In the early days of 3-D printing, it took several steps to “print” a metal part. If you wanted to print a gold ring, for example, you had to follow these steps . . .

If your liquid chemicals contain gold, silver, platinum or other precious metals, how can they be separated (precipitated) out of their solutions and tuned into solid metallic form again? Several different processes can be used to precipitate previous metals from liquids... 

Over the last century, all kinds of media – for audio recording, video recording and the recording of still images – have consistently been replaced by new media that have been better in one way or another. And every time something new hit the marketplace, large quantities of the old “stuff” got tossed away, got sold at discount prices, or was snapped up by collectors. So, where can you find silver in obsolete media?

We’ve already written about pink gold, rose gold, white gold, and even green gold on the Specialty Metals blog. (See related posts below.) We thought we’d seen just about every color, then we found an article entitled “What Can Make a Piece of Gold Turn Blue?” that Esther Inglis-Arkell wrote for io9.com. 

Can silver be profitably recycled from printing ink? The answer to that question is yes, silver can be obtained from many printing inks. When you introduce the right chemical into them, the silver precipitates and falls to the bottom.  But here is some additional information you need to know.