Overview of equipment for gold mining. Types of equipment for gold mining

Gold is that precious metal which, despite its growing value, is also characterized by an increasing demand. Gold mining is an exciting, but at the same time rather laborious process that requires not only special knowledge, but also the use of appropriate equipment. The extraction of metal is also complicated by the fact that its reserves in nature are limited. Nevertheless, many are interested in the question of what equipment is used for gold mining. One of such devices is the industrial device for washing gold.

How is gold mined?

Since time immemorial, millions of people around the world have been mining gold on their own. This is especially true for the developing countries of Latin America, Asia and Africa. The extraction of grains and even whole nuggets of metal from gold ore is considered real luck here. However, the gold rush also did not bypass the developed countries, where the search for gold has become an exciting pastime among tourists.

Prompribor

Do-it-yourself gold mining requires knowledge not only about the equipment, but also about the places where this metal can be successfully mined. Its grains can be found in water, which is carried by mountain rivers with a length of no more than 15 kilometers, as well as in quartz compounds.

The choice of equipment for gold depends on the method of extraction of the metal:

  1. Rudny: this method is used exclusively on the scale of industrial metal mining, since it requires the use of not only powerful expensive equipment, but also permission from the state.
  2. Manual: the most primitive method used by miners. For such gold mining, a washing device is required, which has a simple design, which is called a tray. This method of extracting gold is simple: you need to find a mountain river, scoop up sand with water in a tray in the direction of the current. In the process of such mining, sand is gradually filtered out using a sluice for, and at the final stage of mining, only gold placer remains.
  3. Hydraulic: equipment is used that, under a certain pressure, erodes the rock masses where gold is supposedly contained.
  4. The use of a dredge: a dredge is an industrial device for gold mining, into which soil is poured, presumably containing particles of gold.
  5. The use of butara: the scrubber-butara is a drum screen designed to cultivate the soil, which contains particles of precious metal. The scrubber is an equipment that has many advantages. The main advantage of the application is that it is able to extract even the smallest metal particles from the soil.

scrubber butara

The advantages of such industrial devices include:

  • saving water and electricity;
  • no need for an operator;
  • good selection of equipment models.

The design of the butara is simple: the equipment consists of a funnel into which soil or sand is loaded, an inclined screen and a flushing sluice.


Prompribor at work

There are such models of butar, which are used in the production of gold:

  1. Single-screen: they can be called mini-butars, because they are characterized by mobility and compact dimensions. In addition, such an installation can be easily transported using a trailer. The size of the trapezoidal gap of the butara ranges from 1.4 to 10 centimeters. Based on the name of the machine, it can be determined that it is equipped with one screen and does not have any additional working elements.
  2. Double screen: models are equipped with an additional screen and a hopper for loading sand.
  3. Disintegrators: used for processing clay sands. The disintegrator is a blind barrel with thresholds, an irrigation system and working elements for clay erosion. Typically, such a machine is used with a single-screen butare.

Among the units used for the extraction of precious metals, one can distinguish a boulder separator. This machine is necessary if you have to work with boulder sands. It also cleans clay slurry well. This is a very powerful machine with excellent productivity. For example, in one hour the boulder separator processes up to 300 cubic meters of soil. Individual working elements are made of heavy-duty and wear-resistant materials.

There are also simple butars that can be used even by prospectors with little experience. In a mini-industrial device powered by a gasoline engine, the soil is loaded into the receiver, where it undergoes primary processing (here, foreign rocks are washed and cut off). After that, the working material enters the drum, where it is irrigated and crushed. Gold particles fall into a compartment located separately from the drum, and the waste soil is poured out through a special hole. Prompribor can be adjusted if desired - adjust the intensity of soil cleaning, etc.

In the Russian Federation, every person who decides to engage in gold mining should be aware that such activities, in the absence of permission from the state, are prosecuted by law.

The most common metal used to make jewelry is gold. This fact suggests that there is a lot of gold in nature and it is easy to mine it manually. Is it so?

Romanticism of independent searches for gold-bearing veins

Every year, millions of people around the world decide to master the craft of a gold miner. The gold rush covers both beginners and experienced skilled geologists, prospectors and scientists. They dedicate more than one year to the search for a gold mine, and sometimes they do not give up hope of finding a "treasure" throughout their lives. But behind such a romantic at first glance, there is a lot of work, knowledge, skills development and, of course, patience.

