Technology

3 Factors to Consider When Choosing the Best Metal Detectors

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By Kaleem Ullah

When there is a discussion about treasure hunting, one of the most popular questions that pops up is: What is the greatest metal detector? Every person asking this question will have an opinion on this matter. Every person has their own story to tell, as well as their kind of treasure to seek.

Picking the right metal detector that is appropriate for your requirements is the first and by far the most crucial factor in selecting a metal detector. No matter how fancy or costly a metal detector is, all it does is keep in a corner. This metal detector will find no more treasure than a toy. This can be said, as there are people with an armory of metal detectors. Some are basic, while some are fancy.

Most people choose the basic detector as compared to the fancy one. This is because of the fancy detector’s settings, such as: 

  • Dials
  • Buttons
  • Other features

These are confusing for many as:

  • They don’t like it
  • They don’t get it

This results in less usage of these detectors. If you are new to metal detecting, then you should go for a basic one. Don’t opt for fancy ones as it may take your time to learn its features, and you may not use them correctly. This will cause the opposite outcomes as desired. Use the basic one and get experience until you figure out what you want and what is handled easily.

If you are in search of scintillation detectors, you can get one of the best detectors from scintillation detector manufacturers.

Metal detectors detect all the metals, whether ferrous metal or non-ferrous. Ferrous metal is a metal that is iron-based and can be easily attracted to a magnet, such as:

  • Iron
  • Steel

Non-ferrous metal is a metal that is not iron-based and cannot attract to the magnet, such as:

  • Aluminum
  • Copper
  • Nickel
  • Silver
  • Gold
  • Platinum

Except for the basic models, we designed metal detectors to provide outstanding performance on a wide variety of metals. These metals include:

  • Relics
  • Jewelry
  • Coins

With these, they also provide good performance on non-ferrous metals, such as: 

  • Gold
  • Silver
  • Precious metal jewelry.

Some of the high-priced metal detectors have an electrical system to provide exceptional performance. This leads to a fancy environment and many buttons, knobs, and other features. Most of the time, the manufacturer’s knowledge will tell you what you need to know about the purpose of the metal detector.

Let’s have a look at the factors you need to know while choosing metal detectors.

Ground Balancing:

Many metal detectors offering circuitry deal with mineralization in the soil. Mineralization caused by:

  • Salts
  • Iron
  • Black sands
  • Hot rocks.

If you aim at nugget-shooting; detection of gold nuggets, go for a machine that is specifically designed for this purpose. If you are having a trip to the beach and going to the beach coming; detecting the beach, go for a beach machine. If you are about to detect various locations, such as parks, fairgrounds, or other public places, go for a general-purpose machine.

Sensitivity:

Most of the detectors have a sensitivity change. The search coil of the detector is an antenna having an electromagnetic field originating in a pattern that is shaped. The most common shapes of the coil are round or elliptical.

The distance it reaches is an aspect of power output and frequency. When this field is disturbed by metal, the circuitry senses the disturbance, and the detector registers with sound. It is also shown visually on a display meter or graph. The change of sensitivity will allow the detector to sense this disturbance by smaller targets that are at the given depth, or a given target at a greater depth. 

The greater the sensitivity, the greater the effect of non-target junk and mineralization is a trade-off. Setting the too high sensitivity will cause wrong hits so much electrical confusion that targets are missed mostly weak targets. Higher sensitivity can also cause a medium or large size target to overcome the circuit and cause it to blast an overload signal.

Discrimination:

Some of the questions that may pop up in mind are:

  • Can it be adjusted to state the difference between a quarter and a bottle cap?
  • Can this tell the difference between a rusty wire and a wire of gold?

Having good discrimination is a timesaving. If you can determine that a target is valuable or junk, you can go for not to dig the junk and only dig for the valuables.

The combination of these aspects also provides a means of the machine determining the: 

  • Size
  • Depth
  • Composition of the target.

Machines with outstanding quality will be more accurate at this. The more skills and operations, the more expensive and complicated the machine is.

There are a lot of features you can put into the combination, and these can include:

  • Physical size
  • Water resistance
  • Weight
  • Balance
  • Battery type
  • Battery life
  • Visual display
  • Coil size
  • Coil selections
  • Headphone connections
  • Wi-Fi/Blue Tooth, even voice commands. 

For detecting gold, you can use the Fisher Gold Bug II. Gold focuses on areas of high mineralization, and this detector does a good job of ground balancing. It minimizes the negative effects of black sands and hot rocks. Some of its features include:

  • It is simple to operate
  • Sensitive to tiny nuggets
  • Light in weight.
  • Uses sound for target detection.

For all ground uses such as parks, beaches, and more, you can use Garrett GTI 2500. It is a fancy model, but an average person can easily learn how to operate it. Some of the characteristics of it include:

  • Light in weight,
  • Swings nice
  • The battery can be separated
  • Hung on your belt
  • Can be customizable
  • Have good depth and display of target size

If you want to detect radiation, people use scintillation detectors. Get a quality detector from Scintillation detectors suppliers.

There are many detectors for several purposes. You can use detectors according to the task you perform. Several detectors cost more or less. Choose the appropriate one that works the best and fulfills all your requirements.