Smelting Kovar - Page 2

Originally Posted by TheRecycler

Smelting anything is a serious deal. If you are going to get your return on investment, then great. However, at what cost? Are you environmentally keeping the air clean, are you disposing of any excess materials properly, are you exposing yourself and family to any toxic fumes? Those are my concerns. As long as you're safe, your surroundings and environment are respected, smelt away. I wouldn't do it.

QUOTE=alloy2;243584]Kovar is an alloy found in IC chips, CRT monitors among a thousand other uses.

This alloy contains the following metals 29% Nickel, 17% Cobalt with the remainder Iron. If you smelt Kovar scrap with plenty of silica sand the iron will report to slag leaving you a nice high grade Nickel / Coblat to sell.

Now after smelting you have an alloy high in Nickel, you could cast this scrap into anodes to further refine the Nickel electrically in a cell, your Cobalt would report as cell slimes. To satisfy everyone's curiosity, no I am not going to smelt any kovar or set up a nickel parting cell.

You may find a buyer willing to pay for both metals, scrap yards traditionally pay on an alloy on the metal with the highest content. Which is not half bad with Nickel's current value at $5.70 U,S,D per pound.

A gas fired furnace would be best suited to the task.

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Anything I have to say should be taken with a grain of salt, I'm well known to lie on occasion and tell long meaningless stories that lead nowhere being of absolutely no benefit to the reader.

The small lots which I may smelt are purely small scale done in the interest of science or entertainment, if you want to set up a full size industrial smelter follow the rules or go home.

I have a lot of silver tied up in contacts that I have collected over the years, would I smelt this material knowing or even suspecting that cadmium or barium is present, obviously not without first having an assay done on the feedstock.

You have to first determine the metals present and the potential hazards each pose to know wither your going to smelt or melt the material you have it's all about making educated decisions based on knowledge gained from an assay. If you can not afford to own an ICP or do a fire assay or perform a simple blow pipe test to identify a metal your going to have to contract out to an independent laboratory.

If I had a feedstock containing mostly gold with some platinum group and a bit of silver present along with some iron and copper I wouldn't hesitate for a moment making a decision to upgrade this material by smelting.

We all have to work at a level were most comfortable.