items for silver recovery? Or is it a waste of time?

Typically, those small switches have contacts GOLD plated. That's because gold never oxidizes and you only need a REAL thin layer of it. Most likely, there isn't any recovery value, unless you have thousands of them. Gold fingers and CPUs are different, because their gold layer is much thicker.

Silver is used on switches that are intended for power use, such as switches rated for a fraction of an amp and up. Gold can not be used here because it gets vaporized by tiny sparks. There are different qualities, although most of them look the same unless you cut them open under a microscope. Below are pictures we took on different brands, ranging from low to high.

The lowest ones are solid copper, or silver plated copper. They don't offer much durability.

One level up, is copper contact with a thicker layer of silver, ranging from 1/10 to 1/4 total thickness. Those contacts are good for normal duty applications and will last a long time.

The best you can get is REALLY thick silver, typically thicker than half of the contact. Those contacts are referred to as silver contact and will last very long even under heavy duty use.

To answer your question: unless you can sort your contacts pure and consistent, they buyer probably won't pay you much more than brass.