Virtual tour of precious metal refinery

[TheDoctor]

I was recently a guest of Wieland Industry''''s precious metal refinery in Phorzheim, Germany, where I was taken on a tour of the facilities. Most of the tradespeople here will have some knowledge of what goes on within the refineries, but won''''t have ever had a chance to actually see it first hand. So, a mini-tour of the "virtual" variety begins now.

The first photo shows a bucket half-full of pure gold flakes, which have been proiduced through electrolysis....the pure metal from a bar of semi-clean, semi-refined gold is electroplated onto a titanium anode through an electrolytic solution, and it simply falls off and is collected from the bottom of the solution as a solute. The impurities remain in solution and are separated by other means.

 

[TheDoctor]

Here is a freshly-refined, pure platinum bar. It is heavier than it looks, a definate two-hander.
This is destined to be delivered to an American medical supply company, to be turned into probes which are used in medical proceedures, such as angiograms.

 

[TheDoctor]

These bins are full of scrap material, which is sent to the refinery for processing into pure form.
Each batch is processed separately, by melting and mixing, chemical and photometric assay for purity analysis, and then removal of all alloys through electrochemical processes.

 

[TheDoctor]

Here is a bucket containing pure platinum "sponge", which is the solute from electrochemical refinement. It is soon to be furnace-melted under an argon gas envelope, whcih prevents atmospheric contaminants from reacting with the clean metal.
It feels like very heavy dirt-lumps, but iconsiderably heavier. This bucket of crumbly lumps is worth over half a million euros.

 

[TheDoctor]

This is an amazing device. It produces alloyed bars in a continuous feed, and a shear at the end cuts off the bars in manageable lengths. The furnace at the top melts the pre-measured alloys and gravity feeds the molten metal into a tungsten die, whcih forms the bar. It moves through the forming die at several inches per minute. There is a rack of dies of various sizes, so that the machine can produce a huge variety of shapes and sizes of metal stock bars.

 

[TheDoctor]

Here is shown the racks of continuously-formed seamless tubing, as well as rod stock which looks very much like rebar used in construction.
The tubing is sold to ring manufacturing companies, who use it to form wedding bands by die-forming it.
The rod stock is used in similar processes, often turned in lathes, drilled, punched, milled into wire, etc. for a multiple number of uses in producing jewellery.

 

[TheDoctor]

This is a bin of newly-refined, pure gold, following the final melt from powder. It is turned into pellets by dropping the melted gold through a sieve into liquid, which forms the tiny pellets as you see them.

 

[TheDoctor]

This is a rolling safe that contains batches of refined metal, ready to be shipped back to the firms who have sent refining lots to the refiner. There is one person responsible for this safe and its contents, and he spends his time on detailed paperwork from the time the metal is received until it is sent to the customer.

 

[TheDoctor]

Sorry, can''t edit what''s already been posted for photos. This one belongs to the first entry.

 

[TheDoctor]

Try this again..
This is a rolling safe that contains batches of refined metal, ready to be shipped back to the firms who have sent refining lots to the refiner. There is one person responsible for this safe and its contents, and he spends his time on detailed paperwork from the time the metal is received until it is sent to the customer.

 

[TheDoctor]

This is a bin of newly-refined, pure gold, following the final melt from powder. It is turned into pellets by dropping the melted gold through a sieve into liquid, which forms the tiny pellets as you see them.

 

[strmrdr]

way kewl
thank you!

 

[kenny]

Fascinating!

 

[Shay37]

This is amazing stuff. Thank you for that "tour."

shay

 

[Kaleigh]

That was really cool. Thanks for the tour. Great pics!!!

 

[TheDoctor]

Thanks for taking the time to have a look.
I apologize for the posts which are missing photos. I shopped them down to under 100 k, but they increased in size during the posting, and I should have noticed. If I could edit the photo attchment part of the posts, i would have.

 

[pricescope]

David i see all the pictures just fine, thank you for fascinating pictures of the Midas

factory.

 

[cymbrie]

WOW very cool thanks so much for sharing!

 

[ilovesparkles]

Way cool thank you so much!

 

[JohnQuixote]

Great inside look.

 

[MissAva]

Very Spiffy!

 

[pyramid]

Thank you for posting this. I love to see this type of information.

 

[valeria101]

Some spice cabinet! (powders, chunks and grains of interesting stuff...)

This looks very high tech compared to what a local gold refinery does. What a difference!

 

[angel_nieves]

Wow what a fascinating piece of information

 

[glitterata]

Very, very cool! Thank you!

 

[hoorray]

Wow -- this was really a great inside view of the process. I still have trouble with the fact that the bucket of "lumps" is worth a half a million+ euros!

Thanks for posting this.

 

[ello]

Wow - that was really interesting - thank you for sharing!