Science or Snake Oil

[DeepThought]

I will ask it again: for all the commentary about different detectors' performance, why is there no standard to compare them against? Depth = a function of electromagnetic field strength, target size/orientation and surface area. Of these, there is a lot of talk about the last two and absolutely none on the first (as a function of the transmitting oscillator). A lot like comparing sports car performance without ever talking about HP to the ground. OK design engineers...feel free to chime in. Or provide a copy of your metal detector design schematic and chip sets...

 

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[Charlie P. (NY)]

Best sports car I've had the pleasure to drive only had 150 Hp - an Austin Healey 3000 Mk III. If your "sport " is drag racing maybe not. But if your "sport" is twisty back roads. Mmmmmmm.

There's more to detectors than depth: seperation, audio on seperate circuits from display so you can compare, ease of use, discrimination of specific trash, target seperation (finding treasures among trash), ease of use. On and on. The happy folks are the ones who find detectors that suit their specific needs and temperaments.

 

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[Tom_in_CA]

.... There's more to detectors than depth: .....

Well Charlie, I think we would all agree that ... that's what we all like. So it's not that we "don't care about depth". Of COURSE we all do. It's just that there no uniform way to measure it, when factoring in all the other "gotchas" that risk coming with those ball-to-the-walls deep detectors. You know, like do they retain TID beyond the first 5 or 6" ? How's their target separation? Are they usable in mineralized nasty soil? etc.... And all this still fails to realize that there's no way to get any two people to agree on the depth anyhow. Is it when it ceases to be a 2-way signal? Is it when the TID isn't locking as good? Does a mere whisper "still qualify"? And so forth, and so on.

Like as for target separation: There's a particular stage stop here in CA, that .... over years of being worked by my buddies and I, we've picked out all the easy conductors. Now ... in order to get ANY more conductive signals, we have to force ourselves to go into this one super iron ridden zone. It's so riddled with nails, bailing wire, rusted bolts and such .... that you litterally can not hear a clean stretch of ground where there ISN'T a target (albeit usually iron). So a machine like an Explorer, CZ6, XLT, etc... would be next to worthless. Even with small coils (well, at least now it would be. Earlier on we picked targets from the zone, assuming they were ABOVE the nails). Anyhow, the machine of choice there now, where I can still find lots of conductors hiding, is the Tesoro Silver Sabre. It's only got half the depth of the afore-mentioned machines, and no fancy smanchy target ID, but boy can it find conductors all through the nails! Now is that to say I WOULDN'T like more depth while seeing through and around nails? SURE. But it's simply the known tradeoff.

 

[Muddyhandz]

All detectors aren't the same...your 1266 may be special.

I'm on my third '66 right now. Maybe all three were special.

 

[lookindown]

I'm on my third '66 right now. Maybe all three were special.

I figured you might have owned more than one...you could have just told me without adding the sarcasm, but I know you get real touchy with anyone you talk to on here, so I expected it.

 

[Muddyhandz]

Oooooookay! I liked your post before replying and went along with your comment and even put a happy face to show that I was rolling with your joke.
I gave you back what you gave me. Was your comment sarcastic?
I do get touchy with trespassing, stupid reality shows and Tom constantly commenting about a detector I've been using for 20 years.
What's your point?

 

[lookindown]

Oooooookay! I liked your post before replying and went along with your comment and even put a happy face to show that I was rolling with your joke.
I gave you back what you gave me. Was your comment sarcastic?
I do get touchy with trespassing, stupid reality shows and Tom constantly commenting about a detector I've been using for 20 years.
What's your point?

That's the trouble with written words...I wasnt trying to be sarcastic at all, that's why I added the don't know symbol...Ive made many sarcastic comments on T-NET, but I wasn't trying to be that time. Since you thought I was, I understand why you replied like you did...misunderstanding, I aint mad at ya.

 

[DeepThought]

run into this all the time at work...the only problem with e-communications. we miss out on those visual queues and tonal changes that we really communicate by....not what we think someone thought they said when they wrote it down. Or what we thought I understood them to say. You can't beat face-to-face or an old-fashioned phone call sometimes, for shop talk. Or a GPS...

