PI settings in heavy minerals help please

[gregorb]

If Eric or anyone with knowledge of PI machines could possibly help me please? I have acquired a used PI machine, it is working fine, nothing wrong with the machine just the dumbwit owner.

My area is heavy ground, minerals and iron oxide soils. My question is please can anyone shed some light on what I should have the settings.

The machine is Bulgarian made I am told. It is a Deeptech Ground Pioneer 4500. It has a 1m square frame and smaller 10" coil.

It has sensitivity control 1-15, delay 1-15 and threshold 1-15.

I cannot get it setup so that it stops screaming and the manufacturers do not respond to my queries (no surprise as I am not the firsthand buyer I suppose)

Please guys, if anyone can spare a few moments to put into laymans terms what I should roughly have the settings on as I do not understand the technology to know how best to set this up.

Thank you very, very much in advance for whoever replies to my plea for help. ;-)

 

[Eric Foster]

Hi Greg,

If you sit the coil well up off the ground and keep it stationary, does the detector behave itself then? I don't know this detector, but it appears to have no ground balance control, or compensation as it is sometimes called. From what you say about the soil, that may be the problem - too much iron mineralisation. A DD coil may improve things in this respect, but not knowing the charateristics of your detector, it is difficult to say. You need separate transmit and receive connections in the plug to accomodate a DD coil.

Eric.

 

[gregorb]

Hello Eric,

thank you for your response. If we hold up the big square coil say about 1/2 metre from ground, then it is quiet until it gives signals. However when we then try pinpointing with small coil, that just indicates everywhere, on the same settings that the large coil were on.

Sorry if I appear dim witted with this new machine but I have been a part time user of simple VLF quiet machine in the past. I am totally new to PI and although I have read so far 60 odd pages of this site of 102 and gleaned what I can, I just need someone familiar with the technology to perhaps put in simple terms what I need to get into my head.

The actual model I have is http://www.deeptech-bg.com/gp4500.html

I have tried emailing them but they do not respond. I am told it is an excellent machine (in the right hands) and I do not doubt it for a moment. This is my failing as a new learner to PI technology.

I understand sensitivity and having read your site pages, I think I now understand that the delay should be low (for gold) and high (for iron), is that right? Also that the delay should only be changed if you change threshold at same time. What I do not understand is what threshold does and what I should have it set at. The three settings are from 0 to 15 for sensitivity, delay and threshold.

I only have areas to search that are heavy minerals and rocks so I know I am asking a lot of any machine but could you say for example what settings I should expect the machine to perform to finding small relics like coins and then what settings to go deeper for larger items be it iron or large gold targets (wishful thinking) but it would be good to get to grips with both ends of the scale to understand better.

The Deep tech literature and on-line videos seem to contradict themselves what they recommend for heavy minerals.

I am aware that you are Mr PI God/King so I am exceptionally grateful to be even speaking with you. thank you for taking time out to read my post.

Kind regards, Greg

 

[Tony]

Greg,

It sounds very much like your PI detector is "seeing" the ground minerals as a target.
A PI detector (such as those designed to find gold nuggets in heavy mineralised ground) that has ground balancing can tune this ground out but I'm not sure if your detector has this feature?

What metal targets are you looking for?

If you are after gold rings then you need a faster delay (but this will expose your detector to more ground noise)
If you are after coins then you can advance the delay (make it slower....not as sensitive to gold but the detector will be quieter)
If you are a relic hunter then you can advance the delay even further (detector should be even quieter to ground noise)

Ideally, some sort of ground balance feature is needed for your ground.

Your ground sounds quite bad as even the smaller coil is still seeing enough ground to blast the audio.

Usually, delay settings are referred to as slow and fast (you mention low and high).
Fast settings are needed for small gold rings/nuggets...eg, 10uS is considered a fast pulse delay.

You will need to detune the detector through lowering sensitivity and slowing the pulse delay. This is not a problem depending on your desired targets. Experiment a bit more with delay and sensitivity but there is a chance the detector will still be very noisy as no settings can overcome severe ground signals.

Set your threshold to just audible.

Good luck but remember your PI can't work past it's design limitations.

Tony.

 

[gregorb]

Thank you Tony for your comments. I have lifted the model details off the manufacturer website and wonder if anything here means something to you technically minded ones that might indicate more what I should be doing or it is all pretty standard blurb for PI machines? Thanks again, Greg

TECHNICAL CHARACTERISTICS

 

[David]

There was a Bulgarian company called Detech(they also make the SEF butterfly and other accessory coils) that makes PI's. They also have a magnetometer combined with a PI coil. I wonder if it is the exact same company as Deeptech??