My Personal Method Of Ferrite Balancing

[Rob Allison]

Hey Flak,

    Ya, I never noticed much difference in Semi-Auto to be honest.  I might have to play around with it again to see.  I love the GPZ 7000 beyond the weight.  I toggled the idea of going back to a GPX with a EVO coil, but it's hard to put down the GPZ 7000 when you know how powerful it really is.  Also, maybe different type of gold I wasn't able to find as well with a GPX, especially the very porous type gold.  

 

[Andyy]

22 hours ago, jasong said:

Also digging through old posts, something I'm not able to find discussed is how Locate Patch and Salty Soil differ from audio smoothing like Low.

I tried locate patch in my ground in hope that i could scan faster with less noise.  But I always found the opposite so have never been able to use this feature.

[flakmagnet]

I had a funny thought Rob…that is while I am basically in an area where very small gold is the rule and so there is a lot of messing around with target signals etc. whereas the gold I see you post is definitely not small ?

All the best…hope the family is doing good.

[Andyy]

On 7/4/2019 at 2:24 PM, Jonathan Porter said:

I go about Ferrite balancing a bit differently to what is shown or advised, this is my own preference and is to do with Saturation noise and Salt signals, especially with the X coils because they can Saturate quite badly. 
JP

JP - excellent thread.  

I have not gotten out to check this method in the saturated soils with the xcoils.  But my question is whether this was sufficient to stabilize them in your tests or whether those of us with xcoils should use the button 6 to 8 inches above the ferrite to minimize saturation affect on the xcoils and then we follow with std pumps to the side?  Thx

[Jonathan Porter]

The issue with the X coils is complex and hard to ascertain because of the many variables users are going to encounter. This has been borne out by the varied reports assuming they are all accurate.

You have a couple of options I think, you can do the balance with your GPZ14 coil then swap, you can detect in Auto mode and hope for the best, you can use Semi-Auto and make sure you wave the coil over the ferrite where the windings are and not the other section that makes a noise on the ferrite. It might pay to just expose one side of the coil to the Ferrite only around the front or rear area of the coil to avoid the other noisy section. You can find the sections that are problematic by getting the coil away from the ground and just wave the ferrite over the coil finding the points that won’t balance out or make the most noise. I recommend the front part of the coil for Ferrite balancing well forward off the Yoke.

Some of the X coils I tested would not fully balance out the ferrite over the windings no matter how hard I tried ( this issue was quite seperate from the big signal off the ferrite point on the coil associated with the mod), these coils were also quite variable in their behaviour in my high X ground.

I have probably raising more questions than I’ve answered, I spent a huge amount of time testing these coils when I foolishly believed we were trying to improve the coils to an acceptable level. 

JP

[Andyy]

2 minutes ago, Jonathan Porter said:

The issue with the X coils is complex and hard to ascertain because of the many variables users are going to encounter. This has been borne out by the varied reports assuming they are all accurate.

You have a couple of options I think, you can do the balance with your GPZ14 coil then swap, you can detect in Auto mode and hope for the best, you can use Semi-Auto and make sure you wave the coil over the ferrite where the windings are and not the other section that makes a noise on the ferrite. It might pay to just expose one side of the coil to the Ferrite only around the front or rear area of the coil to avoid the other noisy section. You can find the sections that are problematic by getting the coil away from the ground and just wave the ferrite over the coil finding the points that won’t balance out or make the most noise. I recommend the front part of the coil for Ferrite balancing well forward off the Yoke.

Some of the X coils I tested would not fully balance out the ferrite over the windings no matter how hard I tried ( this issue was quite seperate from the big signal off the ferrite point on the coil associated with the mod), these coils were also quite variable in their behaviour in my high X ground.

I have probably raising more questions than I’ve answered, I spent a huge amount of time testing these coils when I foolishly believed we were trying to improve the coils to an acceptable level. 

JP

Thank you.  And I almost did not ask because I know it is a touchy subject.  I think we are beyond all of that now and just have a keen interest to try to make anything and everything work to the peak of ability.  You know how we love to experiment.  If anything I have a greater knowledge on X signal, G signal and saturated ground, now.  I'm sure some of us will be doing more testing to determine alternative ferrite balancing.  I know I will be.

[mn90403]

My new 'take' on everything is this:

We all know that Boeing has some serious problems with its 737 Max jet.  In certain conditions it is not airworthy and it becomes vulnerable.  The whole fleet has been grounded and Boeing is on the hook for the consequences to passengers and airlines.  Boeing may go bankrupt because of this design flaw.

Although the consequences of allowing or authorizing the use of a coil on a detecting machine platform would be infinitesimal in comparison, buyers would still look at Minelab to 'fix the problem' especially if the coil comes out of the blue.  The 'deep pockets' would be Minelab without the real profit upside for getting involved.

Buyer beware and no endorsement implied or given from Minelab has to be their cautionary tale.  This goes back to what standards ARE necessary.

What would you recommend if you were on the Board of Codan or a stockholder?  (I am neither.)

[flakmagnet]

My simplest recommendation would be to: a. release a smaller coil, b. make a patch lead that will not compromise the detector and that would work with a competitor coil.

I realize this is simplistic but sometimes simple works best.

[DolanDave]

Good Thread Everyone,

   I have been experimenting with different settings, and ferrites. I have a different ferrite that falls within Minelabs GPZ 7000 specs, that seems to be working pretty good. Also, would be cool to incorporate an audio / O'scope screen option, to see when you need rebalance... I know semi pretty much does that when properly balanced to ferrite and ground, but I noticed you still need to constantly rebalance due to varying conditions, EMI, soil type, ect..

 

 

P.S. I tried this new ferrite Ring, but it didnt work to well...

 

[cobill]

Dave, 

Is this Treasure Talk the source for your chart, and if so, the software update according to ML fixed the ground balance issues...or did it?

"With the update, we have improved the ground tracking so that the detector is much less susceptible to the typical events that will cause the tracking to deviate from the ideal level."

"detecting your pick will still cause an audio response but it won't impact the tracking."

"there will no longer be a need to continually re-ground balance with the ferrite, unless perhaps moving to a completely new area."

https://www.minelab.com/usa/treasure-talk/gpz-7000-ground-tracking-software-update

 

The more I read about GB, the more confused I become! Really appreciate JP's posts.

Bill