Question regarding silver contacts in breakers

there was an excellent post about this a few years ago. maybe someone can find it. I won't have much time to look till Christmas.

The buss bars in the contactor that have the Silver/Cadmium contacts on them.... Yes there's Cadmium in them...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadmium_poisoning

The buss bars are normally Copper, often plated with something Silvery, Silver or Nickel, I dunno what.
Use side cutters and nip the bar and then bend and break it there at the nip, it will break and if its Copper you will get a very Reddish colour at the break.
(If you cut it, often the coated metal will smear across the cut and cover the red of the Copper)

Often everything metal in the contactor is Copper coated, often Copper coated Steel parts, but its easy to check with a magnet for Steel.


Pics? You will need to make more posts to be able to post pics.
Or you can make a link to a site that has your pics.

Test kits are available on ebay and amazon. I have used the ones for gold testing and find them easy to use. I have little experience with testing silver and recommend looking at youtube for demonstrations.

Keep in mind a large percentage of youtube folks know less than you and you need to use good judgement when viewing them.

As I recall some silver contacts can have some material that will become very dangerous if heated with a torch. So until you are very knowledgeable I recommend using mechanical means to separate the silver contact from the base metal.

There is a forum that only deals with refining PM's (GRF) as this forum does not support refining.

Generally you will be advised here to fine tune your gathering of material and finding good quality buyers. Please check out our buyers here on the forum and read over their reviews. 73, Mike