Using a Magnetron to Heat Coins and Find them

[ryanchappell]

I guess GPR would be superior, but it would be cool to take a radar magnetron and irradiate a lawn in the evening and use IR goggles to find the coins, due to the heat they produce from absorbing mircowaves. Or just let the shallow coins burn dead spots in the lawn.

Maybe some day soon they will make a high resolution GPR that will let you see the targets clear enough tell whether you are looking at a tab or a ring.

 

[bewhole]

And just hope there is no bullets or aerosol cans or anything explosive in the lawn.

 

[Steve O]

Ha bewhole LOL, I'd have it on a super long shaft and wear body armor..... or do it with a robot.

 

[edjcox]

A magnetron emits microwaves. The spread in all directions and if your close ennough they'll cook you too. Microwaves use magnetrons for producing the microwav energy which heats your food. I think that you'd be foolish to try and heat coins in the ground as microwave energy needed is a lower frequency to penetrate earth and the amount neede to physically heat coins would be so high in power that I think you'd be boiling inside before any coins would begin to warm.

Worked heavy ground radar in USAF. We used magnetrons and klystron tubes but really to do what you said... well lets be kind and just say it's impracticle at best...

 

[ryanchappell]

Yeah you would have to use a radar dish to focus it in the right direction. It would probably be more practical to develop a GPR. They should be working on better GPRs that allow you to see the metallic objects, in a heads up display like google glass, that would be the future. Right now those mini GPRs that Kellyco sells for outragious prices are not practical compared to a VLF, but if you could just feed that into a headsup display, WOW would that be useful.

Or just tie a VLF detector into Glass for the VDI and tones, but could you imagine using a GPR probe on a stick and seeing the result in Glass? Maybe a waist mounted GPR and a metal detector that ties that you wave to pinpoint it...

Ideas don't have to be perfect, just thinking about them and dreaming is what starts innovation. I remember thinking and dreaming about the Cable Modems, the iPod, the Xbox, and the iPhone, they were not new ideas, and many of us probably were dreaming about them before they came about. It just took someone with vision and determination to make them a usable reality... but metal detecting seems to be stuck in the stone age, controlled by a few companies and content with the status quo, plus a little competition to improve that status quo just enough like the Minelab vs Whites competition etc.

I bet the military would jump on my GPR idea for mine detection and R & D it into something usable...

 

[ojm bc]

enough to give you a deadly jolt more then a few repairman have lost their live's not discharging the capacitors used
to run a magnetron, but on the other hand they all come with very strong magnets that can be removed..just discharge the high voltage
capicitors.

 

[ryanchappell]

enough to give you a deadly jolt more then a few repairman have lost their live's not discharging the capacitors used
to run a magnetron, but on the other hand they all come with very strong magnets that can be removed..just discharge the high voltage
capicitors.

Yep. You'd have to scale down the power source, voltage, wattage etc. I bet the computer scientists in the 1950s would have said the exact same thing if I was proposing a laptop computer to them! But you are exactly right, portability would today be a very limiting factor, as you can see with the GPR devices that are no smaller than a 50lb cart that you roll tethered to a AC outlet or portable generator.

So right now, best case, you are looking at a pair of goggles that have to be painfully calibrated and synchronized with what you are looking at. A power cable from a generator or AC outlet connects to a 40lb unit worn on your back. The front belt mounted magnetron would beam radio waves of a frequency that would be functional for finding the metals we desire. Some how a dish or coil worn on a helmet would receive returning radio signals from the objects and produce a pixelated image of where targets are. This image would be streamed wirelessly from the backpack to the goggles.

Or maybe you just scan the whole area with a special GPR cart that simultaneously images from 2 or 3 different angles to produce a 3d image and see around trash, while recording precise GPS data, down to a mm. This data is processed by the computer and a virtual image of all targets is mapped. You then navigate the mapped area in real life with accurate color pixelated images translucently displayed over the real view in the goggles, a heads up overlay.

Maybe the thing has its own mini GPS system that will work in an area the size of a football field, with three battery powered GPS transmitters that work on a proprietary frequency, since public GPS probably would not give you enough precision. Something like they are starting to use in football games soon.

The realtime scaled down version could be implemented when battery and radar technology improves...

 

[ojm bc]

n/t