 

[stasys]

Deep Thought I had the same question few years ago and got the same --sometimes strange replays. But after spending more time in metal detecting and trying allot different detectors i can say its very easy to make standardize metal detectors comparison. For example with detectors for military, they have all this test and comparison, look info in Minelab...com counter mine metal detectors and you will have allot nice read with different picture and table, very informative. Why we dont have the same in civilian metal detectors?---- because producers dont need it

 

[DeepThought]

Stasys - It's a buying power decision for me. This year I'm paying for a wedding and a college tuition, along with some home renovations - while losing 20% of my pay due to sequestration. Before I drop any more money on a MD I'd like to know I will get a suitable return on my investment. I get all the talk about not being able to measure MD performance because of different terrain, mineralization, phase of the moon and time of day... But I should be able to compare how they perform on a bench top under controlled conditions. Consider EPA mileage on cars. An MXT is about 10 times as much as a tracker IV. I should have some indication it will perform near as much better

 

[Tom_in_CA]

reply

Deep Thought I had the same question few years ago and got the same --sometimes strange replays. But after spending more time in metal detecting and trying allot different detectors i can say its very easy to make standardize metal detectors comparison. For example with detectors for military, they have all this test and comparison, look info in Minelab...com counter mine metal detectors and you will have allot nice read with different picture and table, very informative. Why we dont have the same in civilian metal detectors?---- because producers dont need it

No stasys, it's not because "producers don't need it". It's because it's too subjective to each individual's interpretations. Go back through this thread, and read the posts I've added to this. And you will see that ... no ... it's not possible in any sort of real world useable form.

For example: if one of the standard comparable test data check-list items is: "how deep will it detect a dime to", can you imagine how subjective just that single supposedly simple question would be? If you're talking an air test: a) who's to say when the signal ceased to be heard? There's a grey zone of which one person would say: yeah that's still clear. While another says "well, on the 5th wave of the dime, it stuttered a hair, so I think that's it's limit." b) what sens. level is the test done at? Mid way? all-the-way? etc... Brands aren't necessarily calibrated in such way that a setting of "5" is the same on each one, for instance. c) And so what if some machines got that dime to 14" in the air test. If you can't replicate that anywhere except clean virgin white dry sand, and can't tell that dime from a nail, what good is that 14" ? Heck, there's machines that would show up on the dime test as perhaps going 16+" (if you want to include nugget machines), but what good is a nugget machine going to do in any other applications EXCEPT nuggets? (they're just too squirelly sensitive and you'd go bonkers trying to use it in park or ghost town type hunting).

Read my input into this thread, and see if you can see what I'm saying.

 

[rickv14623]

But I should be able to compare how they perform on a bench top under controlled conditions. Consider EPA mileage on cars. An MXT is about 10 times as much as a tracker IV. I should have some indication it will perform near as much better

I don't get out to hunt as much as I should, but when I do it's not on a bench top. Lab results do not ever equal the real world. Brand name headache pills work no better than the store brand yet cost twice as much. No MD is better because it has a higher price tag alone. That is why we talk to each other about how these things work in the real world. The magic answer chart if it weer to exist would be doomed to failure.

 

[woof!]

Stasys - It's a buying power decision for me. This year I'm paying for a wedding and a college tuition, along with some home renovations - while losing 20% of my pay due to sequestration. Before I drop any more money on a MD I'd like to know I will get a suitable return on my investment. I get all the talk about not being able to measure MD performance because of different terrain, mineralization, phase of the moon and time of day... But I should be able to compare how they perform on a bench top under controlled conditions. Consider EPA mileage on cars. An MXT is about 10 times as much as a tracker IV. I should have some indication it will perform near as much better

Deepthought, this thread is now in its 3rd page and you've gotten no sympathy. Here's mine.

If you want spex, check out the T2 and F75. We got spex that other metal detector manufacturers don't even know how to measure, and wouldn't dare to publish if they did.

The lowly TK4 meanwhile will outperform the most expensive units on the market under some conditions and in the right hands (yours?). It's typically $60 - 140 retail, the lower figure however only with heavy discounting. No ergonomics spex, almost nothing in the way of electrical spex. It was a mature product when I came to work at BH a decade ago, and it's the one product I haven't been allowed to "improve" because it's still one of our best sellers just the way it is, even with that ugly muffler-on-a-stick mechanical design and admittedly not a lot of hots. What it does do, it does well. You can read up on it in the BH forum.

