Sinclair

19 hours ago, Alluminati said:

Those look to be good enough for the bank machine, I have given them much much worse. There will be a layer of sand and crumbled zinc on the floor when they remove the coinstar machine here. lolol.

I've used some automotive polish by hand to put a shine on a few higher denomination coins that I've spent in person. It works well but more trouble then its worth probably. 

Yeah - we have some coinstar machines, but they're taking ridiculously high charges + you can only get vouchers for the shop the machine is located in.

Nobody wants to have coins these days, as it seems. After a long research, I've found a bank, which has coin machines and doesn't charge you for dumpig your coins.

I've washed another 3-4 drums, and the new gasket design seems to work perfectly. No leaks, easy to open..

Some off-topic stuff.. since my chinesium still takes some time, I made some proof of concept testing of my changed drum design.

It's made out of a standard 125mm pvc muff. This time I've glued in 3 rods

I've removed the rubber sealings and shortened the end covers. The back-cover is glued in. The front one has got a silicone gasket.

Bothe caps are connected by a stainless threaded rod and some special washers with attached gasket. Here are some coins before tumbling:

Then it went for 2-3 hours on a gutted HP DeskJet InkJet:

The result is not bad:

Normal coins on the left, tumbled on the right:

They've lost their shine and look like sandblastet.. as long as the bank machine takes them, I'm ok with the results There are some heavy corroded ones with pitting.. even those cleaned up quite good:

Congrats - you certainly have a good spot there!

ACK, my post wasn't meant as any kind of offense - just a general reminder thingy

It's always a matter of personal preference.

The less tones you use, the more audible target information gets lost - meaning, you can't identify some iffy signals by ear, you'll always have to use the display, to see if the ID is stable for example. For me that's not practical when hunting at night. 20+ signals in Park1 10kHz on my beaches may be coins (lower 20s), but also can be bottletops (jumpy 25-30s).

Long story short:

I always advise people to learn their targets, decide how they want to separate them and set their machine accordingly.

Nothing against your settings, ColonelDan - just a general observation / advice. I sadly often see people on youtube / forums using some doubious settings from other people without knowing or thinking, what they actually cause in their detecting environment.

The print quality looks quite good - as a do-it-yourself-ish guy, I should maybe invest in an entry-level chinesium printer like an ender3 or something..

Besides bottle caps, I think the Equinox is doing pretty good with big iron. I am running beach1 with default IB and RS and I can't even remember, if I've ever dug a big peace of iron with it ...     I must admit - I've never verified the ones I thought they're big iron, because the Nox just let's you know, somehow. If you're running high RS settings, you notice small differences in how long a signal is ringing, depending on the target size. You can then swing suuuuper slow to verify (like ~5-15cm/s).. that way you really get a good idea of the target size.. seemed to have saved me from digging groundwater

Nice find, mate!

The weather was calm and nice last evening, so I decided to try a more far away beach to get some remains.

I haven't even turned the machine on, before some pedestrians told me, that they've seen at least two detectorists in the past 3 days - what a start..

It didn't took too long to find the first coil mark in the sand:

Hm.. looks kind of Minelab'ish?! What do you think?

We had some rain in the afternoon, so all footsteps etc. had to be fresh!

Within minutes, I've found some old DM coins. After two hours, I've only found one 2€ piece.. and then I saw this:

Looks like a Deus for sure. Ok, so that sparked a fire in me somehow and I did another hour on that beach ..  Suddenly things went better, and I've found some good spots.

17,30€ and 6DM - not too shabby for an after season hunt on an obviously well hit beach (but nothing found in the first 2 hours)! There's really a good amount of luck involved to find the peanuts on such beaches.. how ever.. 6DM in old currency in such a short time was strange..

I've also found an old sixpence:

And of course some 925 silver again :

Now, that one had no solid number.. sometimes 9, 21, 15 if I remember right.. but somehow it made me dig

My first china parts for the tumbler have arrived. Waiting for the motor and a belt to build the new version.

Beach season is over - so I've made a little wrap-up video of the better finds. The video is in german, but perhaps it's interesting for someone anyway

It's been a really great season!

Perhaps it is more relevant, if your're not using 100% infill.

Which printer are you using?

I am no 3D print expert (and I still don't own one .. why ever ) - but: wouldn't it be better to print the yoke lengthwise instead of top to bottom? I *think* it will be stronger for side-forces that way..

Nice project by the way!

On 9/25/2018 at 8:42 AM, Dubious said:

What's wrong with Firmware R1?

It's missing the turbo-modes and it has that power-on lockup problem as you have found out by yourself:

Beach season is over, so I've sent fisher an email, asking how I can get my unit fixed. If it locks up while waterhunting for example, it's really not tolerable that you have to take out the batteries to get it working again... other than that I think it's a great pinpointer.

