Ceramics v4!! WHAT...

[OutdoorAdv]

So I saw this when the fist v4 advert was released a few weeks ago. The advert says you can use negative disc to find ceramics! I thought this was a French->English translation issue. I figured what they meant was that negative disc would allow us to find even smaller iron, leading to trash pits, leading to ceramics... but not actually detect ceramics. I even texted a friend that has a Deus and laughed saying they need to proof read these things better. This goes against how I thought a metal detector worked... I thought you needed metal to detect!

Here is the advert section that I boxed in red.



Yesterday I saw this updated v4 manual pamphlet and it actually shows an XY plot of what a ceramic target would look like... WHAT! So now I'm not thinking this is a translation issue, but that it can actually detect ceramics. I feel like a nut even believing this but perhaps its can detect the concentrated mineralization in the clay used to make ceramics??



If true, this would be huge for me. I spend a lot of time hunting for trash pits. Typically the only way to locate them is to look for extremely concentrated iron, or large deep iron. Being able to detect a concentration of ceramics would be huge. Its sounds crazy to even say... but now I've seen it in two spots. I still don't believe it and wouldn't believe it until I saw it, because it goes against how I thought a detector worked.

It even made me google a kind of pottery I find called Staffordshire "ironstone" because I thought perhaps there was iron in it... nope, no iron in ironstone. Its name is due to its durability.

Did anyone else notice this reference to ceramics? I haven't seen anyone else talking about it on and of the fb groups or other forums. Just wanted to see if everyone is as baffled as I am.

 

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[Deft Tones]

It isn't going to work with all ceramics...or bricks for that matter, too.

Ceramics vary very widely. Clay > Sun-baked > fired ceramics. Glazed/Unglazed. Saltillo, Porcelain, thru-body, etc, etc., etc.

Not going to work like you hope. Sorry. I was employed in the coverings industry for decades. Now we're entering my field of expertise/experience. Italians have a long history here....XP ought to know thats a bit BS!

Short answer is it will all depend upon source material, firing temps/time, glaze, and contaminants in the manufacturing of ceramics.

FYI, no space travel without porcelain and ceramics.

 

[OutdoorAdv]

It isn't going to work with all ceramics...or bricks for that matter, too.

Ceramics vary very widely. Clay > Sun-baked > fired ceramics. Glazed/Unglazed. Saltillo, Porcelain, thru-body, etc, etc., etc.

Not going to work like you hope. Sorry. I was employed in the coverings industry for decades. Now we're entering my field of expertise/experience. Italians have a long history here....XP ought to know thats a bit BS!

Short answer is it will all depend upon source material, firing temps/time, glaze, and contaminants in the manufacturing of ceramics.

FYI, no space travel without porcelain and ceramics.

Thanks a ton Deft Tones. I have a hard time understanding how it would with with any ceramics at all I know there are many different types and perhaps XP meant some specific types? When you say it wouldn't work with "all ceramics" do mean that it might work with some?

I have found some "hot bricks" with my Deus in 18khz before... they sound just like a hot rock. The "hot bricks" are always salt glazed on one side, which leads me to believe they were in the kiln closest to the fire resulting in the salt glazing on the one side. So do you think that maybe earthernware or stoneware is what XP meant, rather than all ceramics? In all the saltglazed stoneware shards I've dug, I didn't hear a single one with my machine... so obviously something is diff between them and the "hot bricks" I've found.

I just have a hard time believing it will work on any ceramics, but its definitely not my area of expertise. I'm hopeful and it sure would be cool if it did. But I think XP really needs to be more specific in their documents because "ceramics" is very broad. haha

 

[PirateLabs]

A lot of the pottery type ceramics used lead in the glazing so maybe that is what the detector is supposed to zero in on? I spent 20 years in the precision ceramic machining industry as a design engineer serving the aerospace industry and the materials we used were highly refined and had very specific properties without impurities but the old stuff from way back had a lot of impurities and some times, lead.

Bill

 

[Deft Tones]

You're correct. The ceramics industry is highly developed and very broad.. and ancient.

Yes, some ceramics, just like some bricks as you've discovered, they will sound off on our machines. It's hard to say why one piece may do it and the next will not when searching old sites, but frequently they are caused by impurities in the source material, errors in firing process(including but not limited to contamination), and/or through the intentional addition of additives for creating some desired affect (density, electrical resistance, electrical conductivity, beauty, etc.). Usually these come in below GB on our machines, but I have personally seen a few mosaics in a dump of thousands beep positive on my V3i.... so it can happen.

