Differentiating between Galvanized Steel and Copper

[JNichols12]

Good Afternoon All,
I am very new to metal detecting and have a series of questions that I was hoping to have answered. I am currently not looking for actual treasures but wanted to see if metal detecting could be used for this specific application.

1. Can you distinguish between Galvanized Steel and Copper at depths between 2-5 ft? (note that the objects we are looking for are roughly 1" water service pipes)
1a. Is there a piece of equipment out there that will ID those as such that is easy to use?

I currently have a Nautilus DMCIIb and we believe we have figured that out by using Discrimination. However, although the Nautilus one of the best, it isn't exactly user friendly for a rookie.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Nichols

 

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[99thpercentile]

Yes this can be done, but probably not with hobbyist metal detector. The type of metal, depth, and diameter of the pipe will change the decay response measured with a high end digital metal detector. The current state of the art detectors developed for detection, discrimination, and classification of unexploded ordnance (UXO) are all capable of this. Some examples of these types of instrument are the: White River Technologies EMPACT; GapEOD UltraTEM 3; or the Geometrics MetalMapper. All of these instruments are time domain electromagnetic induction (TDEM) instruments. They all have multiple transmitters and multiple receivers. The transmitters and receivers all are multicomponent. All of the receivers record either multiple time gates of the decay cure (~30) or recorded the entire waveform.

i have discussed similar applications for mapping all of the buried water lines in a city and determining which are lead.

Good Afternoon All,
I am very new to metal detecting and have a series of questions that I was hoping to have answered. I am currently not looking for actual treasures but wanted to see if metal detecting could be used for this specific application.

1. Can you distinguish between Galvanized Steel and Copper at depths between 2-5 ft? (note that the objects we are looking for are roughly 1" water service pipes)
1a. Is there a piece of equipment out there that will ID those as such that is easy to use?

I currently have a Nautilus DMCIIb and we believe we have figured that out by using Discrimination. However, although the Nautilus one of the best, it isn't exactly user friendly for a rookie.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Nichols

 

[JNichols12]

Yes this can be done, but probably not with hobbyist metal detector. The type of metal, depth, and diameter of the pipe will change the decay response measured with a high end digital metal detector. The current state of the art detectors developed for detection, discrimination, and classification of unexploded ordnance (UXO) are all capable of this. Some examples of these types of instrument are the: White River Technologies EMPACT; GapEOD UltraTEM 3; or the Geometrics MetalMapper. All of these instruments are time domain electromagnetic induction (TDEM) instruments. They all have multiple transmitters and multiple receivers. The transmitters and receivers all are multicomponent. All of the receivers record either multiple time gates of the decay cure (~30) or recorded the entire waveform.

i have discussed similar applications for mapping all of the buried water lines in a city and determining which are lead.

Thank you for passing this information along. I will look into those different pieces of equipment and see if we can find one that can consistently work. I figured that the Hobbyist metal detectors would not be ideal due to depths and other factors.

Thanks again!