Home » Jewelery made from old cell phones. The goldsmith students of the Politecnico di Milano

Jewelery made from old cell phones. The goldsmith students of the Politecnico di Milano

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ROMA – If you like these gold and silver rings, know that they come from your old mobile phone. Outdated in technology, now ugly and heavy, your smartphone is certainly not an object to throw away. It remains a mine of useful things.

Yes, a mine. Because inside it preserves precious raw materials such as gold and silver, which you just have to learn to extract and then model. The students of the Politecnico di Milano (Department of Management Engineering, Industry 4.0 Laboratory) have succeeded.

Their project – Horizon 2020 Fenix, funded by the European Union – has many merits. He is an environmentalist. It embodies an example of a circular economy, one that recovers and does not destroy. Finally, it engages several companies allied to each other and cutting-edge technologies, such as 3D printing, which is essential for making rings, earrings, bracelets, pendants. From the cell phone, here are even the cufflinks for the shirts.

40 months after the birth of the project, which is about to end, the engineer Paolo Rosa of the Politecnico di Milano proudly recalls that companies from several countries have gathered in a consortium and that the results of our students are cited by the Innovation Radar. It is the European portal that indicates the best innovative research projects funded by the EU.

Processing on mobile phones

First step: desoldering the electronic components. The students of the Politecnico di Milano fielded collaborative robots that – thanks to calibrated flows of hot air – dissolved the components of the smartphone without altering its chemical characteristics.

At this point the other European realities of the circular supply chain came into play. The University of L’Aquila received the disassembled electronic boards from the Politecnico di Milano, and recovered pure materials such as gold, silver, platinum, copper and tin.

MBN Nanomaterialia Spa of Treviso has transformed these materials into metal powders and fragments suitable for 3D printing. In line with the European spirit, the project then called in two Greek companies (I3DU and 3DHUB) that materially make the jewels and the Fundaciò CIM research center in Barcelona, ​​in a quality control role.

Bracelets with gold and silver from smartphones

Paolo Rosa says: “The hope is that, at the end of the project, Fenix’s business models will be made their own external subjects, capable of promoting the creation of new circular supply chains”. Of over 44.7 million tons of electronic waste worldwide, only 20% has been recycled.

Yet the mythological bird Phoenix, and the Fenix ​​project in Milan, teach us that everything can be reborn from its own ashes.

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