Does Recycling Sputtering Targets Make Sense for You?

I read an article in Scientific American last year and was amazed to learn that denim, crayons, incandescent holiday lights and even children’s sports trophies are being recycled. While we are not an operation that generates much scrap to recycle, we can recycle spent targets which can be a great benefit for our customers.

Often times we are able to cut costs for a customer on a product that we produce for them on a regular basis by reverting spent targets back into a new heat of material. But it is the recycling of precious metals into new product through a process of reclamation that can be most advantageous to a customer.

With the price of precious metals such as platinum well over $1,700.00/T.O. it is well worth it to reuse the metal.  We can simply remelt a precious metal target adding only the amount of new material necessary to yield a new target.  Or we can reclaim the platinum, for instance, from a platinum alloy target and use it make a new platinum alloy target.  The customer’s metal is put through a multi-step assay process in order to ensure that every ounce of the precious metal is accounted for. The usual return of the metal is 98% of total.

There is an extensive amount of math involved in making a spent precious metal alloy sputtering target into a new one even if it is the same composition, and we can take care of that for you.  We’ll show you exactly how much metal can be reused and how much new material will be required.  We take very seriously the responsibility entrusted to us by our customers to make these calculations accurately.  We realize that a miscalculation can be very costly, which is why we pride ourselves on our precision and experience.

Recycling is good for the environment and can be good for a customer’s bottom line too.