5 hours ago, Steve Herschbach said:

In other words, I think the Bias adjusts the "tipping point" between these mixed result items and whether they "lean" more ferrous or more non-ferrous. My setting of zero means I should be digging more ferrous, not less. With the hopes of not missing an item forced to read ferrous when it is not.

That's exactly how I understood the whole topic. I'll have to play with those settings a lot more in the next season. Recovery Speed settings are VERY important in this context, too! In addition, the impact of those settings will probably be far more prominent / audible  in 2 or 5 tone mode.

People mostly tend to write, if something doesn't work as it should, or if they have the find of their lifes

I still like the F-Pulse, only wished it had firmware R2 on it. I got one of the first ones sold in germany and other than the firmware, I can't really complain about anything.

@Jackpine

Depends on what you're after..

Some good exlanations:

http://thesilverfiend.com/minelab-equinox-iron-bias-explained/

For my beaches I kept IB pretty high and never touch it. I might try some other settings during the off-season.

1 hour ago, Nuke em said:

It is a productive beach but cashless society is killing the coin hunting compared to the past .

There are about 15 people detecting the beach i go too but not all at the same time and many not with the right machine or know where to go . Trash levels make it difficult for some machines to know what target is what . Then theres the EMI / WIFI .

Yes, cashless society is a problem - we've discussed that already

For my small, not so heavily crowded beaches, I am happy with the results for this year, but I've been out veeeery often to reach my goal. The metal detecting hobby seems to be growing pretty fast at the moment.. never met so many detectorists, as this year. On one evening we had 6 on the same beach.. crazy.. only chance to come by is to get out as often as possible, in hope the gas bill doesn't eat up the earnings

Seems to be a very productive beach, and / or no one else is hunting it? The coins look like they‘ve been there for quite some time. 72 pounds in one hunt is just ridiculous - on the other side, I couldn‘t swing the detector for 5h with my hand..

EMI from my mobile phone is annoying, too. Noise Cancel doesn't help at all.

On my Nox the lower rod had been a little bit loose, when it was new. Now it's gone the other way - the fine beach sand settled everywhere, and it's really tough to disassemble. You practically can't without scratching up the lower rod. Maybe I'll swap the two aluminium rods to one carbon rod at some point.

2 hours ago, steveg said:

Wow, you guys are the only two so far, that are talking about "something" in the audio, post-update...or, at least, the only two that I've seen mention it in a post so far.

I did, somehow:

"The ID changed +1 - I didn't and wouldn't call that an improvement. I am hunting at night / in the dark very often - 90% by ear. All I can say is, that they sound different after the update, when they are close to the surface. I can't really explain it - it'll take some more hours...  "

But in opposite to the others I've noticed a difference in close to the surface items...  how ever. I think it heavily depends on your settings - 2-5-50 tones, tone breaks and so on - if you perceive a difference after the update or not.

Pinpointing and userprofile issues are still not 100% fixed. I'll stick with the new version anyhow.

Found this nice 925 earring today.

I can only repeat myself - the Nox is a silver magnet

It's done - I've surpassed the 900€ mark, so the Nox has paid for itself in spendable coins alone!

I would have never thought this is going to happen, but it only took ~5 month and one beach season.

If you're still interested going 18500, this may help:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/ON-OFF-DC-DC-Step-up-Boost-Voltage-Converter-Module-3V-3-3V-3-7V-to-5V-6V-9V-12V/273369566861?hash=item3fa6188e8d%3Am%3AmE691EnwgUOinJ46dabcDKw&var=572745174966

This one even has an integrated charge circuit:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/3-7V-4-2V-Charger-Protection-5V-6V-9V-12V-Discharger-DC-DC-Step-up-Converter/322597422676?hash=item4b1c4e0654%3Am%3AmhKh8XC-nshjAkX5a_waM-Q&var=511585703546

There are various other versions available .. you get the idea!

Wanted to convert my fisher, because I hate those 9v blocks - but then came the Equinox

7 hours ago, Alluminati said:

So when you detect at the nudist beach do you have to take your cloths off?

No - what do you think why I am hunting in the dark / at night?

Well, there are several reasons actually. How ever - beach season nears its end, so there's not much going on anymore.

9 hours ago, Chase Goldman said:

Trying to cover a beach with the 6 inch coil would drive me nuts.

The 11" is a very good compromise - If we can even call it a compromise.. I've found really small stuff with it .. sausage-ends in 8" no problem (sens at 18!)

11 hours ago, Alluminati said:

The 6" will be worth it for shoreline work, at least around here.

Yes, there are places on the beach, where the 6" will certainly outperform the 11". I have some very trashy spots, where you can clearly hear the 11" struggeling with masking. But overall those areas are too small compared to the rest of my detecting area - at least for me! So I probably wouldn't use it often enough to justify it's purchase... Over here it costs about 230€.. if it was in the 150-ish range, I might get weak

In the end everybody has to decide for themselves ...