I demonstrate a garage-built desert dry shaker gold concentrator for gold prospecting. I extract sub-50 micron gold from LA beach sand. Keywords: Gold prospecting, gold mining, shaker table, dry washer.
I never comment on anything . But this is certinally worth my time. I would like to post some material to you but am unable to find a Po Box. For added additional separation for super fines, I also currently use a variable vibrational motor with my small prospectors' friendly size table.
I am glad that you are a person with genius and thinking and trying to gain a lot of experience about separators. I request that you make a separator similar to Nelson. In this dry separator compared to the water separator, which shows better efficiency, thank you very much
Great unit. you definitely want to add the 2 DOF adjustments. I’m a firm believer in concentration when it comes to gold prospecting. If you set up your angles to catch 50% material then you should almost guarantee you’ve separated 50% waste only. Add a simple funnel as a feed hopper and you won’t over or underwhelm the table. Removing the magnetite after the first pass will allow less interference for the gold to sit in the bottom of the channels for the second pass. Second pass should only capture 25% of the remaining. That should give you good buckets of concentrate for further processing at home. 👍
Well this is really cool. I don't live in a place with gold, but with this type of table finding tiny gold looks promising. Thanks Best thing I have seen coming out of California...
Dear Colleague. In my opinion, before the separator, the gold nugget of each area should be examined with a microscope to identify the dominant form of gold nugget. If it is completely round, it can be easily separated with any device. But if the gold nugget has sharp angles, it should be designed on the surface of the vibrating table according to the surface of the gold. Thanks a lot.
I really like this top design, super efficient with the material only using what is needed for grooves. Most table tops 90% of the table doesn't do anything but take up space and waste energy of movement. I suppose you could run wet down at the beach under a large umbrella tent :), get that LA beach gold :)
Have you thought of incorporating the angle of repose for separation . Pit run gravel has a angle of repose of between 24-30 degrees . I use 24 degrees in part of my sluice using a hard backed old wool blanket . The sluice of coarse uses water . The fibers of the wool stick up 1-2mm and catch the flat flour gold and the blacks and blonds due to specific gravity and shape move forward through the sluice . There is no riffles involved near or on the wool blanket . The sluice is 95+% efficient as there is more than one type of gold catch with in . The 24 degree angle is critical for catching the flour gold with a very low volume of concentrate as a result . . The surface area of this wool blanketed tray is 9"longX12"wide and is capable of catching about 3 grams of gold . which gold colors the blanket surface noticeably . it is very easy to clean because it is hard backed to a wooden insert tray with handles . Click on the top left hand thing to find a couple of videos using and going through the sluice . the curved classifying screen on it uses an ever increasing angle of repose too and works quite well to stay clean of debris . it uses a small 1 inch pump . the tech behind it is not new but a compilation of good ideas from miners that worked very well
1. I read that hematite is slightly magnetic so I built a magnet separator like yours plus another one that instead of the cap a "cigarette pack" thickness piece of plastic glued to the end of the (flattened at right angle) pipe. I could, in fact, remove more "black sand" that the other style (after the cons had been de-magnetited - is that a word?). Can't prove it, but I think it was hematite. Saved some panning, anyway. 2. Wouldn't you have less cons with about the same capture rate if your table were longer? Allowing more of the dross to drop into the waste as the gold was cleaned more as it bumped further down the grooves? You might flush some tiny gold with the extra black sand wash-out travel distance. Don't know. Just a thought.
Yes, you are right about the length of the table. The longer the table the better "figure of merit," where the FofM is the total gold you can collect from the table in an hour. It's going to change with the type of material, of course. FofM = More material * more efficient * higher concentration ratio.
@@orophiliaYou are always way,way ahead of me! Like Socrates to the unwashed, so to speak. Thanks for ALL your tips and patient, thoughtful explanations in laymans language.
Ive always wondered if there's much gold in the beach sands of LA. Supposedly a company was formed around the turn of the 20th century to mine gold in a beach sand deposit around Ballona Creek if I remember correctly. With all the dredging, breakwaters, and creek channelization that's gone on since, I doubt the gold has been renewed.
I've sampled the sand in various places around LA and the gold content varies from nothing to several ppm. Not enough to make it viable. Thanks for the info.
Here is a challenge id like to see. The gold in micro chips is like 100-200 mesh after grinding. I figure though that its much heavier then the plastics so mechanical separation should be possible. Gold that fine will float for a long time in water. So i think your dry process might be able to concentrate it enough to really save on acids?
That's a very good question. Dry concentration has not been explored very much as far as I can determine. I think this type of concentrator has potential but I need to try it on a number of different materials to start to get a feel for it. So far it looks promising. -- Dave
Pretty cool Dave! Looks like it can run a fairly decent feed rate as well. Have you calculated what the percentage of cons vs. tailings is? Theres lots of bone dry beach sand in my neck of the woods this time of year. 🤔
Hi Alex. I was running about a kilogram per minute but the answer is more complicated. It will depend on the extraction efficiency, concentration ratio and amount of black sand in the material. I'd say 50 kg per hour with that black sand at a 10:1 concentration ratio and good extraction of the small gold particles. A second run through the machine will further concentrate by 2:1 without losing much gold. Of course, the rate could double under different conditions.
@@orophilia 10:1 is actually pretty darn good for a dry system. A unit like this could be quite useful in certain circumstances. They've changed the rules here in Michigan and have curtailed the use of sluices on the beach. This could be pretty useful at certain times of the year when the higher beach deposits dry out.
Theoretically, the water medium carrier of sd=1, reduces the density of material by 1, but air has a much lower SD and the material has almost no SD reduction ...
Love the concept and the build looks great. I see you put a lot of workmanship into the table. It is a beautiful prototype. Have you tried introducing the sand to the far end of the riffles? Any difference in recovery?
