Identifying A Detector

[Jeff McClendon]

 

 This correlation of swing speed and ID values (the ID values for a surface conductive target clearly and consistently increasing with sweep speed, not necessarily getting more variable) doesn't let me sleep at night - is that unique to the Mental Detector?  Even so, why would the phase shift (which I imagine the IDs use) increase with the faster swings?

So, I answered this question earlier. Even experienced detector users sometimes swing their detector coil without it being parallel to the target and ground even when swinging slowly. Swinging very fast would make this more likely unless one was paying very close attention.

I also mentioned the recommendation by the manufacturer to swing slowly. This next bit is from the manufacturer's ad for the MD3030's features:

Features: 

1. Easy Operation: direct notifying and displaying detected objects through audio and LCD screen; just use button to operate and adjust; arm support providing safe and comfortable use; 

2. Versatile Operation: Three Tones Discrimination for different types of metal; Notch Mode for ignore junk metals; Target Identify can classify the types of detected objects (gold, silver etc.) on LCD screen;   

3. High Accuracy: Super Slow Sweep Identification with a very slow sweep of the search coil to discriminate different types of metal; 

Clearly you are understandably curious about perceived anomalies with your detector. That's good. Unfortunately, there is just so much that a new detector user and a very inexpensive detector with fairly old and slower processing technology can do. Swinging the detector you own really fast with your newbie swing technique is not going get very good results.

 

 

[Chase Goldman]

 

Thank you! While I think I understand the idea that consistent, overlapping swings with the coil at constant height, parallel to the ground would produce more stable IDs, I can’t figure out why the ID values increase with higher swing speeds and decrease with slower ones, reproducibly, with the same easy test target, everything else being equal (or close to it)?

As has been said before, it really comes down to how fast the detector can process and display target IDs - this is known as recovery speed and the faster you swing, you reduce the ability of the detector to fully process the signal for two reasons - it has less target data and closely-spaced adjacent targets can be missed or misinterpreted while the detector is processing the last target signal.

[GB_Amateur]

 

p.s. This correlation of swing speed and ID values (the ID values for a surface conductive target clearly and consistently increasing with sweep speed, not necessarily getting more variable) doesn't let me sleep at night - is that unique to the Mental Detector?  Even so, why would the phase shift (which I imagine the IDs use) increase with the faster swings?

You seem to be really concerned about this.  I suggest you read the following:

https://www.nutsvolts.com/magazine/article/march2016_SignalToNoiseRatio

Sweet dreams!

[midalake]

Gosh I am late to this!  After the last few years, a Mental Detector could be very useful, MHO.  Now this unit as a metal detector, not so much.