Buying a metal detector is not like buying a car. You've been driving a car since who knows when, and your parents were probably doing the same. You know what roads are, you even know 99% of what you're likely to see on Monday's morning commute. I drive a Scion XD, but the job it does isn't much different from what my '49 Chevy coupe clunker I bought for $85 back in '68 did, except that the clunker burned darn near as much oil as it did gasoline and the crankcase capacity was a whole lot less than the gas tank.

Metal detectors are electronics, they're still evolving rapidly despite the fact that the basic principles were established more than 100 years ago. There is no standardization, get used to it!

Buying a metal detector as a newbie, it's not about technical spex anyhow. It's like being a teenager in 1915 drooling over the horseless carriage ads. You ain't got your driver's license yet, don't know what roads you're going to drive on, or what you're going to find there in between episodes of putting the hood ornament in the ditch (the first thing I did when I got behind the wheel of a car).

Since you're obsessed with spex, what you need is a TK4. I'd gladly pitch the F75SE to you, but that's like handing a Ferrari to a kid who just got his learner's permit.

If metal detecting "clicks" with you, the part where you're having to learn where to search, learn the sounds of the machine, learn how to retreive targets, and having lots of fun getting dirty and often coming home with nothing but trash to show for it, the TK4 can offer that experience just as well as any other metal detector on the market no matter how expensive.

If it turns out that you actually like what's involved in metal detecting, and want to spend more on it, you'll find no shortage of advice on how to spend that money. What's more, you'll actually have a context within which to place that advice so you can make some sort of sense out of it in a way that matters to you personally.

Your "return on investment" approach based on spex is all an illusion. The investment is not so much the machine, but you. The people swinging $1,000 machines earning a dollar an hour salable proceeds regard that as success, because they enjoy what they're doing. If you think you're going to buy a metal detector and without knowing what the heck you're doing have yourself new profitable career, you need to take up fishing in water, not in dirt. Bait's cheap and all ya gotta do is haul them fishies outa the water, but it's not for people who think that $100 spent at Academy Sports in the fishing goods dept. is gonna make the "Chicken of the Sea" green with envy.

TK4. The darn thing does work, the capital cost is miniscule therefore virtually no dollar downside risk, and the rest is up to you.

Wishing you the best,

--Dave J.

 

[stasys]

No stasys, it's not because "producers don't need it". It's because it's too subjective to each individual's interpretations. Go back through this thread, and read the posts I've added to this. And you will see that ... no ... it's not possible in any sort of real world useable form.

For example: if one of the standard comparable test data check-list items is: "how deep will it detect a dime to", can you imagine how subjective just that single supposedly simple question would be? If you're talking an air test: a) who's to say when the signal ceased to be heard? There's a grey zone of which one person would say: yeah that's still clear. While another says "well, on the 5th wave of the dime, it stuttered a hair, so I think that's it's limit." b) what sens. level is the test done at? Mid way? all-the-way? etc... Brands aren't necessarily calibrated in such way that a setting of "5" is the same on each one, for instance. c) And so what if some machines got that dime to 14" in the air test. If you can't replicate that anywhere except clean virgin white dry sand, and can't tell that dime from a nail, what good is that 14" ? Heck, there's machines that would show up on the dime test as perhaps going 16+" (if you want to include nugget machines), but what good is a nugget machine going to do in any other applications EXCEPT nuggets? (they're just too squirelly sensitive and you'd go bonkers trying to use it in park or ghost town type hunting).

Read my input into this thread, and see if you can see what I'm saying.

Tom in CA, I totally disagree with your complicated understanding. My suggestion go to Minelab...com and reed more military detectors comparisons,, until we can,,, you will see your self how its looks minelab.com/emea/countermine/evaluations/f3 enjoy reading
But if you would ask me what best hobby detector now are, without doubt I would say any cheapest used minelab explorer, but its always right not to believe

 

[DeepThought]

