Iron Mask.......what is it/how does it work?

[slhinkle]

im usin the minelab explorer II and have for about a year but intermittently....... I also use an excalibar for hunting in the water.....
I dont know or understand what the function of the Iron mask is on the detector.......would appreciate any thoughts...... im tired of listening to the election.......

 

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[jeff of pa]

Although it is hard for me to explain it.

My Sovereign has iron Mask built in.

I Like it.

My understanding in areas of high Iron Content
it helps the detector see through it better.

Living in the Hard Coal Fields with alot of Iron ore it's a Lifesaver.

I also noticed (Good or Bad) if I try to pinpoint a tiny piece
of iron like tiny rusted tin can bits.
in all metal, it will ignore it when I hold the pinpointer over it.
Which can be a pain when trying to retrieve it.
but if there is a piece of metal
other then the iron bits mixed in, it will find that easily.

I Think that is the Iron Mask doing this.
but since I don't have an on/off Toggle I can't say for sure.

 

[Captn SE]

Since you say you have an Explorer, I will explain the Iron Mask feature on the Explorer. I'm not a Sovereign user, so if someone wants to chime in on that machine, please do.

"Iron Mask" is nothing more than a given level of discrimination on your detector. Set the Iron Mask low, and you have little discrimination, which means you can detect both ferrous(iron) and non-ferrous targets in the ground. Set it high, and you have high discrimination, meaning most ferrous(iron) metals will be rejected, while most non-ferrous targets will be accepted. Turn the masking feature off, and you're hunting in All-Metal mode, no discrimination. You have the ability to set how much/little discrimination you want with the Iron Mask feature on an Explorer.

So, you can look at any metal in the ground and categorize it into one of two categories: Ferrous or Non-Ferrous. Ferrous metals are attracted to a magnet, while non-ferrous metals(copper/silver/aluminum) are not. In addition, you can also categorize a metal by its conductivity: low or high conductors. Low conductors are nickel, aluminum, foil, small gold items. High conductors are copper, silver, larger(higher karat) gold items, and Iron(ferrous targets). With an Explorer you have a choice on how you want to hunt for metals in the ground with regards to the tone you will hear. If your "Sounds" setting on your Explorer is set to "Ferrous", then your high ferrous(iron) targets will produce low tones, and your low ferrous targets will produce high tones. If your "Sounds" setting on your Explorer is set to "Conduct", your low conductors will produce low tones, while your high conductors will produce higher tones. In addition, you can select/create any discrimination pattern you like, with any combination of Ferrous/Non-ferrous or High/Low Conductive target accept/reject. The sky's the limit when it comes to discrimination, however, I feel the way to be the most proficient at finding targets is to use as little discrimination as possible. Let your ear be the true discriminator in recovering a potential target from the ground. Let the machine detect nearly every target in the ground, and you decide based on tone and depth if you want to recover it.

In trashy parks filled with aluminum, foil, pull-tabs, ring tabs, bottle caps (i.e. low conductors), it makes more sense to hunt in Conduct mode. You will have better target separation between your low and high conductors in the turf when hunting with Conductive sounds. If you're hunting around an old home/demo site, which is usually filled with a lot of iron(ferrous) metals, you would be better off hunting in Ferrous sounds, to give you a better separation between low and high ferrous targets.

HH,
CAPTN SE
Dan

 

[Treasure_Hunter]

In my experience on the Sovereign, when it passes over Iron it will null out. It doesn't really mask the iron, but you will immediately recogize the signal as iron when it nulls. The null is a momentary loss of the threshold. It will react the same as a good signal in that it will react (null) in all directions of the sweep, North to South, East to West just like a good signal.

If there is iron by gold, it will null, then give you a signal for the gold. It may be a slightly broken signal for the gold, but it is there and you know it......

Just the observations of a slightly less then new newbie..............

Good luck and good hunting......

 

[slhinkle]

i appreciate the information............... I just need to get out now and use it......... thanks slh