In order to find at least a grain of precious metal, you need to find a deposit - a vein. There are very few deposits of gold compared to other precious metals. Often, gold deposits are located on the territory of the flow of mountain rivers, in the sand (photo), or present as an admixture in the deposit of other valuable minerals.

It is believed that the best place for beginners to search is a previously mined deposit (photo). It is also good to wash gold by hand in shallow rivers, the length of which does not exceed 12 km. Such places can hide a small placer of gold - sand. Those who wish to hit a big jackpot and find a large nugget, which is considered a stone weighing more than 30 grams, should start searching from the bottom of the river, under the silt, the layer of which exceeds 30 cm.

If you are going to wash gold with your own hands, you can hope for a good result:

  • if the right equipment is purchased,
  • found "fertile" area,
  • natural conditions allow you to start work.

How gold is mined

The ancient Greeks and Egyptians are considered to be the very first gold diggers. They came up with the simplest and most common way in our time - flushing. A sieve (sieve) was placed on the potholes of the river bottom, on the bottom of which shaggy skins of rams were placed. The golden grains carried by the current of water got stuck in the hairs, making a golden fleece out of an ordinary mutton skin.

Today, there are such ways of extracting precious metal:

  1. Ore. For this method, entire mines are organized, equipment is purchased and a permit is issued without fail. Gold is mined by ore on a large scale.
  2. Hands. Do-it-yourself washing of gold in river waters is carried out using a tray or butara, and a sluice.
  3. Hydraulic. A special large-scale technique - a dredge, erodes rocks under high pressure with a jet of water, exposing gold veins. The dredge can be floating or stationary. The floating dredge is capable of processing up to 250 liters of water at a time.
  4. Prompribor. Gold-bearing soil is processed with a special device - a dredge. The industrial device for gold mining in the sea has quite impressive dimensions, its weight can exceed a ton.

It is important not to forget that those who are going to mine gold using any of the above methods should start with the following steps:

  • carry out geological exploration,
  • analyze the quality of the metal,
  • form the boundaries of the field,
  • to rent a land plot or to acquire it in private ownership,
  • organize all the necessary conditions.

Washing gold with a tray

The pan for washing gold is easy to buy or make yourself, butara can serve as a replacement for it. Butara resembles in its design a small barrel equipped with a sieve. You will also need a lock to separate the gold from the sand. The lock for washing gold is a rectangular path up to 150 cm long, along which silt and sand will be driven by the current. The gateway can also be made by hand.

Rinsing takes place as follows:

  1. It turns out whether the natural conditions of the chosen place are suitable for gold mining. The water speed should be medium, the water depth should be from 16-20 cm.
  2. The tray is filled with gravel, and placed in water just below its level. Then the tray is shaken in different directions, make circular movements and shake again. It is necessary to throw out all large stones from the tray and start shaking again. You need to do this until a muddy sediment appears at the bottom.
  3. Next, the tray is held above the surface, and tilted slightly in the opposite direction from itself, rotational movements are performed. This procedure will remove excess sand and gravel from the tray. After that, a small amount of black sand, concentrate and, of course, placers of gold grains remain.
  4. The remaining sand and sediment must be filtered out with a magnet (video). Do not worry that gold will disappear along with the black sand. This metal is not magnetic and will remain at the bottom of the tray.

Washing in this way can be done at any time of the year. This is a very time-consuming and lengthy process, so you should carefully prepare for it and stock up on a lot of perseverance and patience.

Precious metal detectors

There are industrial devices for gold mining according to the following criteria:

  • portability,
  • performance,
  • by power.

Experienced geologists and prospectors develop devices for washing gold individually for each deposit. For gold mining alone, you can use a portable industrial device.

The work takes place according to the following scheme:

  • gold-bearing soil is placed in the receiving compartment, where it is processed and washed with water pressure,
  • falling into the drum, the soil is crushed into small pieces,
  • grains of 8 mm each enter the enrichment lock, the rest is thrown out by the device.