Dave - your're correct. Three pages after the invite at end of the very first post, here we are. In this thread, I wasn’t SEEKING specs and standards as a means of measuring MD performance. Rather, pointing out that WITHOUT some form of common measuring stick (specs, stds, etc) there is simply no reliable way of comparing X against Y. How can someone say MD performance can’t be measured & proceed with instructions on building a test garden to test their MD? This isn’t a tough concept to grasp. As for experience doing so, I spent more last year in documenting and testing a single product’s development to requirements and standards than some MD companies’ 2012 annual earnings.
Got it: the forums are full of personal opinions. Only the minority of which are by people who have been MDing for some time & own a number of devices. And of these, one can find cases where our more prominent expert posters contradict their own comments. Moving on to the manufacturing community, you summarized the whole discussion:”… even know how to measure, and wouldn't dare to publish if they did.”
Short story – When ready, I will go and rent a couple of different detectors for the weekend @ a local dealer. Spend a few hours with them & compare against identical conditions & call this whole subject done. I suspect I won’t need to spend big $ for that upgrade. ROI is a balance based on personal enjoyment, not an “illusion”. Trust me, MDing is a balance, “Sequestration” is no illusion.
Thanks to all. My final post re: this matter.
John

 

[Tom_in_CA]

reply

...... How can someone say MD performance can’t be measured & proceed with instructions on building a test garden to test their MD? This isn’t a tough concept to grasp.....

Deep thought, The fact that it's not a do-able chart, "is not a tough concept to grasp"

Stop. Think Hard. Ok here's the scenario. Someone (a consortion of manufacturers, or an appointed panel, or whomever) builds this "test garden" you speak of. Right? You with me so far? Ok. And in that test garden a variety of known known/marked objects are buried at various depths and intervals. Right? If I've got your idea of "test garden" wrong, let me know.

I suppose the "test" would be, is something like, if dimes (as one of the varied test items buried) are buried at 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, and so on inches up to 20" deep. And the "simple test" is, to see which machine detects the dime to the deepest of those depths. Right? And presto, a chart is made, and the reader easily flies down the comparison charts, right? If I don't have your idea of one-of-the-such tests right, let me know.

Ok, and to some people, this might seem like a perfectly logical test to do. Thus if machine (a) hears the 8" dime, but doesn't hear the 9" dime, then it's safe to assume, that under these test conditions (of which all the other machines are testing on the exact same condition, exact same dime, etc...), that PRESTO! "machine (a) gets the dime to 8". Are you with me so far? And when machine (b) performs the SAME test, yet gets the dime up to the 10" (but not 11"), then THAT's THAT machine's data point for the comparison charts. And machine (c) might get all the dimes up to 13" before petering out. Thus .... sure! It's THAT SIMPLE, right?

But no. It's not as simple as I've painted above (if I mis-characterized your dreamt of charts and tests, let me know). Because here's the problem: In each of those tests where the tester swings the coil over the spot, and listens to "whether or not he heard the dime", who's to be the arbitrar of that? One person might say "I still hear it", while the other says "yeah but it's only a 1-way signal". To which the first person says: "yeah, but only on every 3rd or 4th swing, thus on *most* of the signals, it's still a 2-way signal, thus I say that still qualifies as hearing it". So the two testers argue over criteria. One may say "but you're swinging too fast, or too slow, or shouldn't rely on TID's, etc... Or one says "but I ALWAYS dig 1-way signals, while the other disagrees that one-way signals are bent nails 99% of the time. To which the first says "no, bent nails sound different in Omaha, not Alaska, so I disagree"

So you see deep-thought, you have to ask who's criteria as to what qualifies as still a signal, vs no signal. If you mean any-what-soever flutter, then ....ok, then you merely open up debate on what qualifies as "flutters"?

I could go on and on and on about how the test charts are totally open to subjective opinions, and so too is the test result data going to be hard to replicate in real world conditions. You know, like shows up with this wizz-bang wonderful deep-seeking machines that the "charts proved", yet shows up on the wet salt beach, here finding that his machine goes crazy once it gets on the wet salt, and his depth is only half of what the charts said he would get.

But alas, you're not getting it. Someone pm'd me and said I'm wasting my time, and I'm beginning to agree

stasys, I will go look now at the minelab site military stuff you allude to, and get back to you.

 

[Tom_in_CA]

stasys, I've looked over the link you give. Very interesting.

