Fluid Bed Prototype

[nickmarch]

Hello All!

I made a prototype fluid bed and tested it with a measured amount of -100 gold. I did not video running that material. I tried to run the material again with a hose attached to the house. There wasn't enough flow for it to work so I shot a video of the basic punch plate classifier I used.

Now that I know it works I will make a classifier that is hands off. You can shovel into the final classifier. I'll get out ASAP and push it to it's limit to see just how much material can be run and how fast it can be run. I'll post that video when I can.

You can see it at...

 

Amazon Forum Fav 👍

Diving for Pleasure and Treasure - Grab it through Amazon!

[Astrobouncer]

Nice job man, looks like a monster for processing material. Look forward to seeing it in action.

 

[Goodyguy]

Cool video

What is the device on the bottom of the tub ?
And it's function?

 

[nickmarch]

Thanks Astro!

GoodGuy, Do you mean the piping in the corner? It was intended to drain/suck the concentrates out. It's really not needed.

 

[Goodyguy]

Thanks Astro!

GoodGuy, Do you mean the piping in the corner? It was intended to drain/suck the concentrates out. It's really not needed.

Sorry... It took me a minute to understand your concept.

I really like your design

Using the angled screen was a clever idea to send the concentrates down toward the drain while preventing the heavies (black sand etc.) from choking off your fluid input located at the upper end...... That will come in real handy when running yards of material.


Looking forward to your field test.


GG~

 

[nickmarch]

I assumed that people know that the water is pumped in below the brass punch plate? It creates an upward shower spray across the whole bottom of the tank. Below the brass punch plate is expanded metal for support.

It angles down to the corner where the drain is located. Length and width both angle down to one corner.

A few square inches in the corner of the punch plate is blocked by silicone so there is no upward spray in the corner.

The gold and black sands make their way into the corner. It's the lowest spot! Actually the materials with the highest specfic gravity make their way into the corner. The lightest materials constantly flow out the top.

It's a 30 gallon tank so the water changes out once a minute. 24" long x 18" wide x 18" deep. The punch plate is 3" from the bottom on one end 2" from the bottom on the drain end. There is only about 1/2" drop difference on the width.

 

[forhorsmn]

Wow. Great setup I'm looking at making one of these but on a much smaller scale. Actually going out right now to see what Home Depot has to offer LOL

 

[nickmarch]

Wow. Great setup I'm looking at making one of these but on a much smaller scale. Actually going out right now to see what Home Depot has to offer LOL

Use 2 buckets. Drill a million (a lot) of very small (extremely small) holes in the bottom & an inch or so up the sides in one bucket.

Attach a small bulkhead fitting on the side of and as close to the bottom of the 2nd bucket to attach a hose. Go to home depot and look at the pans that go under a hot water heater. You will find the perfect bulkhead fitting there! It is what is attached to the pan.

Get small rubber tubing or something round maybe styrofoam & figure out how to seal the air space between the two buckets.

Put the bucket with the holes inside of the other bucket and put 2 or 3 screws to stop the top bucket from rising when under pressure.

Turn on the water until the spray is about 1/3 up in the bucket. Classify with a standard classifier in the bucket. Let the water splash out the top. It also makes it easier to classify! The lighter stuff will continually flow out the top. The heavier stuff (gold) will stay in the bottom part of the bucket.

If you are in a spot where you know there is gold run it for hours before working the concentrates. There will be quite a bit of cons but the gold will be on the bottom of the top bucket and some will seep thru to the bottom bucket when you shut the water off.

Option 2: Drill holes in one bucket to match the size of the classifier that you are going to use. Little to nothing is going to get into the bottom bucket while under pressure. After you shut down the water. Unscrew the screws holding the two buckets together & lift the top bucket up & down a few times to fluidize the cons in the top bucket. The heavier stuff (gold) will get sucked into the bottom bucket. Sort of like a jig.

 

[Goodyguy]

Wow. Great setup I'm looking at making one of these but on a much smaller scale. Actually going out right now to see what Home Depot has to offer LOL

Use 2 buckets. Drill a million (a lot) of very small (extremely small) holes in the bottom & an inch or so up the sides in one bucket.

Attach a small bulkhead fitting on the side of and as close to the bottom of the 2nd bucket to attach a hose. Go to home depot and look at the pans that go under a hot water heater. You will find the perfect bulkhead fitting there! It is what is attached to the pan.

Get small rubber tubing or something round maybe styrofoam & figure out how to seal the air space between the two buckets.

Put the bucket with the holes inside of the other bucket and put 2 or 3 screws to stop the top bucket from rising when under pressure.