The settings of the industrial device for gold mining allow you to adjust the intensity of soil cleaning depending on its condition and type. The device contains: a gasoline-powered engine and a gearbox, drive units, a loading hopper, a drum, pumps, sleeves, support wheels, a sluice and a stencil. The last element is the most important detail of the design - grains of gold settle on a removable stencil. In order to make it more convenient to transport the device from place to place, collapsible installations are made. This is very convenient because the weight of one portable design can reach 100 kg.

Despite the fact that gold can be found even without the use of special mechanized equipment, you should not do this without special permission from the state. It is important to remember that illegal mining of the yellow metal can imprison you for up to 7 years, with confiscation of gold.

Gold is a precious metal that has been held in high esteem since ancient times. It was it that was the measure of wealth, filled the treasury of the rulers and was the most desired prey for treasure hunters. Despite the dramatic changes in the structure of the world, gold remains one of the positions in quotes on the international currency market and one of the most popular metals in jewelry. Its extraction is not an easy task; there is not so much of it in nature compared to other minerals and metals. Using an industrial device for panning gold, you can achieve results in gold mining, but as in any complex industry, the decisive point for success can only be knowledge and skills donated by experience, one's own or someone else's.

The relevance of independent searches

Every year, millions of people are engaged in the search for deposits and panning for gold. This activity attracts various categories of people, among which there are both beginners and experienced professionals. First of all, gold mining is popular in poor countries, where a large percentage of the population is looking for an opportunity to earn extra money in order to somehow live. These are the countries of Africa, India, New Guinea, the Philippines, Indonesia, the countries of Latin America. In countries where the level of prosperity is more favorable, tourists who like the atmosphere of a hike and a gold rush, as well as experienced geologists or people who devote time to finding deposits and panning for gold, go for metal for more than a year.

Forager craft details

If you dream of getting your golden grain, you only need to draw up a plan, acting according to which you can make this dream come true. Gold is in the bowels of the earth. Often it is found in the sand that streams bring from the mountains, and is also present in compounds with other fossils, such as quartz. On the territory of Russia there are many depleted deposits, where, however, you can find the remains of gold ore. Along with this, you can explore the gold-bearing streams. It is believed that the best result can be obtained in rivers whose length does not exceed 15 km. In this case, we can talk about gold placers. Nuggets weighing more than 30 grams can also be found, but they hide at the bottom of the river, under a layer of silt, from 10 to 30 cm deep.

The success of gold mining with your own hands depends on:

  • Successfully selected site;
  • Modern equipment;
  • Small costs for work;
  • climate.

Mining methods

There are several ways to extract precious metal:

  • Ore method;
  • Manual;
  • Hydraulic;
  • With the use of a drag.

The ore method is good on an industrial scale, this requires a mine, expensive equipment and permission from the state. The manual method is the washing of gold, including the tray. With the hydraulic method of mining, the rock masses are eroded under the pressure of special equipment. A dredge is a mechanized apparatus for processing presumably gold-bearing soil.

An industrial device for gold mining may differ in the following parameters:

  • Power;
  • Portability;
  • Performance.

Such machines are developed by geologists and miners who take into account not only technical parameters, but also ease of use, because this is very important for field development. For an independent hike you need a mini industrial device. To carry out gold mining, the soil is loaded into the receiver, where its primary processing is carried out, there is also a function of flushing under pressure and cutting off large rocks. Further, the material enters the drum, where it is subjected to irrigation and crushing. Such an aggressive action leads to the separation of particles of the fraction - 8 mm. They fall outside the drum, into the enrichment lock.

The waste soil is ejected by the device. The industrial device for washing gold has settings that allow you to adjust the intensity of cleaning, depending on the condition and type of soil. Such a machine contains a gasoline engine, a gearbox, drive units, a hopper, a drum, a sluice, a stencil. It is the stencil that is the removable part on which particles of the yellow metal settle. In addition, there are a number of parts that are necessary for the working configuration - sleeves, wheels, supports, pumps for water pressure, mats, protective coatings. The engine is located on the rear side to minimize its contamination. The weight of such a compact device can be from 40 to 100 kg. Most often, manufacturers offer a collapsible design that is convenient to transport.