Modern industrial ceramics heavily rely on aluminum oxide. Lots of modern ceramics will beep, but they were designed and engineered vs accidental or incidental. In the old days they used lots of different minerals besides corundum and all were of varying purity depending on their physical location, source materials, refining methods, blending methods, etc. Old ceramics often had highly variable consistency invisible to even their microscopes. In short, they did tons of experimenting and competition was high with many or most ceramic houses, manufacturers, and kilns having their own "secret sauce", but rarely knew what they were doing exactly. Their ceramic needs were worlds apart from modern tech.


I think XP meant that their machines are sensitive enough to detect SOME ceramics in very limited cases. Not really a "feature" as many current machines also do this, more like a half-truth in marketing.

But perhaps XP has made a new technological breakthrough and just being modest.

 

[OutdoorAdv]

Thanks for the responses guys. That makes sense. I'd think a company would be more conscious about what they put in marketing and technical materials. That could be a selling point for someone, then they realize it doesn't work how they expected. That'd be like stating "it only finds gold rings", which is true if you only dig the plugs that contain gold rings. Like stating that the negative disc can find "ceramics", when it only finds ceramics with conductivity like the few mosaics in the dump of 1000's and a not all ceramics. Its not a false statement, but not true either. Unless of course there is a technological breakthrough like you mentioned. However, I keep reading that v4 adds a minor feature set to the Deus, and a breakthrough like ceramics would be huge. If it indeed is now sensitive to the materialization in the clay pottery or the lead or other oxides in the glaze, I would think it would at the same levels as the ground mineralization. Like I mentioned, not something I know much about, but it would seem improbable that it could filter out ground mineralization and not mineralization in the clay used to make pottery. Guess we'll have to wait and see...

 

[Deft Tones]

They probably just narrowed the ground rejection spread.

SuchMuch and those other clever Russians could likely provide more information here.

 

[vferrari]

They probably just narrowed the ground rejection spread.

SuchMuch and those other clever Russians could likely provide more information here.

Agree that is what they did on opening up or "spreading" the resolution on the low end discrimination settings. This whole thread discussion is awesome. However, even though the XP promotional materials focus on the new "negative" discrimination settings and XY screens as tools that could enhance detection of certain ceramics (indicating this is purely a V4 software functional enhancement), I wonder if the high frequency coils will help in this regard as well since they are geared toward picking up ultra-fine low conductive metal material such as gold flakes. Just putting it out there.

 

[tektin]

It isn't going to work with all ceramics...or bricks for that matter, too.

Ceramics vary very widely. Clay > Sun-baked > fired ceramics. Glazed/Unglazed. Saltillo, Porcelain, thru-body, etc, etc., etc.

Not going to work like you hope. Sorry. I was employed in the coverings industry for decades. Now we're entering my field of expertise/experience. Italians have a long history here....XP ought to know thats a bit BS!

Short answer is it will all depend upon source material, firing temps/time, glaze, and contaminants in the manufacturing of ceramics.

FYI, no space travel without porcelain and ceramics.

Or rockets.

 

[tektin]

I do know that cretin clay's have high levels of minerals that can be seen with detectors, as with salt that messes with detectors.

 

[Deft Tones]

Agree that is what they did on opening up or "spreading" the resolution on the low end discrimination settings. This whole thread discussion is awesome. However, even though the XP promotional materials focus on the new "negative" discrimination settings and XY screens as tools that could enhance detection of certain ceramics (indicating this is purely a V4 software functional enhancement), I wonder if the high frequency coils will help in this regard as well since they are geared toward picking up ultra-fine low conductive metal material such as gold flakes. Just putting it out there.

Honestly, I don't know.

When I found those few tiles (green 1x1 hex porcelain masaic) I was in my first, or beginning second year of detecting. If I had the grasp on my machine that I do now I'd be able to give a better anecdote. The truth is I didn't pay attention to the frequency hitting hardest very often at that time. The machine probably made a wierd noise and I was like, hmmmm, what's this? Literally I dug everything at that time. I do remember it was a debris covered mosaic tile dump from a demolition and the fact it was ceramic had me puzzled at first thinking ghost signal after kicking them aside.

Those that successfully hunt meteorites would know much better than I.