Ok, my comments: I work with govt. (as a subcontractor with some heavy equipment involved in asphalt/road building). So I'm a little familiar with spec's and voluminous contracts and studies like what you're saying. Uncle Sam (the military, etc...) can get downright silly with 100 page documents for something as simple erecting light-poles along the freeway, with median dividers around them. You know, how many watts the lightbulb will be, the grade steel to use in the rebar of the concrete foundation, the height of the light-pole, whether or not you used discriminatory practices in hiring the workers who erected it, and a million other points for seemingly simple tasks. And the reason for these vast blue-prints for any public works project (or military procurement of supplies, like a mine detector) is so that all the bidders are bidding on supposedly the "same thing" so that uncle same gets his mine detectors to the a) best type that he can get, and b) for the lowest price so the vendors are all vying for uncle-sam's business, and c) so that all the bidders are on the same level playing field, comparing apples to apples about what they're about to build, what spec's they'll be held to, etc... (so no one later can claim "foul play" or "un-fairness", etc..).

So I am well aware of how much volume goes into the the simplest of military procurements ($1000 toilet seats, $500 coffee pots, etc...).

To that, I would say that the end result of such careful steps, can also clarify and show the very folly I'm speaking of.

For example (don't get "lost in the example", as this is JUST an example) : I watched a documentary on the D-day landings the other night. Look at two wonderful examples of things which were tested and tested and tested before D-day, but which turned out to be total flops. AND BELIEVE ME ! charts, studies, and bid-specs were probably JUST LIKE the link you put here on T'net. It would probably would have looked TOTALLY UN-ASSAILABLE. And you and deep thought would have looked at those charts and studies and bid spec. sheets and said "see?? It can be done!". But here's the two flops: A grappling hook launched by a rocket launcher, had to be able to shoot XX feet into the air (because that was the known measured heights of the cliffs they were going to tackle). And bidders of military ware set about to design, compare, and compete for these govt. contracts. And the devices were tested and tested and tested against each other (not unlike the tests you guys want for metal detectors, for instance). And they settled on one which presumably shot the highest, provided the most durable package, and whatever else specs they needed. BUT ON D-DAY, the things failed miserably, because no one took into account that the ropes might get wet and heavy with sea-spray during the voyage over to Normandy. So you see, that option (b), that perhaps uncle same passed over in the comparisons (because it lacked a few feet in projectile distance compared to option (a), MIGHT ACTUALLY HAVE BEEN THE BETTER CHOICE. But hey, you can't argue with side-by-side testing and consumer report studies, RIGHT?

The other flop was the testing of floating tanks. Tanks that actually, believe it or not, proved themselves as do-able with many tests. Some sort of enclosure where they had a little boat-shaped cacoon, which unfolded and released the tank once it reached shore. But the seas were rough in the English channel on D-day, so most of the tanks sank The test conditions in the months leading up to this, had been in calm bays and harbors. No one thought ahead to think "what about rough seas"?

Now I know, to answer each of the above examples of "gotchas", you might easily be thinking "well, you simply adjust the test to account for wet ropes", or "you simply re-adjust the test to account for rough seas" and so forth, right? But you have to remember that the variables, are ENDLESS. Once you close one "gotcha" loophole, another one opens.

The first mine detectors the USA used in WWII were in Africa and Italy (in the beginning of the war). There were several companies that had to compete to submit bids and prototypes, for Uncle Sam to choose from (PERHAPS NOT UNLIKE YOUR LINK SPEC'S). And the eventual model they chose was not necessarily the "most sensitive" (as you would THINK the spec's would be for). They also had to be able to be field-serviceable, inter-changeable, durable, light, green cammo paint, and a bunch of other things. And as far as "results", they only had to be able to find a frisbee sized object. And in the USA, they DID JUST THAT. Several submitted designs satisfied that, and of those, the best was chosen based on various criteria. And they worked in a) the USA test beds, b) Africa, and c) Sicily.

HOWEVER, when they got to parts of Italy (working their way northwards), they enountered places where the mine detectors weren't working too well, and no one knew why. It was eventually figured out that it was d/t ground minerals (who'd have known such a thing in those primitive days?). ALSO BY THEN the Germans had wised up to the Americans mine detectors, so they simply made subsequent land mines with less metal (plastic exterior with a lesser # of metal parts/components). And NOW the Americans mine detectors were no longer "sensitive enough". And if you take yourself back in time to the original USA test beds, you can see that it's entirely possible that another competitors model might not actually have been the SUPERIOR machine in-the-end. Perhaps anothed mine detector would find an object smaller than a frisbee. But since they didn't need to find objects that small, that became a "mute point", right? Or if one of the vendors knocked themselves silly to develop a mine detector with ground balance, perhaps he exceeded the weight limit, or the ease-of-use criteria, so they poo-pooed his detector, and chose the competitors instead.

