I run some gold ore through my DIY shaking sluicer. The recovery rate is estimated to be about 90% for 100 mesh minus. Keywords: Gold Sluice, Gold Prospecting, Gold Mining, Sluice Box, Shaker Table, Shaking Table, Gold Extraction
Great video! The glass panning is a genius idea! I add a projector lens under it, super glue it, and also a small triple pod around the lens so easy stay on a flat surface, and for drying quickly a piece of a napkin can suck it moist fast and easily. Thank you for sharing your ideal. Ali from Provience, RI.
Ive been wondering why gold prospecting pans don't have clear plastic at the bottom. It would help a lot if you just want to know how much gold is in a pan.
What material are you using for your table top and how do you cut the grooves? I have a CNC router table that we might use to crank out a few variations of grooves for testing. I like the idea of using a watch glass for observation of heavy materials. Just by chance I had recently purchased a box of 150mm watch glasses. They are a bit big for my small beakers but now I have a good use for them. Thank you. I hold a 350 acre hard rock claim in the San Gabriels and I need to get it on a paying basis. I need all the help I can get. Thanks again for all your insertional videos.
Hi Lars. I'm using 1/4" Neoprene rubber sheets from . I cut the grooves with a trim router. They are a bitch to cut with any router bit because the surface kind of folds back during the cut and leaves a protruding edge that has to be sanded off. I've found that aggressive sanding with 150 grit paper does a nice job of completing the grooves and leaves a good surface finish. It doesn't take too long. My current thinking is that a wider table with several sets of chevrons/grooves can process at least 100 kilos of crush per hour. I think I can make a 2' X 4' shaker table that will process at least that much crush also. Perhaps we should take a look at your place in the SG mountains and talk about how you can make it pay. I can perform fire assays of your ore, pass the crush through my shaker table, etc. My fun comes from making equipment, solving problems and publishing YT videos. Send an email to: orophilia.gold@gmail.com -- Dave
I've wondered about using a side to side shaker and vertical shaker in tandem. Side to side to distribute the material into a wide area, then vertical to sort by density with riffles depth based. First riffle is deepest, last is shallowest, and all of them cut much like V so the gold naturally wants to sort to the bottom and lightest material should be kicked out into the next riffle. Riffle width would probably be based on how long you want to run before cleanout. Only thing to figure out is what vertical vibration frequency and amplitude would be best. Probably would change based on gold size. Also might be interesting to try the vertical shaker as a pan, gold should sink to the bottom and can just keep feeding material on top of it through a classifier.
I just found your channel and find it very interesting. Some years ago I built what was called a "side shaker gold pan" out of wood. The grooves were cut at a 45 degrees angle into the bottom on my table saw so they were like backwards riffles in a conventional sluice. Side shaking the pan at a slight angle in still water caused heavies to drop into and be trapped in the grooves and lighter material to simple roll out. Perhaps try that in still water with your groove plate at a very slight angle. Moving the pan under the material instead of washing material over the pan and let gravity remove the trash. Does that make sense?
Yeah, the whole thing is quite interesting. My take is that the side to side shaking causes liquefaction which floats the light material letting the heavy material fall through. It works quite well and explains the operation of the shaker table.
Looks like your tape has been released a little prematurely. But will be great to follow your progress as you attempt to optimize your recovery. I feel amongst many issues is your feed rate. Sure it is nice to get the job done as quick as possible , but if you are losing an unacceptable amount of gold , then something needs to change. A question that may be difficult to answer , but is extremely important , is , "Why is not ALL the gold caught in the first chevron ?" Try to determine where the escape is occurring. Is it at either end , is it from all along , or is it over the top ? Should it seem it is over the top then possibly deeper chevron could be considered , or wider , or increase in water flow or slower feed rate ( which could be compensated by a wider table )
Yeah, lots of interesting questions and many ways to make modifications. I consider 90% recovery of 100 mesh minus to be acceptable. Thanks for the comment! -- Dave
Why do you have the space between the chevrons open? Won't the gold get to the end of a chevron and flow off to the first groove? That's what the gold in a shaker table does. Alternating overlapping chevrons? Wouldn't they concentrate gold in the center better? ...but you may see something I don't.
Great comment. I was trying to concentrate the gold in the center of the chevrons and it seems to work. I think I'll try the alternating chevron approach and see what it does. -- Dave
Hi Dave, This device is very interesting and I've been trying lots of different setups and experiments. I've got it tuned up now so that all of the gold ends up in the first or second chevron. I didn't find the right design until early today. I'm going to re-cut the mat one more time tomorrow morning and then I'll make a detailed video showing how it works. Thanks for the comment. -- Dave
I don't think there is enough liquefaction there to keep exchanging the gold for the other particles. Maybe some sort of asymetric shake like when one taps on a pan could help in "jigging" the gold back up the table to a collector while at the same time help agitate the material? I suspect the lack of agitation is why the gold migrates so far down. I made this self-classifying foldable sluice for a goldtrip here, (Not me in video, it's a stunt-golddigger while I film...) ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-frv2Bl3FGwo.html The amount of flow and force required to agitate the fine particles under the top mesh section in this sluice is worrying, but it catches very fine gold, and anything big enough to not go into the second mesh size stays on top of the mesh. The plan was for it to be caught in the open section after mesh but it just stays put. That's gold pieces about 0.3 grams not moving while rocks the size of a half donut runs off. The fine stuff is caught in the first 2" of vortex pockets so it's not really any point of the bottom section except for as a lid when it folds.
Excellent comment. Yeah, the separation of gold of various sizes from materials of various densities and sizes is a very intriguing problem. My next step is black beach sand. It's quite a difficult material that tends to agglomerate and block the tiny gold particles from dropping to the bottom of the grooves. Also, even with lots of surfactant, some of the 100 micron gold floats on the surface. My conclusion is that if I can recover 85+% of 150- micron gold from black sand then I've succeeded. -- Dave
@@orophilia the way I asked, after I reread it, I did not do a very good job of asking and it may have appeared that I was suggesting that you were wrong to not use a miller table. Thank you for answering. Having seen how well thought out and well built your "gold tools" are I knew you had a good reason.
Can wee make microscope for field testing . Camera microscope is good too I like ! But in the field you need have battery that last for all day. I use Chinese stuff and getting angry all the time batteries die In 2 hr
Hi Romas. Yes, we can make a magnifier for field testing. Please tell me what characteristics you'd like. I think longer battery life is important so I'm thinking about a larger battery, say 10 hours of life with the light on. -- Dave
"I want to buy this machine can you help me i am in turkey" Hello Mustafa. I am sorry, but I have no way to produce these machines for sale. I hope someone will see the videos and make the machines as a business. -- Dave