Turn on the water until the spray is about 1/3 up in the bucket. Classify with a standard classifier in the bucket. Let the water splash out the top. It also makes it easier to classify! The lighter stuff will continually flow out the top. The heavier stuff (gold) will stay in the bottom part of the bucket.

If you are in a spot where you know there is gold run it for hours before working the concentrates. There will be quite a bit of cons but the gold will be on the bottom of the top bucket and some will seep thru to the bottom bucket when you shut the water off.

Option 2: Drill holes in one bucket to match the size of the classifier that you are going to use. Little to nothing is going to get into the bottom bucket while under pressure. After you shut down the water. Unscrew the screws holding the two buckets together & lift the top bucket up & down a few times to fluidize the cons in the top bucket. The heavier stuff (gold) will get sucked into the bottom bucket. Sort of like a jig.

I like the way you think

 

[nickmarch]

Any of these could easily be made into and used as a fluid bed.

http://www.bossbuck.com/products/lowerunits/lowerunit.html

http://www.bossbuck.com/products/lowerunits/3polyunit.html

http://www.bossbuck.com/products/parts/lids.html

http://utahbiodieselsupply.com/drumconefunnel.php

http://utahbiodieselsupply.com/drumfunnel.php

 

[John-K]

Use 2 buckets. Drill a million (a lot) of very small (extremely small) holes in the bottom & an inch or so up the sides in one bucket.

Attach a small bulkhead fitting on the side of and as close to the bottom of the 2nd bucket to attach a hose. Go to home depot and look at the pans that go under a hot water heater. You will find the perfect bulkhead fitting there! It is what is attached to the pan.

Get small rubber tubing or something round maybe styrofoam & figure out how to seal the air space between the two buckets.

Put the bucket with the holes inside of the other bucket and put 2 or 3 screws to stop the top bucket from rising when under pressure.

Turn on the water until the spray is about 1/3 up in the bucket. Classify with a standard classifier in the bucket. Let the water splash out the top. It also makes it easier to classify! The lighter stuff will continually flow out the top. The heavier stuff (gold) will stay in the bottom part of the bucket.

If you are in a spot where you know there is gold run it for hours before working the concentrates. There will be quite a bit of cons but the gold will be on the bottom of the top bucket and some will seep thru to the bottom bucket when you shut the water off.

Option 2: Drill holes in one bucket to match the size of the classifier that you are going to use. Little to nothing is going to get into the bottom bucket while under pressure. After you shut down the water. Unscrew the screws holding the two buckets together & lift the top bucket up & down a few times to fluidize the cons in the top bucket. The heavier stuff (gold) will get sucked into the bottom bucket. Sort of like a jig.

I have been looking for a DIY project that works fluid bed tech into it. I am curious on how this version compares to something like Astrobouncers bucket option that uses the piping elevated and projecting the water down instead of up.

How viable is either method to set up in a recirculating process for those not allowed to dump back into the water or when at home trying to avoid the Drought Police? I found an interesting pump at Harbor Freight but it had a 1 1/8 discharge port and everything I found was
for converting 1 1/4, 1 1/2, 3/4, etc... So now I am looking for another pump. :-)

 

[jcazgoldchaser]

search fluid bed concentrator on YouTube

Start here, then georgiagoldguy's video shows better how to build one:

 

[John-K]

This gives a good example for a recirculating setup. Still hoping for a pump solution, that HBF one seemed perfect minus the odd 1 1/8 barbed discharge.

is the video you mean? I had seen this before and it gave me some ideas. Was thinking more of a 4x4 box so I could set up a feed system that would allow my son to help when we are out. That tiny box would just invite him to dump it into the bigger bucket for splash value. :-)

What I was interested in is that some people are showing their fluid beds with the pipes elevated a bit above the floor of the box where as these demo videos seem close to the floor and NickMarch has a setup where it comes out of the floor if I am understanding it right.

http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/d...ghbanker-hydraulic-fluidized-bed-riffles.html looked promising as well but both that thread and this one seemed hint at having further modifications to be completed. Trying to see which would be better to work with. :-)

 

[nickmarch]

This guys setup looks easy to make & should work well. Personally I think it would work better with a lot less water being pumped. 60 gpm seems like way to much but I could be wrong.

http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?desktop_uri=/watch?v=GtcYI-HoZQI&v=GtcYI-HoZQI&gl=US

If you keep the flow at a bare minimum just enough to keep everything fluid & have a mud like consistancy you will retain the tiniest particles of gold.

I'm making another fluid bed type setup put of a 8 gallon funnel. I'm sure it will work but will it work better than my others?

 

[Jeffro]

Just replying so I can subscribe to this thread

 

[John-K]

This guys setup looks easy to make & should work well. Personally I think it would work better with a lot less water being pumped. 60 gpm seems like way to much but I could be wrong.

YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.

If you keep the flow at a bare minimum just enough to keep everything fluid & have a mud like consistancy you will retain the tiniest particles of gold.

I'm making another fluid bed type setup put of a 8 gallon funnel. I'm sure it will work but will it work better than my others?

3600 GPH does seem a bit serious, especially if you are trying to stay with a more portable DC powered pump. :-) Interesting implementation, made me wonder if some type of popup sprinkler head might worth playing with. I like the fact you can shovel a decent amount of material into it without worrying about a small hole to hit. It sounds like the fluid bed idea shouldn't require massive water pressure. Does your proposed bucket implementation require less because of the many many holes in the bottom to distribute flow or simply due to a lower flow design/expectation?

The Dollar store here has these little 1 gal black buckets and I am thinking of grabbing a couple of those and see how that works within a 5 gallon setup for recirculating. Allows a bigger area for input than the small box design but is still pretty portable. Plus on a side note, the Dollar store also has sand sieves for kids there that fit perfectly on top of the 1 gallon buckets. I picked up a little setup for my son so I wouldn't be carrying a 5 gallon bucket and classifier for him to play. :-) So for potential prospectors this might be a cheap way to let them play next to Dad.

Hit some more stores for something that can use that odd 1 1/8 barb port to a more conventional, no luck. Last suggestion was a boat store or specific pipe fitting store. Kind of lessens the value of the pump if it so difficult to implement.

 

[vtgoldprospector]

Awesome job! Just 1 point which really has nothing to do with the construction but of its use... In the first few seconds of video when you were putting dirt on the punch plate you had a lot of floating material.. You may not want to run dry material like that.. You can very easily be floating the gold right off. Look at the surface of the water as the dirt is added and worked, you can see some of it float and drain off.

I made a small fluid bed to run test sample in. It catches 90% and better of the gold, flake and gold so small it is barely visible to the naked eye, and I have good eyes..

 

[nickmarch]

Interesting implementation, made me wonder if some type of popup sprinkler head might worth playing with.

I wouldn't. I think it is best to pump water from the very bottom.

I like the fact you can shovel a decent amount of material into it without worrying about a small hole to hit. It sounds like the fluid bed idea shouldn't require massive water pressure. Does your proposed bucket implementation require less because of the many many holes in the bottom to distribute flow or simply due to a lower flow design/expectation?

It's to feed the water from the bottom. If I was to use pvc pipe in the bottom of a bucket or any container I would cover the pipe with gravel.

The Dollar store here has these little 1 gal black buckets and I am thinking of grabbing a couple of those and see how that works within a 5 gallon setup for recirculating. Allows a bigger area for input than the small box design but is still pretty portable. Plus on a side note, the Dollar store also has sand sieves for kids there that fit perfectly on top of the 1 gallon buckets. I picked up a little setup for my son so I wouldn't be carrying a 5 gallon bucket and classifier for him to play. :-) So for potential prospectors this might be a cheap way to let them play next to Dad.

I always go for bigger and higher volume. The more material you can process the more gold. The faster you can process the more gold. A normal plastic storage container is a good option. You can store everything you need inside and it would be fairly easy to carry.

...

 

[nickmarch]

Awesome job! Just 1 point which really has nothing to do with the construction but of its use... In the first few seconds of video when you were putting dirt on the punch plate you had a lot of floating material.. You may not want to run dry material like that.. You can very easily be floating the gold right off. Look at the surface of the water as the dirt is added and worked, you can see some of it float and drain off.

Thats a prototype. I would set it up with spray bars. My problem is that I make something and then think of something else and make that.

I made a small fluid bed to run test sample in. It catches 90% and better of the gold, flake and gold so small it is barely visible to the naked eye, and I have good eyes..

Look under a microscope. With my 2 bucket method and every fluid bed setup it captured gold down to 8 microns. The problem is that you can't see below 50 microns without magnification & need a coagulant to capture the tiny stuff. Gold 70 or so microns will stay suspended and not settle if there is to much water flow. Thats why I say to use a very low water flow. Just enough to keep everything fluid.

The video of the hydrocon I posted... It's a good setup I just think 60 gpm in a 5 gallon bucket is too much. It will blow out a lot of gold.

...

 

[vtgoldprospector]

I use a 20x jewelers eye to confirm everything I think is gold. Yes, magnification is a must.

As far as flow rate requirements, this changes depending upon how much and how heavy the material is in the fluid bed. On my small one I have to turn up the water as it begins to fill with super heavies to keep it displacing properly. Makes me wonder how much you will have to increase yours given its depth.