Ground Balancing

[landman]

I read on a forum, someone suggested that ground balancing was actually
a shift of the frequency to coincide with the ground to find the 0 factor. Could this possibly be true?
If not exactly what are the electronics doing inside to ground balance?

 

[Southwind]

I'm sure the process of GB'ing is complicated to explain in depth but I've always thought of it kind of like the old TR units. GB'ing sets a baseline for incoming signals to be sorted/processed. On the old TR's you held the coil slightly above the ground and tuned it basically setting a baseline. Lower the coil below that baseline and the threshold and any positive signal would need to be stronger to set off a tone. Raise the coil above that baseline and the signal would increase to the point of causing a false tone. It was a skill to dance with the machine to maintain maximum sensitivity by keeping the coil at that preset baseline.

I think the machines today once GB'd set a baseline of expected returning signals. Any incoming signal that goes above the baseline gets processed. Anything below gets ignored/nulls.

But then I could be totally wrong!

 

[Walknstik]

The way I remember "ground balancing" being explained was...a manual ground balance adjustment can cancel out the noise from ground readings allowing you to better hear signals from desirable targets.

 

[Walknstik]

Meant to also add in last post that I thought it was accomplished by using electronic filters to take away any ground noise?

 

[trojdor]

For the proper (long) answers to these and other similar questions, I highly recommend reading the book:

"Inside the Metal Detector"
by George Overton, and Carl Moreland


mike