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 Post subject: mineral pulsating jig
PostPosted: Fri Aug 21, 2015 11:16 pm 
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Location: N Dakota
Once again my thoughts are drifting off to the gravel beds. Have been relatively disappointed in the lack of info on pulse jigs. I have figured out the angles and flow rates for the sluice box and gold screw to work sapphire gravels with good success. However what I want is a pulse jig that is functional and portable. It has taken weeks of scrounging to even find basic cut away diagrams of commercial jigs for accurate descriptions of theory and basic design of the jig. Now that my facts and theories are right on how and why it works, building my own becomes the next step.
A pick up bed sized unit is easily put together with porta pumps and miscellaneous water containers for recirc system. The "portable unit" becomes a real problem in reducing weight and running off battery powered pumps. The current problem< Ha thats funny, Is generating enough current from the dc generators I can find to run either the pumps or charge the batteries. Micro hydroturbine generators are just that. They will run in line with the hose feed but only produce about 750ma at 12v. I need something more along the lines of 3-5 amps to self sustain the pump power or trickle charge the batteries. Setting up a wind turbine is too much equipment. I need another option, perhaps the wind turbine motor can be converted to run off hydro and still put out the power I need. That still doesnt solve power requirements to run the diaphragm pump. Need to have enough lift to raise and lower the diaphragm. I might have to resort to a portable Honda generator to run pumps and motors. Now my portable unit just got less portable. Another piece of equipment to hike in, and fuel, and another partner to help carry stuff. Portable equipment is supposed to save labor not increase it. Maybe the Ausies have a solution?

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 Post subject: Re: mineral pulsating jig
PostPosted: Sat Aug 22, 2015 4:30 pm 
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Location: Wylie Texas but in Alaska for a while
I would look for a gas powered pump. that can pump the water and maybe run the jig for you. I it is a balancing act against weight, pressure, and volumne.

There are some small generators that would probably weigh less than a battery tat woud last all day.


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 Post subject: Re: mineral pulsating jig
PostPosted: Sat Aug 22, 2015 11:15 pm 
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Well, it's like this. The Unit can be downsized to fit a pack frame. The water containers; 5 gal pails can hang on the frame posts. That frees up your hands to carry your lunch. Helper #1 carries pack with shovels, pans, buckets with the hose, a 1" pump and fuel. Helper #2 packs in everything else plus more lunch. I like help, a small crew is fun, but we are starting to talk about 6 bodies! Most of the prospectors I know arent overly happy to share that much time with anybody. Lets just say they like their solitude. ( they probably dont have 5 friends) so the goal is to make the unit a 2 man carry. I know the world of ATVs is here but truth is the last 3 sites I hit were not accessible except on foot. At 6000 ft carrying 65lb of equipment is punishing. It would seem at the moment this is a base camp item and a work in progress.

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 Post subject: Re: mineral pulsating jig
PostPosted: Mon Aug 24, 2015 4:51 pm 
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Dan, I just had a thought, search "gold rocket", an Aussi invention for recovery of gold and gemstones, it looks pretty neat, and portable.
Baz.


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 Post subject: Re: mineral pulsating jig
PostPosted: Tue Aug 25, 2015 7:30 pm 
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Will do!

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 Post subject: Re: mineral pulsating jig
PostPosted: Sat Aug 29, 2015 11:31 pm 
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acquired some 16 ga steel cut offs from a welding job for a heater cover. maybe 14" wide strips. I have enough to bend a box and weld up the seams, might even have enough to build a hopper and the chute. I already have screen in various sizes for classifiers 3mm to 25mm although some was for my BBQ :wink: Guessing I will put this together first and see what falls in place next.

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 Post subject: Re: mineral pulsating jig
PostPosted: Thu Sep 03, 2015 12:37 am 
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I have stumbled on a way to reduce the pkg size of the grizzly and hopper, think folding colman stove. simple piano hinges and clips. and the hopper will fold up with grizzly screens inside and fit into the floating bed chamber for transport! Make my model out of cardboard for fitting and break out the plasma cutter.

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 Post subject: Re: mineral pulsating jig
PostPosted: Mon Sep 07, 2015 9:27 pm 
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good progress on the hopper today, Had to remember how to use the cutting torch since the plasma cutter was buried somewhere. so my cutting looks alot like an angry beaver cut my steel. Just adds to the grinding time. Cut the panels last week, now just need to match things up and rivet some hinges in place. not pretty by any stretch of the imagination,but should be very functional. Next is the jig fluid bed. Find some punch plate, and build the seat in the box for it to lock into. then figure out how many chambers I want to float through. Still a bit unsure on the pulse pump. I can find manual pumps but im not doing that all day. Think of something

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 Post subject: Re: mineral pulsating jig
PostPosted: Tue Sep 22, 2015 9:35 pm 
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I did think of something, I found one in Idaho for a couple hundred $$. Assemble it in the garage in a couple of days. So much better than reinventing the wheel! That should complete the prospecting items I needed. Now to spend a little time tweeking the settings for optimum performance and jog down the numbers in that little black book so I dont have to rely on memory. Its time to bring in some more sapphire gravel.

