Need help with water Recirculating System for Shaker Table

CGC Miner

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Nov 18, 2010
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Hey guys.

I've got a small RP4 shaker table. Plan on running realistically 1/2 ton+- per hour of crushed hardrock ore and need some help designing and figuring out a recirc system that will actually work for multiple ton runs.

Are there any design specs out there?

I have room to build but need to keep it relatively simple and under 2k. Most importantly it has to work for more than farting around sampling.

Any insight is much appreciated.
Thanks
 

arizau

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May 2, 2014
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Hey guys.

I've got a small RP4 shaker table. Plan on running realistically 1/2 ton+- per hour of crushed hardrock ore and need some help designing and figuring out a recirc system that will actually work for multiple ton runs.

Are there any design specs out there?

I have room to build but need to keep it relatively simple and under 2k. Most importantly it has to work for more than farting around sampling.

Any insight is much appreciated.
Thanks

I just want to point out that a half TPH is about twice the capability of the unit according to what I read on 911 Metalurgist website. On the same website it showed a settling tank setup for recirc too. FYI..... I just googled "rp4 shaker table" to find the website. Lots of good set up and operating info there in case you have not seen or read it.


Good luck.
 

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utahvikingr

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Nov 3, 2020
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How much was your RP4? Been looking for a used one. I’ll eventually buy an RP4 though
 

OP
OP
CGC Miner

CGC Miner

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Thanks guys. The 911 site has some good info but not quite what I need. I've run the table just fine with placer cons but am yet to run crushed ore. The ore is much much dirtier and slimy-er which requires a better recirc system. The barrels would work just fine for a tiny batch but just imagine having to dump or scoop those out twice a day. I'm thinking more along the lines of dewatering screw, then to settling pond area, baffle then cleaner intake end pond. Screws are $$ and not easy to find. What to use for the ponds.... I'd like to be able to clean them out with bobcat or mini ex.

Utah: I picked this one up like new, used years back for $1,000 cash and a few silver coins.
 

arizau

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May 2, 2014
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Beach High Banker, Sweep Jig, Whippet Dry Washer, Lobo ST, 1/2 width 2 tray Gold Cube, numerous pans, rocker box, and home made fluid bed and stream sluices.
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I'm guessing that the table would be less of a hassle to keep fine tuned as a concentrate cleaner rather than full start as a recovery system for raw fine ground ore. Have you given any thought to pre-concentration of your ore by sluicing first? Should yield nice clean cons if the recovery is satisfactory without any real sacrifice of tonnage handled.
Good luck.
 

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OP
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CGC Miner

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I'm guessing that the table would be less of a hassle to keep fine tuned as a concentrate cleaner rather than full start as a recovery system for fine ground ore feed. Have you given any thought to pre-concentration of your ore by sluicing first? Should yield nice clean cons if the recovery is satisfactory.
Good luck.

That is an option. A friend of mine keeps trying to convince me to do that but I know that roughly 40% of the values will be lost, which is unacceptable to me. It's such a pain, I just need to engineer a proper recirc system. If all goes well with the ores I am running, I might switch to a larger table and use the same water system.

I pushed in a small ramp to 6' below the table today. That is where I envision the recirc.
 

arizau

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May 2, 2014
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Beach High Banker, Sweep Jig, Whippet Dry Washer, Lobo ST, 1/2 width 2 tray Gold Cube, numerous pans, rocker box, and home made fluid bed and stream sluices.
Primary Interest:
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Maybe your recovery could be improved by using a beach box or other type of beach sluice. Beach sand is typically no larger than 100 mesh (close to your grind size?) and the real bugaboo is the mined sands are usually way over 60% black iron sands..likely tens of times more than in your ore.

I'll shut up now. Good luck.
 

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russau

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May 29, 2005
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CGC , about 25-30 years back I made my own beach box . There are pictures of it over on another web site. WELCOME TO WWW.IOWAGOLD.NET YOUR SOURCE FOR PROSPECTING INFO in the "How to pages" gold equipment_easy_to_build_your_own.htm and then look for "BEACH BOX PIXS I don't know how these pix's got over on to his site but I sold it years back and can't find any pix's of it anymore since my computer crashed and took all my info with it ! BUT I hope this idea will spure you into making something along these lines but in a heavier framework ! All i had on the sluices surface was black rubber mat and it worked fine to trap that fine black sand and fine gold . And thank's again for the tag-a-long !
 

OP
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CGC Miner

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CGC , about 25-30 years back I made my own beach box . There are pictures of it over on another web site. WELCOME TO [url]WWW.IOWAGOLD.NET YOUR SOURCE FOR PROSPECTING INFO[/URL] in the "How to pages" gold equipment_easy_to_build_your_own.htm and then look for "BEACH BOX PIXS I don't know how these pix's got over on to his site but I sold it years back and can't find any pix's of it anymore since my computer crashed and took all my info with it ! BUT I hope this idea will spure you into making something along these lines but in a heavier framework ! All i had on the sluices surface was black rubber mat and it worked fine to trap that fine black sand and fine gold . And thank's again for the tag-a-long !


Thanks Russ. I might have to rig something like that up for testing.
I'll keep you posted on progress. Hoping to get something in place within 1 month so I can start running some ore.
 

BlasterJ

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For a small settling tank, you can use a wading pool or above-ground pool. For a larger area, you can have a pond liner fabricated and delivered. My dad used to sell a lot of these to shrimp farms and heap leach operations.
 

Jim in Idaho

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There's a desert guy that has videos showing his recirc setup. I'll try and find one and post a link. I'm just finishing up my winter project of rebuilding an original Wilfley lab table. I'm going to sell it once finished. Probably in the next week or so.
I'll post some pics of that tonight. here's a link to the guys videos:

Jim
 

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russau

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May 29, 2005
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Clay-B-Gone (or a equivalent ) would be a good addition to this piece of equipment ! It would settle out the clay and dirt in 30 mins of down time. Then you could dig out the waste to save on water usage ! You can't have too clean of water ! Somebody has been doing some thinking on this !
 

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Jim in Idaho

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Yes...that's especially true when trying to recover flour gold with a sluice. The dirt in the water causes the flour to suspend, and it ends up going out with the tails. Any dirt in the water, at all, slows the sink rate of the flour gold. There just isn't enough time in a sluice for it to get to the bottom, unless the sluice is really long.
If it were me I'd add some anti-weed mat to the bottom of the sand filter, too. He's got a nice setup, but it could be improved.
Jim
 

Load77

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I just finished putting together a recirculating system. I used three of the big 330 gallon containers typically used for spray chemicals (cleaned out very well). I have them lined up with one about 16” off the floor, then the next 8”, the last one on the floor. I pump the dirty water into the upper tank, then each tank drains into the next from a pipe at the top of each tank. I’ve also added a similar product to to clay be gone, to aid in settling out the dirt faster.
It’s feeding a 4x8 mout baker mining shaker table. So far it’s working great.
It took some trial and error to get the pumps working at the right rate.
 

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