Pan American Pulasator Jig

[Diamond-digger]

Pan American Pulsator Jig

Back in 2010 Enlitnd1 posted some pictures of his gold mill, picture attached. The pictures included an image showing a duplex Pan American pulsating jig. What is unique about the picture are the flutter valves used to drive the jig. The only thing driving the jig is a water pump, very little mechanics and all hydraulic. It is a very cool set-up. Attached are pictures showing my attempt at building a simple version of Enlitnd1's jig. Mine works well and I used off the shelf parts from the local hardware store. I would like to learn more about these old water pulsation valves because I want to build a jig about the size that Enlitnd1 has. Any help or shared information would be great. The last image shows Enlitnd1 Duplex jig from his original post


Hope the video works.

 

Amazon Forum Fav 👍

A Handbook of Civil War Bullets and Cartridges - Grab it through Amazon!

[Jim in Idaho]

That type of jig doesn't have anywhere close to the jigging action of a true jig. Watch the gravel. Then go watch the gravel in my portable jig. To effect a high recovery percentage, the gravel should lift, at minimum 1/4", and better if it lifts twice that. Now, that said, for gold you can do an OK, but not spectacular job, with a pulsator jig. But for gems, forget it. Gold is enough heavier than the typical gravel (6X) that you don't need a high lift to get separation. But gems are only about .5X heavier, so that lack of lift and separation causes a lot of losses. I will say he did a really nice build on it.
Jim

 

[Diamond-digger]

Nice video Jim and a very nice unit that you built. I appreciate the feedback. The pulsator jig valve was my very first attempt at building one of these things. I can see the advantages of using a mechanical set-up with better pulse action to separate out the dense material closer to quartz in density. I know the Pan American jigs are used a great deal in all parts of the world for diamond and gold recovery and all have the same action that yours has. I'm going to try one more modification to my build. I think I can get the pulse much higher, I hope.

 

[Jim in Idaho]

You can get the pulse higher, but at the expense of a much slower speed, assuming the same pump size. It may also require a larger-diameter diaphragm. You also need larger-diameter piping. It's all about the volume of water. You can figure out the volume needed. The volume of water is the volume it takes to raise the square inches of jig surface by 1/2". If you have a 4" x 10" jig (single cell), you have 40 square inches. To raise that 1/2" requires 20 cubic inches of water. You can look at the amount of lift, or compression of the diaphragm, and if that is 1/2", your diaphragm needs to be 20 square inches. If the lift, or compression is only 1/4", and you want 1/2" of lift on the gravel, the diaphragm needs to be 40 square inches. All this is assuming 100% efficiency, which we don't get. Then, you have to have large enough pipes to deliver that big pulse of water to the jig box.
The other problem with the pulsator jigs is "no suction stroke". With the diaphragm above the jig, the water can't flow back to the diaphragm, so all you get is an "on-and-off" pressure stroke. My jig, with the cam action, has a long suction stroke, with a very fast pressure stroke....a "sawtooth" waveform. Very efficient.
I looked at the pulsator jigs when I first started. I finally decided they were mostly just a pulsating fluid bed...not really a true jig. They work OK for gold, assuming you only put sand thru them, but won't work for gems. They probably don't work for gold any better than a well-designed fluid bed, however, which is simpler to build.
If you decide to build a true jig, feel free to PM me if you have questions. I also sell the plans to the one in the video.
All the best,
Jim

 

[Diamond-digger]

Wow, saved me some time. You are 100% correct in that it is really nothing more than a pulsating fluid bed with no suction down stroke. I am going to play with this a little more. PVC is dirt cheap to work with so I'm not out much if doesn't work the way I want. Sounds like you have been doing this a while and I appreciate your expertise. I'm not an engineer but i do learn fast, especially from people that know more than I do.