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 Post subject: Re: mineral pulsating jig
PostPosted: Tue Oct 06, 2015 12:11 am 
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The jig tested well! On the initial run I screened to 1/2" but did not wash the clay or sand from the gravels. I ran it with a car window motor and a 1100 gph bilge pump. So no speed or volume control and un-metered feed rate. I fed 25 lbs of gravel in 10-15minutes, plugged off the pump once with roots and debris, and ran the sample for roughly an hr on a 5 ah battery connected to both pump and motor without slowing down.
1. battery life on 2 power drain units is yet to be determined.
2. 1100 gph pump is more than adequate but a cleaner sample would prevent plugging
3. pulse pump runs at good speed for water flow, no need for speed control
4. recovery of target gems without ragging materials and a 2mm screen trap was 65 of 68 sapphires, 6 garnets, some iron pyrite
5. hand panning of all 25lbs of gravels produced only 2 sapphires from the tailings ( presumably flushed out after clearing debris from pump and start up surge pushed more water volume)

The unit weighs less than 20 lbs and runs on 10 gal of water and a small battery. For a light duty pack in unit it does everything I hoped it could. Probably not an industrial use unit but could easily process all that Im willing to shovel in a day. It does double duty as it traps the heavy fine materials that fall through the 2mm screen if you dont prewash your materials, replacing the need for a sluice if you are in gold country. However a final clean up of concentrates suggested that a pre wash would be beneficial to remove fine sand and closer screening to size would produce less concentrates if gold is not present. That is not a failing of the machine but the operator.

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 Post subject: Re: mineral pulsating jig
PostPosted: Tue Oct 06, 2015 6:43 pm 
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Photo would be nice Dan.
I'd love to see how you put it together.


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 Post subject: Re: mineral pulsating jig
PostPosted: Thu Oct 08, 2015 9:47 am 
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If you look at YouTube video from Jim Nelson, I found them by searching " Jim Nelson mineral jig" he has a couple of versions in action along with a trammel feed. They are short and to the point. The new jig is the one I just built. But I have instructions to build the older version with a sloped barrel instead of the straight barrel. I prefer the straight barrel, easier to build. Would love to post pics but my ability to xfer pics is severely lacking( I suck at it)

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 Post subject: Re: mineral pulsating jig
PostPosted: Mon Oct 12, 2015 11:41 pm 
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update on the operation of the jig. Ran my 2nd test, this time I prescreened in 3 stages. First was a 1/2" to remove the large rocks. 2nd was 1/4" which was kept for the first run. 3rd was a window screen to remove sand. Simple stack of bucket screens poured off into classified buckets for separate runs. So far NO sapphires over 7mm, the materials between 1/4" - 1/2" I hand panned after it ran through the jig. Just none of that size in this material. However the stones from 7mm and under ran perfectly. hand panned all the tailings and didn't find a single stone. To make sure, i ran it through the gold screw and still found nothing. I then panned out the screen trap box. 100% trap of 140 sapphires from 2mm - 7mm from 100lbs of gravel. About 4 gal. of classified screenings ran in 15 min. This is a steady pace of feed without trying to overload the hopper and the trap. Did have to stop for minor repairs. The cam set screw backed off and the pulse pump shut down. Forgot to use thread lock (oops) 10 min fix and running again.
What this is telling me, is as a prospecting tool this machine will be very effective in sample collection. I can run a fairly coarse material and not worry about losing anything. I can run larger samples , spend less time doing it, and be more accurate! If I choose to set up on a remote site and run all day, my concentrates will not fill a 5 gal pail.

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 Post subject: Re: mineral pulsating jig
PostPosted: Tue Oct 27, 2015 1:48 am 
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Hi Dan. How goes the prospecting venture?


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 Post subject: Re: mineral pulsating jig
PostPosted: Wed Oct 28, 2015 8:24 pm 
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Well Lefty, the pulse jig is working well. It needs a small modification to the trap. It gets fine sand in between the exterior and interior walls which makes it difficult to pull the trap. Im thinking a small taper to the trap box will fix this. Some refinement to my earlier modifications will dress it up a bit, make it more manageable in a pack sack. Otherwise just working out run time with different size batteries and their respective charge times. The Jig hasnt missed a sapphire in 5 runs at any speed with mixed or classified materials. Roots will clog the pump but thats just a hazard you have to deal with if you dont prewash your gravels. Spent the weekend sorting sapphires for shipment to treat and cut. After culling anything that had cracks, cleavage issues, nasty inclusions, or really opaque. I have 50 ready to go, but we arent quite done with the gravels. Sally has her jar of concentrates to go through yet and I have another 100 lbs of gravels to run through the jig. I will have my 100 stones to ship when we are done. Nothing under 5mm round or over 10mm. Every color in the rainbow but not well saturated. A couple nice pinks and 1 that I would call ruby, but it may turn out to be garnet with my luck.
Prospecting is done for this year after the weekend. It snowed 2 inches today. It will all melt off by tomorrow but it will be back soon enough. Time to put up the equipment until spring and clean up the garage for vehicles to sit in. Spend more time in my gemology courses and knock out that GG degree this winter.

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