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NEED Schematic Diagram of MINELAB EXCALIBUR 1000 circuit

S

sullivan2002

New member
Hi to all friends

I have to repair my Excalibur 1000 that in this momento opened. I suspect could be one pot (Threashold or volume) or the Quartz or coil.
There is someone who has the electric circuit of this fantastic equipollente?

Thanks in Advance
 
As far as I know no one has the schematic for the detector. Minelab is very careful to safeguard their information. Too many thieves trying to duplicate their machines and sell them cheap.
 
Thanks for answer me. I understand but I need it just to repair my device.
Every time we buy a new electronic device we must hava the way to repair after warranty period of time. This is common for most devices just like TV, Amplifier, ecc...

So I cannot now do myself this operations or I can do but with difficulties.

Hope someone has somewhere and could share with me also privately

sullivan2002@libero.it
 
Been into the excalibur for about ten years, lots of research into and yet to hear of, or see any Blue prints of.
 
Unfortunately schematics for metal detectors are not available to the general public. They are only available to the manufacturer and to the repair centers authorized by the manufacturer.
 
Yep Chinese knock off excalibur 2. You can find them on Amazon fir around 3000.00 dollars. The call it a Garden Detector. Wish someone would shut these fakers down. My friend bought one of these. Looks exactly like the real deal . He used it two months and then it died. It did not perform the way the real excal does. But the fakes are so good it is hard to tell. Minelab needs to have a database of serial numbers for the excal that can be searched. They have it for their more expensive machines but not the excal
 
You don’t need a schematic normally to fix these. Bad pots are found with a scope or meter. Bad traces are found visually or with a continuity test. Press around the board to look for intermittents.
 
I’d not recommend taking them apart unless you find the issue requires it.
You don’t need to do it to verify the pots or xtal.
 
the problem is that I can't find the problem, it takes me every so often to check the motherboard but it all seems fine. The impedance between TXA and TXB and RXA and RXB seems ok, there are no traces or marks of water in the tracks, the tracks all look okay, I can hear the threshold sound very well and I can adjust the intensity with the relative pot (knob) but when I set over the coil a piece of aluminum, it does not detect it,
Honestly, I'm in a closed alley and I don't know how to proceed. Maybe there was dampness or damaged slopes, but this is not the case.

file.php


I don't think is a coil problem,
I don't think is a water or humidity, metal detector inside I found it very dry
I don't think now is xtal cause if was xtal maybe I say maybe I could not hear the threshold sound
battery is out of the question cause I use only power supply with 13/14volt
I don't think are traces, nobody could damage them, they are in good shape and all are inside the Excalibur casing
I don't think are pots, I changed one, I replaced one with another taken from the sensivity, I don't remember but I also I tried to shorten the external terminals as if it were at its maximum value

I need good advice from someone who is really expert, a push to get to the solution

PS: I have a tester and a little oscilloscope, I need to know where to put the tips and what to test and what to check again.

I discovered that touching the boad near the volume pot, It changes the volume of the threshold but is like when I touch an input of an home amplifier but I don't hear the tipical sound of detection.


THANKS
 
What do you have the disc set to? Can it detect gold and nickels? Minelab repair could fix the problem quickly and easily.
 
Now it's out of use, no gold and no nickel

I know the Minelab could do quickly, I have also a Minelab Equinox so I use this for gold and nickel.

I don't want to pay a lot to repair it.
 
Verify you have something higher than 10.5V at the board where the battery comes in. Best to just use a variable DC supply for diagnosing - adjust 10V to 14V and listen for differences.
Use your scope to review the tx and rx signals from the coil. I don’t recall what they should look like but maybe here is something drastically wrong you see to verify a bad coil.
Does the rx signal look at all responsive to waving big metal near it?
Get a can of freeze spray and a heat gun and try both on the boards and coil while the unit is running.
You may need to buy a replacement coil just to be sure.
Manipulate/flex the boards while they are running. Sometimes surface mount parts crack and open circuit.
Look at pot wipers with your scope while you turn them to verify the signal there nicely varies between what is on the other two pot leads.
Look at all solder joints with magnification. Touch up questionable ones using flux (use the correct stuff, not what is used for plumbing!) to help the solder flow.
Be very careful and use a good hot and small soldering iron. If you can’t solder well skip this as you may make things way worse.
Did your video catch the moment of failure or is it still intermittent?
Does it sound different when you switch from pinpoint to disc.?
Make sure your test area isn’t all metal as that would just overload the detector.

Barry
 
Hi, thanks for the advice, something I can do and something not, for example I don't have a heat gun for these tests.
Then, at the time of the videos made a few months ago, it worked intermittently, now for about a couple of months it no longer works, when I pass over the plate a large metal or aluminum target does not feel anything and I hear only the sound of the threshold when I increase the intensity of it.

It is very frustating for not having found the solution to my problem yet. I had a good start thinking that it was just humidity or water that entered the box but this is not the case.
I also thought at the suggestion of many that it was the potentiometer but this is not the case.
 
Another thing,

the reason that for me it's not the coil comes from the fact that when I made the first videos and tests, my Excalibur was on a table and not moved.
If it was the coil I had to move to discover that has an issue on the cable or on the coil.
Power supply was always at 13/14v coming from a stabilized power supply.

At the time of the videos, nothing was moving and it changed from detecting and not detecting any more.
Now no way to hear any detection
 
Use your wife’s hair dryer for the heat gun. Another suggestion is to bake the coil at like 130F degrees or so in an oven for a few hours.
To proceed from here I’d need to see videos of the wiper voltages as you turn the pots, closeup photos of the boards, what you are using for a power supply,, stuff like that. You won’t find a schematic. You will have to understand basic signal flow and guess what parts are doing what so you can proceed through it. Like what is the preamp IC and do you have an output that changes depending on the target. Do you have a good supply voltage on the IC’s - 3.3v or 5v on supply pins or did the voltage regulator die...

The coil can die on its own just like the main board can - its electronics (has a preamp ic inside) and had exposure to water. Look for cracks in the coil cable insulation or the coil housing itself. If I were you I’d be trying really hard to get another coil to try. For kicks though, try unsoldering one lead of the rx connection at the board, power the unit and touch it back to where it was. Do you get any sound change by doing this? If you touch either rx input with your finger does it do anything to the sound? If it does it would be a good sign that maybe the coil is the issue, but Im guessing here.

I may be getting a control board that needs repair from a guy in the next few weeks and if so I can document some of the signals I see for you. I don’t want to take my excals apart as they are a total bitch to get back together.

If you can find a spray can of electronic component cleaner you can spray the whole board and brush some things lightly with a small brush or cotton swab. It may expose bad soldering areas you can fix.
I don’t know anyone who fixes these at the component level. Yours was intermittent though and that’s good. Usually a cracked component, bad pot, bad soldering, open trace, water in the coil cable...
 
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