 

[Jim in Idaho]

Well, I spent considerable time in western Wyoming prospecting for diamonds, and I needed a jig to handle the areas that looked good. Nobody offered a prospectors jig...just large ones at large prices, so I had to build my own. I ended up building 4 of them. The one in the video is now my "go to" unit. Only weighs 20 lbs, and handles about 200lbs/hour, which is about all I can shovel and classify, so works well. If I classify to a condition where the smallest gravel is 1/2 the size of the largest gravel, it recovers 100% of the gems. If I let that size differential go up to 4X, it loses about 25%.
Jim

 

[Diamond-digger]

I have a new build. There is now a small water pulsator jig at the front end that feeds a 2 box fluid bed. You can't see the feed box but it is the same as the previous build. The mini jig pulsates very well, good lift on the 1/4 inch and less gravel. I ran about 20 lbs of material thought it to test the recovery. 25 fragments of topaz, malachite and garnet ranging in size from 3 to 5 mm, saved them all in the bottom of the hutch above the screen layer, not bad. The setup worked fine without the screen. Materials are nothing more than cedar fence planks, some screws, silicone, PVC plumbing, some hardware store nuts and bolts, and a 12 volt bilge pump or two. The spar varnish was the most expensive single thing to buy. Depending on what materials a person has on hand something like this can be built for less than $75 maybe even $60. I will do some better testing and see how long it takes to run a couple of 5 gallon buckets and see if it can stand the stress test and also save the 3.5 specific gravity stuff.
This is a fairly cheap machine and I think it will do just fine for small gemstones. The gold is gravy.

One of the mining companies over in Sierra Leone tested their alluvial diamond gravels using a YT-12 Pan American water pulsator jig. They claimed to have a good recovery rate and tested it by tossing in a few rough diamonds; they got them all back in the cons.

 

[Jim in Idaho]

Nice work! The real test is how much good stuff ends up in the waste. When recovering gems you need to classify pretty tight. In a commercial operation, I'd think you'd have to classify to several sizes, and run a separate jig for each size. It also helps to have clean gravel....no silt, or slimes. I typically get rid of everything under #8, but in a commercial op I'd think everything below #10 would be a better cutoff. Might run the smaller stuff thru a grease table.
Jim

 

[kayakpat]

pretty slick, I love it

 

[Diamond-digger]

Jim, its not anything close to your machine. When I get a chance I'm going do a build kinda like yours. Soon as I tighten everything down and the paint drys then I will run a few buckets of material through it and see what happens.

Here is a photo of some pulsator jigs at work on a diamond placer in Africa.

 

[Diamond-digger]

So busy talking machines I forgot to ask you about your diamond prospecting. How did you do?

 

[Gelmac]

Back in 2010 Enlitnd1 posted some pictures of his gold mill, picture attached. The pictures included an image showing a duplex Pan American pulsating jig. What is unique about the picture are the flutter valves used to drive the jig. The only thing driving the jig is a water pump, very little mechanics and all hydraulic. It is a very cool set-up. Attached are pictures showing my attempt at building a simple version of Enlitnd1's jig. Mine works well and I used off the shelf parts from the local hardware store. I would like to learn more about these old water pulsation valves because I want to build a jig about the size that Enlitnd1 has. Any help or shared information would be great. The last image shows Enlitnd1 Duplex jig from his original post
View attachment 1167720View attachment 1167721View attachment 1167722View attachment 1167723

Hope the video works.

Slick build ! Questions: what type of that screen in the lower sluice (punch plate may be ?) and where did you found it, I am talking about the forth picture?

 

[Jim in Idaho]

So busy talking machines I forgot to ask you about your diamond prospecting. How did you do?

