Andyy

That is a little beauty.  Thanks for sharing!

20 hours ago, jasong said:

 I will definitely try out semi auto and the ferrite again when I get back into the field and see how it affects both the z14 and x coil balancing. The semi auto update did not yet exist when I had to stop detecting to go back to work so it's kinda new to me. I detect all over the country in different ground types Arizona to Colorado, good to know how to adjust for each.

But that leads me to a last question: is there a circumstance you can conceive were Auto would be used instead of semi auto now? Also, would manual still be preferable in cases where the soil is very consistent, or is there no advantage to using manual on the GPZ now?

I have been in areas before where I never achieved complete balance off the ferrite even with the 14" coil.  Now I am understanding that people really need to be cognizant of "Saturated signal", "X signal", "Ground mineralization signal" and "Salt Signal".  Sometimes I think this can be tough to determine.   Obviously ground mineralization can be ground balanced with side pumps.  Deciphering whether there is salt signal, has also been discussed previously.  Saturation has been discussed in this thread and instructions were given to determine if this signal exists.  (I still need to follow through to see if this method clearly identifies saturation in my soils)  It would be nice for the machine to tell us the amount of these components so that we can best tune the machine.  Maybe that will be a future machine.

I am not sure if I will get out testing this weekend, but if I do, I have a place in mind that had very noisy ground, and is a lot shorter of a drive (which is a plus).  Then I can try to raise the coil off the ground to determine if saturation is present.  It is possible saturation has been giving me issue for some time (even on std. coils) and I just thought it was ground signal that was not balancing.  Things I would like to try with the ferrite (specifically for the Xcoil) are: 

1) how well auto works (no ferrite use)

2) semi-auto (with ferrite) using recommended technique by JP

3) semi-auto (with ferrite balance only over the front tip of the coil)

4) semi-auto (with ferrite raised on rocks 6-8 inches)

33 minutes ago, Jonathan Porter said:

In layman’s terms Saturation is where the concentrated highly magnetic mineralised pebbles and soils on the surface of the ground throw a field back at the Tx winding causing a small current to pass across the Tx which then manifests as a signal in your ears. You cannot ground balance out Saturation signal, it will always be there no matter what, unless you lower the Sensitivity, change Ground Type mode (EG go from Normal to Difficult) or use a less aggressive Gold mode (EG go from High Yield to General) or worst of all FILTER it OUT by introducing Audio Smoothing.

I am in full agreement that the GPZ is a great machine to use and fairly easy to learn.  The questions we ask are not intended to make the machine seem more difficult to operate or to make us look or feel smarter for asking the direct pointed questions, or to frustrate JP :)  The truth is, that the more information we have on how something works, also helps us solve current or future problems that might come up, whether it is some strange coil, setting experimentation, or who knows what.   Many terms are used and assumed (sometimes incorrectly) leading to misunderstanding information.  I prefer not to assume.  And the fact that we have someone like JP on here to explain this stuff, is much appreciated.  For example, if the questions were not asked, I would still be using the octopus style ground balancing, which can still end up leaving the machine not ground balance to its full capability. 

Anyways, I have found this to be a very healthy discussion. 

th

2 hours ago, jasong said:

Further, saturation point implies very little mag field change in the ferrite/ferrous material with increased TX strength, which should be a good thing. Less ground noise. So why do we want to avoid it? Would it be best to just saturate the crap out of the ground since everything past that point generates very little noise? Like the B curve for magnetite is almost flat after saturation even if you quadruple the external mag field, whereas up to that point the saturation effects B exponentially...

But something JP said was interesting.  Saturation will be amplified by the ferrite.  My guess is that the Rx can only translate a set range of magnetic field.  Maybe saturated ground with the Tx overloads the electronics that the Rx coil can handle. 

in JP's personal method of ferrite balancing, it was said: 

  "If the Ferrite balance is out the resultant X signal will blend with or elevate ground signals potentially causing spurious indefinable signals and generally make the detector noisier to listen to, all of this will affect depth. "

This is what happens with the Xcoil that cannot handle the return signals in "saturated" ground...

I think it is simple to JP because he has been so enveloped by all of the parameters and definitions for so long.  That makes it difficult and maybe frustrating to explain it to us.  I hope for his further input. 

And …. Saturation only affects X balance, not ground balance. 

And …. Semi Auto locks the X balance when you release the button (I proved this well in my testing) but allows the ground balance to track slowly. 