So you can see, even in cases where you can show that such lists and charts have been done, yet history will show that it does NOTHING MORE THAN PROVE MY POINT, that there can and will still be variables that the charts can not show, or can no anticipate. But yes: Uncle Sam, in order to have a "standard" by which bidders compete, will in fact HAVE to come up with those type links and charts. Lest there can never been a criteria to attain to. Yes it serves some good (lest how else can anyone build or design or compete, if they didn't have spec's?). But for the purposes of hobbyist "what's best" or "what's deepest", no, it won't work in actual real world conditions.

 

[DeepThought]

Tom...for the record, I keep saying it: test under controlled conditions. That means in the lab, not the field. Fix a coil at a given angle and position & place targets of different conductivity at different points in space reliably and consistently. Hook a scope up to the audio amp, etc output (take the man out of the loop) and measure the corresponding values for each condition & repeat with another MD. Compare phase angle with orientation. You no doubt know how to do this.

History Channel strikes again. As for your last post, are you a design, test and quality engineer as well as a contracting officer, familiar with the product ORD/RFP/IOT&E and FRIP process? Drop the toilet seat and WWII rhetoric and put it in context of those same requirements mandated by the aerospace and aviation industry - get it right. Reminds me of when I had someone (operating outside of their skill set) ask me why I was doing all this testing. I explained it was needed to validate changes in critical ops. They then said "Microsoft doesn't to it that way." And there lies the difference, I explained - with a smile and without accusation - there is a distinct difference in validating a spell checker at our desktop vs. testing rotor pitch in an aircraft at 20 thousand feet. But there is the comic relief aspect.

Save the condescending reply. Just have a good one...enjoy that one worldly vice.

 

[Tom_in_CA]

condescending reply

Tom...for the record, I keep saying it: test under controlled conditions. That means in the lab, not the field. Fix a coil at a given angle and position & place targets of different conductivity at different points in space reliably and consistently. Hook a scope up to the audio amp, etc output (take the man out of the loop) and measure the corresponding values for each condition & repeat with another MD. Compare phase angle with orientation. You no doubt know how to do this.

History Channel strikes again. As for your last post, are you a design, test and quality engineer as well as a contracting officer, familiar with the product ORD/RFP/IOT&E and FRIP process? Drop the toilet seat and WWII rhetoric and put it in context of those same requirements mandated by the aerospace and aviation industry - get it right. Reminds me of when I had someone (operating outside of their skill set) ask me why I was doing all this testing. I explained it was needed to validate changes in critical ops. They then said "Microsoft doesn't to it that way." And there lies the difference, I explained - with a smile and without accusation - there is a distinct difference in validating a spell checker at our desktop vs. testing rotor pitch in an aircraft at 20 thousand feet. But there is the comic relief aspect.

Save the condescending reply. Just have a good one...enjoy that one worldly vice.

"Save the condescending reply...."

Oh, and let me guess: your replies are the angelic non-condescending ones, right? But when someone goes to dispute you, that makes their answer "condescending", right? The fastest way to put someone out of anyone else's range of input, is simply to call their answer condescending, and other such "ace cards". Wonderful.

"I keep saying it: test under controlled conditions. That means in the lab, not the field."

Yup, just like the testing "under controlled conditions in the lab", that was done before D-day. Worked great didn't it? Deep-thought would have been there saying: "choose this model, based on the wonderful comparative scientific studies charts, which show this one to be the best one for the job". And althogh that's only an example from long ago, the principle holds exactly to what I'm trying to tell you here, even in 2013.

Sure, persons can do what you say, and make the charts you dream of. You can go buy one of each machine, buy a bunch of lab equipment, and do the very things you speak of. But heaven help the consumer who uses those charts, to buy "the best" detector But alas, your eyes will gloss over, and you'll continue to think that it's the best thing to help the consumer wade through the different options.

oh well, interesting conversation. Thanx for being a good sport and continuing in it.