Question for Mr. Foster or other PI expert

[georgetp]

I had a PI Pro that loved Platinum. I found 14 Plat rings in 3 months- Japanese tourist area. My machine would barely pick up gold or silver and very few coins. The machine positively growled over Plat and I knew when I had a Plat ring. The signal gained intensity sort of waWAAAAwa when passing over Plat. Gold was a raspy signal and only when near surface. Question, how is this possible, and can I get the machine to malfunction like this agaiin. I had a latch break, and asked that I receive the same machine but Whites replaced with a new non-Plat loving machine-Okay- a normal machine. I have not found anything since May and would love a reject machine like it again.

 

[Eric Foster]

Strange things do occur, but this is baffling. Without looking at the machine on proper test gear, it is difficult to even speculate why this happened.

Eric.

 

[georgetp]

Eric,

Thanks for your response. I did try very hard to get White's to return that detector but they wouldn't. I don't know if they wanted to look at it or if they just didn't believe me. But the $2700.00 payout from platinum for the three months I had the machine was nice. I have only found about 10 plat rings since. I know that you have worked with White's and have wondered if I would be seeing a new option on one of their machines. I guess when many who post on boards have never found plat or only found a few the option would only be good for those of us near Japan. I just keep wondering though if it was just that the setting was set below 15 or if it was something else. Thanks for your help. I guess I will just have to live with wondering what the heck was wrong with the machine.

 

[Eric Foster]

Platinum is well down the conductivity scale at about 16% of the conductivity of pure copper, so having a short delay would be beneficial. However, generally speaking, a short delay is also beneficial for gold rings. There is a huge variability in the conductivity of gold used for rings as it also depends on the percentage of other metals alloyed with it. Another important factor is the cross section of the ring, with thinner rings benefiting from a shorter than 15uS delay. Going below 10uS though, results in large signals from the wet sand when on an ocean beach.

Maybe, the detector was OK and it was just the sorting action by the movement of sand due to wind, waves, and tides, that brought a lot of platinum rings together. I have heard beach detectorists say that certain areas of a particular beach are better for gents signet rings, and another area for thin wedding bands.

Eric.

 

[Carl-NC]

Where and when did you send it in? Unless the box had flooded and damaged the PCB, the service dept usually doesn't replace the whole durned thing. If this was recent, I can try to locate the unit.

- Carl