As an added note, my 14" coil was smoother in Semi Auto, than when I used to always have it set to Auto.  As JP has mentioned in the past, if you don't want to use the Ferrite, then he suggests Auto, but if you use the ferrite, we should lock it in with SemiAuto.

we will figure this out, yet...

As I questioned on a different link, what exactly saturation is …. still has me confused. 

3 hours ago, jasong said:

From a physics standpoint: saturation should be the point on the magnetization curve where any permeable ferrous or ferrite mineral stops increasing the B field exponentially when an external mag field is applied, ie where all it's domains have already been aligned with the external magnetic field. Therefore, unless I am misunderstanding it, saturation is not a response itself, it just affects the X response as the ferrous or ferrite materials go in an out of saturation as the applied magnetic field from the GPZ changes.

Right, this makes some sense since saturation cannot be balanced out according to JP.   Saturation means you have spillover from something  which I have to assume is limited by the magnetic field of the coil.  Therefore maybe it is all of the left over "saturated" signal that cannot be handled.  I don't know.

Honestly, though, I had never heard of high saturation until the Xcoil came out.  So, yes, I am still confused.

On July 6, 2019 at 4:48 AM, vanursepaul said:

I Glad yours worked out...

Three different tries and two operators didn’t get this one right.

They might disagree with you that it’s...,,”not that hard to get it right.”

But like I said, glad yours is working.

If it were just soldering wires together, I would rate the job as "easy".  But this has a cup connector and needs to be soldered in pretty tight quarters.  I would give it "intermediate" difficulty.  You definitely do not want to rush through it.  There are many ways to mess this up.

On July 4, 2019 at 2:54 PM, Jonathan Porter said:

To check for saturation noise, ground balance the coil in Semi-Auto mode and then place the GB in Manual mode. Bring the coil to the ground and then place the coil directly on the ground (couple the coil to the ground), listen to the threshold as you do this, then pull the coil briskly up and away 8 to 10 inches and take note of the signal created as you couple and pull away, the louder this is the greater the saturation signal will be. You CANNOT ground balance out Saturation signal, you have to keep the coil just above it to avoid depth reducing noise.

JP

So is Saturation Signal just ground noise that the machine cannot balance?   (is it moisture)  I understand it is different than the X-signal but can be greatly magnified by the ferrite.   Is it part of the G-signal?  I'm not sure if I am clearly expressing my question.  In the past I had always thought there was:

1) ground noise (mineralization) including:

     a) X signal component (requires ferrite to remove this component)

     b) G signal component 

2) EMI (ElectroMagnetic Interference- air wave noise)

Is there a 1c) Saturation?

On 7/4/2019 at 7:10 PM, Chet said:

I look forward to giving them a run in some heavily detected areas.

Sounds good, Chet.  Maybe between you me and Jason,  we'll find what the best method of ferrite balance will be in saturated ground.

If you guys are code hackers.. maybe I could have you add a simple time stamp to the front page so I dont have to hit a few keys to show it in the gps screen.  Ha ha

I know nothing of the legalities of changing code, unfortunately.

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.

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

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.

4 hours ago, flakmagnet said:

The gold you guys find so frequently where you hunt in Az. is still there waiting for you. Travel safe.

Ummm, I am so sorry Condor, but while you were gone kicking roos, I cleaned up all of the AZ gold.  You might as well stay there a bit longer.  Haha

As for that Oz gold, it sounds like people are just using the wrong equipment.  The reports keep saying all you need is to walk your dog and you'll  be kicking over pounds of gold.  If it were only that easy.

Oh no!  That was my concern about having someone else do it.  If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.  I was a little OCD and kept ohm-ing out the pins to make sure I didn't bridge any.  I bet I checked it 20 times.  Maybe Jason's suggestions will help.  If you can't get the non-modified coil to work, then this is about all you can do short of sending it to a minelab house to review.  Maybe you won't have to pay for an entirely new machine, just a board.  Best of luck!

Andy

Jason - do you think you will have saturated soils to test this in when you run testing in a few weeks?  I am curious if JP's suggestions will help to bypass this issue.

3 hours ago, phoenix said:

Andyy I`m still pretty clueless as to which coil is which.   Is yours the spiral wound type or the DOD type? Dave

I am pretty sure that the 10" are not spiral wound.

52 minutes ago, flakmagnet said:

Nice report Andyy. Did you make your own patch lead?

Flakmagnet - Yes, it was my patch lead.

