2007- A year of new metal detector technology.

[bakergeol]

Well it is about time. The old VLF technology has been with us since the late 70's. Manufacturers trying to tweak more performance out of old technology with no giant leaps in performance has been the norm for some time now. What are the problems with VLF detectors?Well we know what they are. The deeper one goes with a VLF the more ground mineralization (iron) your detector reads. Good targets quickly read toward the iron end and become "iffy" with depth. What to dig at great depths? VLF depths are also adversely effected by bad ground mineralization. I can obtain great air tests on my VLF, however put the object in the ground and these depths are long gone.

So what will we see new for 2007?New ground balancing discriminating pulse induction units will be introduced. PI's have of course been with us for ages, however, they have been largely limited to dig it all beach and nugget hunting. For these activities depth has always been the first priority and not iron ID. The problem with PI's compared to VLFs is that Iron ID has always been non-existant or rudimentary. The advantage of PIs are that they are not adversely effected by severe ground mineralization to the same degree as VLFs are which results in superior depth. The question is would this also mean better metal ID with depth for a discriminating PI(As an owner of a GS5 which has ground balancing with 2 tone ID- my opinion is yes)? Regarding depth,one is reminded about Dankowsk's famous "beneath the mask" article about recovered coins using high end VLFs compared to a high end PI (Minelab SD2200D-old technology compared to todays PIs).

http://www.dankowskidetectors.com/behindthemask.htm

So who will be the players here? Well word on the street is that Whites will introduce a ground balancing discriminating PI this year. The French will shortly introduce the Adonis which will be a PI with discrimination. Dave Emery's Pulse Devil (PD1000) may well be the first entry in the US. There are two Aussie projects but little information is available about them. What about Minelab?- Who knows?

What I feel important is that these new models have a range of pulse delays to handle different hunting situations(eg. coin vs gold hunting). After all they wil be cross overs being able to hunt nuggets as well as coin/relics.

2007 should be an interesting year
George

 

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[trip043]

good artical george........thanks 4 posting

 

[trip043]

good artical george........thanks 4 posting

 

[U.K. Brian]

Eric Foster produced a discriminating P.I. (the P.P.D.1) about twenty years ago at the same time as Protovale developed the Pulse Analyst. Both worked but the I.D. (I.B. based) suffered from the effects of black sand on the beach.
The later Goldquest (big box, not the SS) had both a degree of discrimination and ground balance.
Germany and Bulgaria have many discriminating/ground balancing machines but the discrimination is only against ferrous of fist size or above so they tend to only be used for hoard hunting.
The new Whites seems to be going to be a mass production version of the GS5. I can't see it matching the 5 though it should be more affordable.
The Adonis, which has received CE approval for sale in Europe now, has had plenty of teething problems but they must be pretty confident that its been sorted as the main dealer is suggesting people should pop in and see it demonstrated before they buy.

 

[bakergeol]

Eric Foster produced a discriminating P.I. (the P.P.D.1) about twenty years ago at the same time as Protovale developed the Pulse Analyst. Both worked but the I.D. (I.B. based) suffered from the effects of black sand on the beach.
The later Goldquest (big box, not the SS) had both a degree of discrimination and ground balance.
Germany and Bulgaria have many discriminating/ground balancing machines but the discrimination is only against ferrous of fist size or above so they tend to only be used for hoard hunting.
The new Whites seems to be going to be a mass production version of the GS5. I can't see it matching the 5 though it should be more affordable.
The Adonis, which has received CE approval for sale in Europe now, has had plenty of teething problems but they must be pretty confident that its been sorted as the main dealer is suggesting people should pop in and see it demonstrated before they buy.

Thanks for your post Brian. I was kind of hoping you would drop in to add your insight here. I realize that I am a bit biased here but I feel that the GS5 has the best all around iron ID for all sizes of iron for the PIs currently in production. Can't really confuse a high conductor coin for a piece of iron. It is a matter of knowing your machine and what different settings can tell you. It can readily distinguish an Al pop can(read large gold nugget or any large non ferrous object) from a tin can at several feet(or several inches) which is something a minelab PI can not do. Still some small heat treated steel such as recent bottlecaps and fishing hooks come across as high tone low conductors. Some large heat treated steel will also produce a high tone low conductor signal but they can be distinguished by their tone strength. So we are far from a 100% reliable iron ID here.

However, if we are talking about a cross over PI it must be able to fully handle the coin/relic situations. The GS5 was designed for small gold hunting with it's short pulse delay( adjustable from 10uS to 25uS). To achieve maximun depths for high conductor coins high pulse delays are desireable. I believe Eric once stated that a quarter would give a maximun signal at 800uS! I don't know what a happy medium for coin hunting would be but obviously a non adjustable pulse delay is simply not the way to go. I feel that Dave Emery's approach of fully adjustable pulse delays for different hunting situations for his PD1000 is the best approach.


Happy Hunting
George