Today's experiment: cleaning boards with a grinder. - Page 2

Hoss, I get low grade boards out of microwaves and refrigerators.

I thought acid was used to dissolve the metals.

Originally Posted by Mechanic688

I think your going to be looking a long time as there is no platinum in caps. only palladium and silver for PM's.

Thanks for that, palladium was what I ment. Thanks for the info too, its just what I was looking for.

The wire brush in a grinder just polished the SMD's with a thin layer of grey solder...

I then tried a grinder with a disc & found it was quite easy to remove just what I wanted.
A little too easy to grind into the board too...

I'm now planning to use a plain metal disc in the grinder. A homemade disc, 4 inch dia & 3-4mm thick with a lot of 3mm x 5mm cuts around the outside of the disc.
I'm thinking that the disc will break off the SMD's instead of grinding them off, but I still get the control over what I'm taking off.
The mainly plain disc will be safer as it won't dig into skin much, or attack larger metal stuff that I don't want, like metal can capacitors.