46 minutes ago, phrunt said:

Thanks for the post Andyy, it's a shame you had that issue but good to see you got quite a bit of gold, do you think you got them because the smaller coil could get into spots the other coil couldn't or did the 14" just miss them?

I had to look up what a Bobcat is

Simon - I definitely believe the first four were missed by the std coil.  So this tells me that the size of the 10" likely did improve hearing the small gold.  Of course there could have been other factors, but I scrub the coils very slowly.  I checked my gps previous tracks, and it seems like the last two nuggets were not found because I didn't see the wash all together, before.

As for the bobcat, I was walking towards the patch when I saw a large amber reflection. I thought someone put up a mine claim marker at first.   A couple more steps and I saw the other eye open.  That gave me the chills.  Then the large shadow left with a catlike gait.

23 minutes ago, jasong said:

The eagle has landed in the US... Thanks for the report Andy!

That can be some gnarly ground down there, and perfect place to test any new piece of equipment. Was the 10" having trouble balancing over the ground in general, or only when you tried to balance over the ferrite on it?

Jason - it seemed really noisy before I ever broke out the ferrite.  No amount of smoothing or ground balancing would help.  But I was in semi-auto so it probably took the X ground balance of Patch#1.  I did not try to go into Auto and leave out the ferrite.  Sorry, I was getting tired. 

54 minutes ago, Jonathan Porter said:

This is exactly what I’ve been warning people about all along.

 

Hey JP, I did check General/Difficult on Patch#1 and it was fine.  But on Path#2, it failed in HY/Normal.  I never got around to testing in Difficult. Typically, I can just go to General/Normal and be fine.

Some pics from the first patch hunt:

(sizes in grams: .05/.07/.08/.21/.19/.71 = 1.3g)

As promised, I got out this morning to do a review on a new Russian Xcoil that I received.  But let me state firstly that I am not a dealer, I paid for this coil myself and have no self interests other than reporting what I find as I see it.  So here it goes:

I headed off to the gold fields of Arizona at about10:15pm last night.  It was 105F outside but it was dropping.  So it looked like this was going to be a fairly comfortable night for detecting.  The goal of this trip was:

1) compare the Russian 10" Xcoil to the 14x13" ML coil in respects to finding gold

2) check ferrite balance

3) check knock sensitivity

4) review overall design

The first patch I tested was one in which I had only found small gold (nothing over .3g).  In total, I am lucky if this patch gave up 15 grams, but it was very fun.  And I gridded this area to the best of my ability.  Rough dimensions are 50'x50'.  It is unlike any of my other gold area I have been to.  There is no quartz on the ground, but seems to be a basalt looking grey covering up a red gossan type material (which the gold is in) There are areas on this hill where you cannot swing a detector it is so hot.  And hot rocks are the norm, here.   Once on location, I began with the standard coil, dropped the ferrite ring and ground balanced.  I also followed up with noise cancelling, etc.   Then I proceeded to recheck an area which had a dense concentration of nuggets, previously.  I found nothing but I succeeded in warming the machine up.  No knock sensitivity, threshold was a little ratty with the EMI, but nothing out of the ordinary.

I ran the most conservative settings I know.  There are much better settings, but I wanted to know how the coils would operate without optimization.  Settings are below:

     High Yield/Normal/Sens=4,Vol=8,Thresh=25, tone=53, Vol Limit=7, Ground Balance Mode=Semi Auto, Audio Smoothing= off, Ground smoothing= off

Next, I switched to the 10" coil.  Used the ferrite and checked knock sensitivity.  all was good.  It also, had the same level of noise as before.  so I began hunting.  after 15 minutes or so I had a target and it was a small nugget.  and then another.  At this point I just wandered through the area I had gridded and found a couple more.  Total to this point was four small nuggets.  I didn't want to spend all of my time here so I headed back to the truck.  On the way I checked a wash that I thought I checked previously.  Apparently not good enough.  I found two larger nuggets, now I am up to 6 nuggets for the trip.  But back to the truck  I went to check patch #2.