So far, I haven't done well at all....LOL I'm finished with western Wyoming. There are diamonds there, but very widely scattered, and hard to locate. I know of a couple of large Chrome diopside plumes, which indicate kimberlite pipes, but the pipes are eroded far below the current terrain, and impossible to get to without big equipment. I'm 95% certain of the location of one pipe.
I'm currently waiting on permission to sample a gold tailing pile in SW Montana. I'm also waiting on weather....that area has been hit with rain, off and on, for a solid month...it's really screwing up my prospecting.
Interesting pic on the pulsators in Africa. I'd love to check the tailings! I'd bet that the reason they're running several is because they're classifying very tightly. That would be required to get high recovery on gems with the pulsators.
Jim

 

[Diamond-digger]

The 4th photo is not mine; it was from the original post back in 2010. It does look like punch plate. Wish I had some of it.

 

[Diamond-digger]

My last modification, I hope. Increased the size of the out-flow tube from the pulsator. The little change made a really big difference in the amount of water delivered to the mini- hutch. Made the pulsator more robust; that also helped. Slightly increased the size and depth of the hutch so I would have a 2 inch depth from the ragging screen. Now about ragging. A company called Gekko was commissioned by De Beers to test an in-line pressure jig for possible improvement to marine diamond recovery. Gekko did extensive experiments and came up with what they called a proprietary plastic polymer ragging with a density of 3.2. They got 100% diamond recovery even below 3mm . Not so proprietary, because 6mm .36 airsoft pellets have a density of 3.18. So the pulsator is designed to recover diamonds 5.5 mm and less. I would not mind if a big one sticks in the ragging Currently waiting for my bag of .36 airsoft bbs to test with.

 

[Jim in Idaho]

I'll make a suggestion, based on my experience.....Don't bother with the special ragging. Just let the gems accumulate on the screen. Be sure your gravel is cleaned of dirt (slimes). If you don't run clean gravel, the dirt will end up filling the hutch. The dirt will go right through the ragging. Just use the country rock as the ragging. At best, you won't get many diamonds, or other gems. You can easily run a couple of hours, and then clean out the screen box. I made my jig with a removable box, to make it easy to clean it.
Even with steel shot as small as 1/8", I was amazed how much dirt will go through into the hutch....it's a PITA. For gems, I clean the gravel, but you can't do that when jigging for gold, so the dirt plugs up the hutch if you don't continuously drain it. Running the drain slightly open requires a more robust pump to keep the hutch filled with water, too. Some jigs have a water inlet into the hutch that augments the flow from the screen box. That makes up the extra water needed to keep draining the hutch. All this, of course, requires some cute adjustment to get right.
Jim

 

[spudnick]

Nice builds for sure, thanks for posting the pictures and video... I am working on a small portable pulse mineral jig, aluminum construction... Jim in Idaho, thanks for the detailed info, i do appreciate your knowledge on the subject.. Very helpful. . Any idea on what # lbs of water pressure is needed to run a 6 inch diaphragm pulse pump effectively . The screen box will be 3 inch x 9 inch... Also the compression spring above the diaphragm would have a rating in lbs as well ? I will consider a mechanical operation, but i like the idea of one pump running everything. Thanks in advance.. Ken

 

[Jim in Idaho]

Ken, I don't know anything about pulsation jigs. I imagine you will need in the neighborhood of 30psi. You won't get that with a cheap marine sump pump....you'll need a positive-displacement piston pump, or a gas engine driven centrifugal unit. One of the benefits of the diaphragm jig is you can run it with a small 12v motor. One of the 12v weedsprayer pumps would work on the pulsation unit, but the pulse rate would probably be slow because the output of the pump would be low....it would take a long time for the pump to pump enough water to pressurize the valve.
Jim

 

[Jim in Idaho]

xxx

 

[spudnick]

Thanks for the reply Jim, I will be trying a small 1 inch gas powered centrifugal type water pump, will shoot for the 30 psi range. Good starting point. . I have the diaphragm pulse unit half built , will have to experiment with the spring size , etc.... What is your average water volume per minute running through your newjig video? That looks like you have classified up to 1/2 inch rocks as well ? Sure does move the rocks nicely. These (build it yourself projects) sure takes a LOT of time and effort as you would well know for sure... Lol.. Ken