When it comes to setting up your own mining company, the following steps will be required:

  • Geological exploration;
  • Metal quality analysis and calculations;
  • Deposit formation;
  • Acquisition of these lands or their lease;
  • Organization of the mine with all the necessary conditions.

Gold can be mined both on land and at sea. In these cases, the device that cultivates the soil will weigh more than a ton and have impressive dimensions.

Gold through your fingers

Gold grains can be found without buying expensive equipment. Please check the law before taking any action. If in Australia a gold mining permit costs about $30, then in Russia it is more difficult to obtain such paper. At the same time, for panning gold without permission, by cooperating in a group, you can get up to 7 years in prison.

To begin with, consider the tray extraction method. Its principle is this: by scooping up water with sand and substituting it under the current, you allow light sand to leave the tray, and golden grains to settle at the bottom, since they are much heavier. These can be barely visible dust particles, which are then collected by hand. The process is laborious, so it is very important not to make a mistake with the place of production, after consulting with experts when choosing a river.

Washing gold with a tray, manually can be done both in summer and in winter. The tray itself can be bought, the cost ranges from 500 to 1500 rubles.

For the effectiveness of the work, it is recommended to first go to the places and collect soil samples. From the rock with a total weight of about 12.5 kg, you can, if you're lucky, get about 2-3 kg of golden sand. Having collected several such samples, one can mark the places on the map, and having examined the samples, engage in direct gold panning in the already explored "gold" places.

Gateway usage.

To separate gold grains, a gold washing lock is needed. For on-site sampling, sluices 25-30 cm wide and up to 1.5 meters long will be suitable. This is a rectangular “path” along which the flow of the river will drive sand and silt.

The cost may vary depending on:

  • The size of the structure;
  • Manufacturer;
  • Model novelties.

Equipment for washing gold can be done with your own hands. This requires building parts that can be purchased on the market or in a store. For the frame you will need a metal tray. If you are making a gateway for the first time, limit yourself to a small size so that you can later make a full-fledged model, avoiding beginner mistakes. You will need a T-joint and a screen mesh. A mesh is attached to the sheet of metal, the T-shaped part is attached to the part that will rest on the ground, if desired, this zone can be reinforced with an additional sheet of metal. The cost of such a tray is low, about 3-4 thousand. Skills in making a sluice with your own hands will allow you to understand the process of panning gold from the inside.

Where can a future prospector find information?

The Internet is a source of much knowledge that can be perceived by a person in any corner of the globe. In this regard, obtaining knowledge in the field of gold mining at home is a very real prospect. Washing gold by hand is captured on video by many users of social networks and other portals. As a rule, this is a video filmed directly at the place of production.

Water is collected in the tray along with sand, after oscillating movements it splashes out, leaving some sediment in the deepened central part. The gateway is installed directly downstream of the stream. Visibility is minimal here, but this corresponds to the small scope of the prospector's activities. It is important to be able to distinguish potentially gold grains from the sediment of other metals and ordinary sand. The washing device can be used for gold mining on an industrial scale. You can buy such a machine in specialized stores, it is most convenient to do this on the Internet.

Here it will be possible to compare the parameters of various models, evaluate the engine capacity, power, structural strength, a set of additional functions, total weight, prices. A detailed study of the range will allow you to learn more about the industry itself and choose a good option to start. An industrial device for gold mining can also be rented, like any large-sized equipment.

More than one century captivates the imagination of gold. Flushing on trays gathers its audience on video sites. The opportunity to try your luck on the river or the mine is provided as a tourist option. Many go camping to find their happiness by sifting the dirt and sand. Someone uses a metal detector, looking for placers.

In summer, the extraction of grains is easier, especially in central Russia, in Altai. Where there are areas of permafrost, this method of extraction is not possible. For this lesson, specialized education is not always necessary; often, people who are far from cartography and geodesy go to the development. Luck plays a big role, because it happened that people not only washed a few grams of gold, but also found nuggets - large pieces of gold. Its cost depends on the purity of the rock; it is not for nothing that every ingot has its own sample marking. Gold is an exhaustible resource, so if you dreamed of finding your ingot, or at least a grain of yellow metal, hurry up.