Now this is where it gets interesting.  It is about 5 minute drive to my new area.  The gold from this area *did* come from quartz stringers and the local metamorphic rocks.  The largest piece found was 5 grams and I believe I found a little over an ounce in total.  Most of it from two washes but some from the adjacent hillside.  Anyways, after parking I started my slow walk to the patch with the 10" coil.  After getting my wits scared out of my by what I think was a bobcat, I continued to the area.  I immediately noticed a problem.  The coil was very noisy.  I tried everything I could and tried to rebalance to the ferrite. But it would not work.  So then I walked back to the truck and got the std coil.  This coil ran smoothly.  So it wasn't my imagination.  Then I switched back again to the 10" coil without rebalancing to the ferrite.  No problem.  It was smooth.  As soon as rebalanced to the ferrite ring, it was out of wack again.  So this was frustrating.  I never did check knock sensitivity as the ground noise was already an issue.  By this time it was 4am and I decided to call it a night.

So it seems that while the coils work well in some areas, there are the areas (as JP mentioned previously) that will give some issues.  The only way to trick it is to use your std coil and lock in the X-balance and then switch coils without rebalancing to the ferrite ring.

Another note I would make about this new coil is that the coil wire itself is thicker and does not like to go into the shaft.  After multiple changings, I found that with a little mid shaft rotation, it helped with this immensely.  The standard coil wire drops right in.

That is really all I have on this, for now.  I am not sure if this helps or just muddies up the water. 

I guess I have just never seen one person on this forum, so against a product coming out.  There seems to be a hidden agenda or the product would be allowed to just fail on its own.  Facts given for buyer beware, is helpful.  But everything afterwards is just useless.

As for IP, time will need to tell on that one.  It is *very* easy to work around existing IP.  You add one novel idea to an existing patent, and you are around it.  So attacking the integrity of people who have bought this coil is just a low blow in my opinion.

4 hours ago, Rob Allison said:

Hey Guys,

   Definitely not trying to take anyone's glory here, but it's far from the Arizona's second largest gold nugget. I have seen many nuggets over the last 20+ years that were 20-30 ounces solid from Arizona.  

Too funny, Rob.  When I saw this, I wondered if you'd have any information.  I didn't think that could be the 2nd biggest.

5 hours ago, phrunt said:

Andyy, it sounds like you just glued the wires down and didn't fill the plug with the hot glue to make it solid and stop movement?  Filling the plug is the hard bit but the best way to hot glue it.

I started painting with the liquid adhesive and the stuff is just a mess.  But I am sure it could work if you took the time for it.  I ended up leaving the liquid adhesive covering the exposed copper and then filled everything in with the hot glue and shaping it as needed. But then I am so awesome at soldering that I had all kinds of room for the connector (sarcasm).  If the glue is not filling in for you, you may need to use a different glue stick or hotter gun.  Back in my early days when I was too cheap to buy the garmin gps cables, I would make a cable by plugging the wire with just the pins into the garmin port and just hot gluing a mold.  This worked great and always protected the connection.  I believe the hot glue makes a stiffer (higher durometer) cover. 

But yeah, do whatever floats your boat :)

I actually tried liquid tape brushed around the leads first.  It was sort of a mess.  So I cleaned it up and used hot glue for the rest.  I had no problems getting the hot glue between the wires.  In hind sight I would just use the glue.  But that is just my experience.

Overall, the hardest thing about the mod was getting the enamel off the magnet wire.  My choice method was 400 grit sand paper.  I just lightly dragged it across.  Acetone did nothing to remove it.  Steel wool tore it up.  Tinning process worked fine once i used the sand paper.

5 hours ago, jasong said:

I'm curious because I've worked in engineering and standards can be relative in the engineering world and don't necessarily mean a product has a flaw.

Exactly.  Of course it is not going to meet Minelab standards.  I am also stuck in this engineering world where "standards" are considered a holy grail word to use.  Every company will have it's own design and test standards, Including this Russian maker.  When a new company starts out, this is usually all that they have.  Then they start building in quality standards, hopefully safety standards, and the list goes on. 

But to JP's point, testing and quality standards are extremely important.  For TV's, this would be drop tests, vibration tests, thermal cycling.  For smaller electrical components it might be a resistance test, HIPOT test, etc.  When you have one person doing it, the risk is less in my experience.  But if this Russian builder were to get a building and hire some people on an assembly line, I would be very afraid.  Quality is usually the first thing to go.  For now, this Russian guy is testing the waters.  He doesn't know if he has a great product.  He is probably looking for an investor.  It will be curious to see where this goes.

But isn't funny that this one Russian was able to do what Minelab engineers have been just trying so... so hard to do for like 4 or 5 years, now?  No, Minelab knows exactly how to make a smaller coil.  They just don't want to, yet.  So the Russian is first to market.  That is a big deal in any industry.