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Minelab GPX 6000 Revealed!


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On the world stage Codan/Minelab is a very, very small company that cant afford to alienate its small and unique customer base by deliberately making the GPX6000 uncompatible with GPX/GP coils without a very good reason. They have listened to us and the GPX6000 ticks the boxes in lots of areas - its lighter, it has a speaker, wireless headphones, battery attached, all cords gone, simpler to use (jury still out as to whether they have gone too far in automating everything), 2 coils included, 2 batteries included, compatibility with existing coils was on our list as well and for some reason it looks like this has not happened.

We still dont really understand what Geo Sense PI is and whether because of this technology existing coils are not suitable for the 6000 - They either dont work outright or give inferior performance - hence the new coil connectors. It will be interesting to get the full specifications / instruction manuals so we better understand what is on offer.

Pricing is also the other big unknown.

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Also uncertain about chip protection. Probably built into the coils to make it more difficult for the after market. Won't make the same mistake twice.

Hopefully the X Coil team will come up with a workaround solution  🙂

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8 hours ago, rvpopeye said:

Has anyone ever seen a coil that has two sets of TX  windings in it? 

I'd think there would be a bit of cross over induction , possibly cutting into max radiated power a little  but if only one was active ...............................They have TX and RX in there now , right ?

 

Even though your question appears as a “general” coil question, since this is a GPX thread, I will answer your question in the context of a GPX PI detector.  We are talking primarily the GPX 4500/4800/5000 models.  We haven't seen iron rejection advertised as a feature on the GPX 6000 and although it appears the GPX 6000 can utilize DD coils based on the menu settings, we haven't yet seen any DD coils announced or pictured that are compatible with the GPX 6000.

PI detectors typically use a single Monoloop winding that acts as both the transmit and receive coil.  Pulsed Induction as the name implies, uses pulses instead of a continuous wave like the more common VLF induction balance (IB) detectors to transmit the magnetic field into the ground. A brief pulse is transmitted and then the delayed receive signal is analyzed before a new pulse is transmitted into the ground.  The process is so fast that the rapidly repeated pulse/receive cycles appear to be continuous to the user.

DD coils on a PI enable the use of separate transmit (left “D”) and receive (right “D”) coils to be used analogous to the IB detectors.  The DD enables use of the iron rejection feature on the GPX 4500/4800/5000 model detectors released before the GPX 6000 (GPX iron rejection cannot be used with monoloop coils).  But because of the pulsed nature of the transmit signal, the coil can also be re-wired on the fly (on GPX detectors) using a switch to make the DD emulate a Mono coil by making use of both “D’s” to comprise a “bigger” receive coil that can enhance sensitivity (at the expense of iron rejection accuracy) or wire the two “D’s” in opposite polarity to enable EMI noise cancellation (also at the expense of iron rejection accuracy and overall target sensitivity).

So in effect I have heard of using two receive coils (as described above) but not two transmit coils.  I don’t think there would be any advantage to doing it that I could see.  Using two transmit coils would seem to be inefficient from a power usage standpoint due to the resistive power losses in the copper and the whole point of the transmit pulse is to pump as much power as possible into the ground to maximize penetration depth, while the objective of the receive coil is to maximize sensitivity and that is actually enhanced by more copper.

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Another small improvement I notice is speed. It looks like it takes 5 seconds or less to boot up and go. The GPZ delay on start up drives me crazy when I gotta keep turning it off and on to throw on my shoulder and hike to another wash.

The noise cancel also looks much faster, about 5 seconds or less. The amount of time it takes on the 4500 and GPZ also drives me crazy.

Incremental progress anyways, not enough alone to get me to buy the machine, but nice to see.

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On the top of both coils for the 6000 I notice a small groove running around the circumference of each coil in from the edge of the coil somewhat similar to the NF 12" Evo.

On that Evo coil that inner groove appears to show where the flat windings extend too from outside edge of the coil.

Therefore  I wonder then if the same applies to the 6000 coil and maybe an indication the coils being flat wound types as well?   

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I just noticed that they Trademarked the coil names "GPX 11" and "GPX 17".    I get it that "Commander" and "GPX" and "GPX 6000" are separately trademarked, but GPX 11???.  Why???  Do they really think it's that catchy?  :smile:  I guess it differentiates them from there Commander cousins (except that there is no equivalent Commander form factor for the GPX 17" elliptical).  From Steve's box image capture:

minelab-gpx-6000-specifications-list.jpg.5837894546dfff27b0685a6ceac8265f.jpg

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4 hours ago, VicR said:

Pricing is also the other big unknown.

The word is around 6k US. I will be on the preorder list next week then I will be able to tell for sure.

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I thought the bird was the word. 🙂  My guess is between $6k and $7k AUD.

Distributors in Australia have a link up with Minelab today.

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1 hour ago, Chase Goldman said:

Whose list, pray tell?  :wink:

I can probably let you know by the weekend, need his ok first.  But several dealers should get it in soon (my own guess)

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