We also add that the Golden-Inform portal can advise you to purchase a portable manual mini-sluice for gold exploration and mining from our partners from Cybermash LLC, whose contacts are attached below:

This article was born in connection with the increased interest in gold mining. I am often asked questions, how to extract gold from streams and rivers? How to make a gateway for gold mining with your own hands? Where and what to buy a gateway? How to make a passerby with your own hands?

In this article I will tell you how to make a passerby, a gateway with your own hands. The equipment is so simple that anyone can make it in a couple of hours at home, and in many respects it will be better than the purchased American aluminum sluice, the cost of which in Russia reaches 17,000 rubles. in the common people called a passerby. That is how it is called by the prospectors of Siberia and the Urals, the name that has come down to us from our grandfathers and great-grandfathers is a walker.

A passage (gateway) is a box knocked together from three boards, at the bottom of which a rug is laid and a stencil (rifle) is placed. A wooden walk-through is not only simpler and cheaper than aluminum, but most importantly, in which case it’s not a pity to throw it away. If you use dry and not thick wood, then the weight will be no more than that of an aluminum counterpart, and with a skillful approach, even less. In addition, wooden boards in your car or backpack will not raise questions from outsiders, someone will not ask what kind of boards they are and ask unnecessary questions. You never know for what purposes in the forest you need these boards.

To make a gate (lock) for gold mining, the main thing is to follow the basic simple rules when making it, and you will be a more successful gold miner than other prospectors with short purchased locks.

Gateway length.

The longer the pass, the more gold you will catch. Foreign locks made of aluminum have a maximum length of 1.5 meters, which is not enough to capture fine gold and disintegrate poorly washed sands or loams. The length of foreign locks of 1.5 meters is due to legislation that limits the length of the lock so that amateur tourists do not wash all the gold in the stream and leave it to others. For example, in America, Australia, New Zealand, gold mining is a hobby, like picking mushrooms or fishing in our country.

The width of the sluice depends on the amount of rock fed; for bucket feeding, a width of 20-25 cm is quite enough.

To make a passageway long and easy to carry, use a cascade of gateways, for example, install two gateways of 1.5 meters in series, for a total of 3 meters. This is enough to trap fine gold and disintegrate the rock. If the soil is clayey and does not have time to be washed on the tunnel, you need to use other equipment called butara. I will talk about it in the following articles or videos on my channel. https://www.youtube.com/user/RudolfKavchik


Installation of corrugations or as they are also called a stencil.

The stencil is the most important part of the pass. Behind them there is a swirl of the water flow and its rarefaction. This creates conditions for the accumulation of a heavy fraction behind the corrugation plates and the demolition of light waste material. The angle of inclination of the corrugation plates depends on the amount of water supplied to the passageway and can be from 45 to 78 degrees. The greater the depth of the flow and the speed of the flow of water supplied to the lock, the greater the angle of inclination of the corrugations. The distance between the corrugations is 5-7 cm. The shape of the corrugations can be straight or with slightly curved edges in the direction of the flow.

If the water flow is weak, then the ripples are not used. The rock is sifted through a sieve before being fed to the mini device. See below the screening chapter.


Gold trap mat.

A gold catching mat can be made from any natural fabric, such as burlap, tarpaulin, and even a regular waffle towel that housewives use in the kitchen will do. The main purpose of the mat is to ensure that the corrugations fit to the bottom of the sluice so that the accumulated material is not washed away by the leaked flow under the corrugations.

At industrial enterprises, cellular gold trapping mats are used. This is due to the technological process of gold mining. The rock is transported to the industrial device by Belaz trucks of many tons, washing thousands of cubic meters of gold-bearing rock per day. Each body of Belaz contains a dozen grams of gold, which is brought in for washing every few minutes. It is not profitable for the enterprise to stop the washing process to unload the industrial device, for this it will be necessary to stop production for 2-3 hours, and time is gold, in the literal sense of the word. Prompribor is unloaded once a day. Due to the large amount of washed rock, there was a need for high-profile cellular mats that accumulate heavy metal and do not allow it to be carried out by a stream of water, which increases the time of efficient operation of the industrial device.

At its core, a cellular mat works like a stencil / corrugation. In the depths of the cells, vortex flows are created that carry out light particles of sand, leaving heavy metal at the bottom: gold, platinum. In the passageway, a cellular mat can be omitted, since the rock is not supplied for washing by dump trucks, and gold can be easily removed at any time by the accumulation of heavy material. In addition, it is not easy to get a cellular miner's mat, and its cost of several thousand rubles is not at all justified when used on mini devices.

