Auto Feeder for my bucket sluice

[soupfreak]

I decided that spoon feeding my bucket sluice was a tad tedious, so I set up this nifty auto feeder:



The funnel comes from the auto parts section of Walmart. The plastic tube was cut to just above the top rim of the sluice, then I taped a #47 cake decorating tip to the end.

I found a $5 mini massager in the Walmart pharmacy that I attached with cable ties to agitate the material.

Still have to dial it in a bit, but seems to be working great. Cleaning the sluice after 1 full hopper seems to be a good balance.

 

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[russau]

ive always heard that you never add dry cons to a wet system.itll make the really fine gold float on out of the sluice. check your tailings and see!

 

[soupfreak]

ive always heard that you never add dry cons to a wet system.itll make the really fine gold float on out of the sluice. check your tailings and see!

You're right, I never thought about that. Thanks for the insight (I am still a bit new to using a sluice.)

Since the cons are dropping into the water, the fine material would essentially not break through and float straight out.

So now I'm thinking that if I angled a trough above the sluice, then made a spray bar and ran it the length of the trough and fed material at the top, then the cons would be under the flow of water and enter the sluice wet.

Am I on the right track here or am I missing something?

 

[russau]

i think your seeing what you need. i also run a alum triangled trough that has a pointed exit for my cons. i have a small 12vdc bilge pump that sprays a Little water over the cons to slowly feed the cons into my cleanup device(which ever one i decide to use at the time)the auto feeder controlls the water and material that goes into my device. and the more you can controll each eleiment(water/cons/feed/tilt) the better you will be in saving your fine gold.i feed my cons very slowly through these feeders to controll my captureing of fine gold.the smaller the gold, the slower i work!

 

[Gravelwasher]

Just thought maybe a small diameter 2-3mm plastic hose on a drip or real slow flow run into the hopper before you load it with the cons then turn on the water supply to the hose when set up to fluidize the tip of the con feeder, might work?

 

[russau]

it just might do that!!!one way to find out!

 

[MrWareWolf]

I have a sluice like this also.. I actually used two small things to create a small 'hopper'..
Item 1) A carefully cut and folded gift card
Item 2) a small piece of styrofoam to hold up one end of the 'hopper'.

I'll take a picture of the card for you, and the foam, as well as the whole thing put together.

There is just enough space under the styrofoam, for all the water and material to flow uninhibited.

It is possible to feed too much material this way, but its far faster than a teaspoon at a time. I use a set of measuring scoops I found at the dollar store to feed classified material, about a 1/2 to full cup at a time.

The key to my setup is that the credit card has a small water-finger in the middle that sits just in front of the black flap of the sluice. As it does that, it catches a small bit of water, to re-hydrate the already wet material, which in turn then falls out the holes to the side of the water-finger..

I considered catching ALL the water, with some sort of flap, and making a full 'hopper' with 4 sides and a bottom, but that would be much more complicated.

In YOUR situation, I would just feed a bit of water in the top of your system, like a drip line, or something, to add just a lil water to keep things moving. Fwiw yours is far cooler than my ghetto fix.. Seriously just a dripline in your drop-tube would probably be enough! Might have to have a different frosting tip, but maybe not. Be sure to not add too much water into the flow.

In my case, if I had it to do over, I would make 2 fingers: one on each side. This would impede the flow a little less, and supply a bit more water to the material. I can see the V in my water disappear somewhat with my device in place. The water-v is not totally gone, but less obvious than without the card in place.

Pictures:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1GL13W9gzagZ0RraW4wS0dxclU/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1GL13W9gzagNHlnRzZkcFJlMlU/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1GL13W9gzagcDNQNzBwM2xaTmM/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1GL13W9gzagdzhTeEo5N0tKSlU/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1GL13W9gzagOWhNZzFPRjF2d1k/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1GL13W9gzagVjVLOHVzU0dBN3M/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1GL13W9gzagZVFKUkhHV1dHb3M/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1GL13W9gzagWW5KRnpOdjRxeEU/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1GL13W9gzagZk8zNkZQNWJCODg/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1GL13W9gzagOW1IMDA3TE1HTHM/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1GL13W9gzagemd4ZV9hb0tfQm8/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1GL13W9gzagZ3FtdndpenRkRDQ/view?usp=sharing

 

[MrWareWolf]

I decided that spoon feeding my bucket sluice was a tad tedious, so I set up this nifty auto feeder:

View attachment 635513View attachment 635514View attachment 635515View attachment 635517View attachment 635518

The funnel comes from the auto parts section of Walmart. The plastic tube was cut to just above the top rim of the sluice, then I taped a #47 cake decorating tip to the end.

I found a $5 mini massager in the Walmart pharmacy that I attached with cable ties to agitate the material.

Still have to dial it in a bit, but seems to be working great. Cleaning the sluice after 1 full hopper seems to be a good balance.

When you add water to the equation, it has a tendency to increase the feed speed a lot. Because of this, I would try adding only wet material to start, and add a small drip line near the bottom of your feeder. Might need a second drip-line in the hopper itself. Something like a small fish-tank airline should carry enough water to get things moving. You might want to add a screen in the bottom of your hopper, to prevent anything large enough to clog your feeder, to be held in the top. It might not work at all. A different cake-decorating tip might allow just a small stream of water/material to pass thru, so it could cause you to have to re-engineer a bit. Really cool design you have there though! If you added a small 'speed bump' just passed the black flap of the cal-sluice, it might make a small well of water to drop the material into. Even dropping dry material onto a 'well' of water will sometimes cause flakes to float initially, so maybe even drop material directly onto the black flap, for it to fall down into the well of water before the speed-bump. You'll have to play around with it a bit. Once it is wet, you're good, material will then re-fluidize without the floating effect. Overall you have a great design here! I would keep at it though, you're nearly there.