An analogue of a honeycomb rug can be made independently from a regular household honeycomb rug, which many have on the porch and are sold in every hardware store under the name "anti-slip coating". The mesh size of the anti-slip coating is approximately 5 mm. See photo.

An anti-slip coating is laid on top of a rag rug. Reefers are installed on top. Such a system will work no worse than an industrial rug, it’s easier to buy, and its cost is much lower, and in which case it’s not a pity to quit.

To be continued…

From this metal mankind goes crazy

Before you start designing or purchasing equipment for gold mining, you need to consider that as of November 2014, individuals and individual entrepreneurs do not have the right to officially search for and mine precious metals.

Although a law allowing such actions was considered back in 2011, it has not yet been adopted. Despite the prohibitions, such activities are carried out extensively in the North of Russia and in Eastern Siberia, where people in the taiga extract gold from depleted mines. The illegal production volume is about 10 tons, which is a tenth of the all-Russian annual production.

You need more than just mining equipment

Gold mining can be carried out today by enterprises that have drawn up the appropriate package of documents and received all permits, primarily a license for the right to use subsoil. In addition, the gold mining enterprise must hire workers, provide development projects for the deposit, mining and land allotment and equipment, among which the dredge occupies the main place.

This mechanism is a mining machine, which includes dredging, concentrating and other elements that allow you to remove waste rocks, leaving precious metals. The dredges work mainly in watered deposits, with the exception of viscous clays, hard rocks and boulder soils. For the dredge to work, a large amount of technical water is required, so periodically the gold mining seasons in one or another part of the globe are disrupted due to drought.

Machine for mining precious and other metals can be marine or continental class. Marine options are built on the basis of keel ships that can move independently or in tow. They are engaged in development in deep lakes, in the oceans, in the coastal zone. Continental ones are used on the continents and are formed on the basis of a pontoon, a flat-bottomed vessel.

Dredges can run on electric power, a combination of electricity and diesel, diesel, and even steam. They can take soil from depths from 6 to 50 meters below the waterline, scoop soil both with one bucket and with a whole bucket chain. By the size of the buckets, combines are divided into small (up to 100 liters) and large-capacity - about 250 liters. If the dredge works on the high seas, then it moves on an anchor-cable device. Such equipment is extremely bulky and costs a lot of money.

Flushing device for do-it-yourself mining

This is what the device looks like

Therefore, among amateur techies, discussions do not cease about whether a mini-dredge can be made by hand. Masters believe that theoretically it can. For its manufacture, a frame is made of lightweight materials (often aluminum sheets from a landfill), to which tires from trucks are attached to ensure the buoyancy of the structure. If there is a desire for a more reliable design, then a plastic pontoon is taken as the basis, including collapsible structures. This option will be more expensive and much harder. In addition, the frame can be mounted on plastic drums with a volume of about 40 liters.

An engine, a water pump, an air compressor, hoses, and a flushing chute are mounted on the frame. The latter is made by some craftsmen in the West on their own, based on their own preferences in gold mining (many countries allow work for private individuals). Many gutters are based on the “Hungarian effect”, when water forms a waterfall after the next threshold and does not foam much (so as not to lose metal elements). They are made of steel, welded together into a lattice and mounted on a specially bent aluminum sheet, which is the gateway. All elements of the gutter must be laid with the so-called prospector's moss, which is a vinyl coating that resembles spaghetti in a pattern. It retains particles of precious metals.

Western prospectors engaged in individual mining call a diameter of about 10-12 cm the preferred size of the hose. It is convenient to operate such a hose alone during washing, while a diameter of 14 cm already gives more than a significant physical load that not everyone can withstand.

The flushing process assumes that the dredge socket will be installed in the head of the lock so that water flows with soil, which is washed, enter it, and the residues are discharged into the water behind the minidredge. Water must enter the pump through the suction valve, without sand, as the presence of grains of sand can lead to damage to the pump. Therefore, an amateur dredge cannot work without a valve. At the end of the hose, an elevator with a suction nozzle is equipped.