Pulse Induction On A Budget?

[Reg Wilson]

Good advice from Mbasko and Stayyer. DON'T modify it..... Never mind what Kingswood said. Get a regulated battery setup. A fully charged 6v battery is 7.4 volts and you want to run on that, constantly, not have it drop continually. Mick the mechanic is the bloke to talk to in this regard. All you need is his set up and finally,,,a pair of noise cancelling headphones or ear buds.
PS I used to run my 2000 on 7.5 volts constantly . No probs. You can make this system up yourself using a 12 volt battery and reducer which you can buy from most electrical stores. Too easy.

 

[kicksome]

Well I'm actually looking at getting a 7.4v 8000mah lithium ion battery and changing the connection on my minelab cable to have a Li-ion connector

https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/7-4V-80...921422?hash=item43f462c0ce:g:3LMAAOSwzsNcwY9A

And then just using Velcro to attach it to the side of the unit so then I don't have to carry around a backpack.
Does anyone see any problems with that?
I also didn't actually mind using headphones when u tested it, the ones that came with it are absolutely shockers so I'll go get some new ones maybe.

 

[Guest]

Thanyou stayyer for that post, I'm just trying to have a look for a lithium ion battery pack for it now, but not exactly sure on what I am looking for? I believe it usually runs on 6v but some run it on 7.2 or 7.4? Any links for battery sales would be helpful.
I messaged the maker of the Treasure mate v3 audio and amp but he is currently out of stock and not sure when he's getting more in.

Edit: https://www.reedsprospecting.com.au/shop/detail/lithium-dome-top-battery-4-pin/

Is this what I'm after?

Gday kicksome

Yes thats the one, I have one and use it to run my sdc2300, it looks a bit dodgy as they have coupled two smaller li-ion batteries together, but its very very light and fits into the harness or backpack exactly the same as the original dome top one, if you have the earlier style battery with the two tabs and not the dome then you will have to get a 4 pin cable to go from the battery to the detector, it comes with the home charger, but they say you can charge it with the minelab 12v car charger that comes standard with the Sd and Gp detectors, I just use a small 150w inverter and the home charger to charge it in the bush as my old minelab charger is a bit dodgy.

The Sd's will run on higher voltages as you mentioned, many people ran them on 12v batteries through a regulator at 7.2/7.3v to get better sensitivity and longer run time, what we found in the early days with all the detectors running on the brick 6v battery was that from fully charged they would run for 6 or so hours but lose sensitivity after only a couple of hours use, I discovered this first with the gp extreme when working on a patch, from starting in the morning with a fully charged battery I was getting regular targets (small nuggets) but after a couple of hours they targets stopped, changed over to another fully charged battery and started getting targets again, mind you these were very small pieces and specimens, but you would probably still get the shallow bigger pieces, it was about that time that the li-ion regulated battery systems came on to the market so I started using them and never went back to the brick batteries.

Coiltek did one called the "pocket rocket" that used the lightweight sony handi cam batteries, you can switch it from 7.2 for sd's and 6.8 for gp's, they worked well but are hard to get now as I am not sure if they still make them or not, I made a similar unit that I can run the sdc2300 and other sd detectors from at 7.2v, but you will definitely get better performance with the regulated li ion systems than you will with the brick battery.

cheers

stayyerAU

 

[kingswood]

Good advice from Mbasko and Stayyer. DON'T modify it..... Never mind what Kingswood said

In my defence, I was just going with the OP wanting to keep costs down
How would this go: https://detectormods.com/shop/63/lightweight-battery-kit
Price seems quite reasonable

 

[Rockwall]

Good advice from Mbasko and Stayyer. DON'T modify it..... Never mind what Kingswood said

In my defence, I was just going with the OP wanting to keep costs down
How would this go: https://detectormods.com/shop/63/lightweight-battery-kit
Price seems quite reasonable

I have used one of them for years. Excellent. Add the quest wire free from Nenad for a really good lightweight reasonably priced solution.

 

[Reg Wilson]

Sorry Kingswood. Didn't mean to offend, and yes that system looks pretty good for the price.

Rockwall, I use and recommend the Quest. Great unit at a fair price, unlike the Minelab and Garrett options, which are much dearer.

 

[kicksome]

Ok thanks for that I'll have a good look at these.

Just a quick question that's doing my head in a little and wondering if this will work:
If I got one of these:
https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/7-4V-80...rentrq:5339abc216b0a4b7fca7bf0affdd033c|iid:1

And got someone to solder on a deans connector plug onto the red and black battery wires on the minelab connection cable. Like in this photo

Would that work?

I went into jaycar and the man I spoke to didn't have too much of an idea about it, just warned me that going from the usual 6v to 7.4v might damage it. But I've read numerous times on here that the sd2000 can handle the 7.4v no worries?

Anyway if someone can clear that up for me then that would be awesome and if it's gets the green light I'll start ordering stuff

 

[bicter]

Ok thanks for that I'll have a good look at these.

Just a quick question that's doing my head in a little and wondering if this will work:
If I got one of these:
https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/7-4V-80...rentrq:5339abc216b0a4b7fca7bf0affdd033c|iid:1

And got someone to solder on a deans connector plug onto the red and black battery wires on the minelab connection cable. Like in this photo
https://www.prospectingaustralia.com/forum/img/member-images/15324/1560473125_images_2.jpg

Would that work?

I went into jaycar and the man I spoke to didn't have too much of an idea about it, just warned me that going from the usual 6v to 7.4v might damage it. But I've read numerous times on here that the sd2000 can handle the 7.4v no worries?

Anyway if someone can clear that up for me then that would be awesome and if it's gets the green light I'll start ordering stuff

If the Detector can only handle an absolute maximum of 7.4V your proposed solution will probably kill the detector. A fully charged 7.4V LiPo starts at about 8.0V or more dependent on the battery.
What is needed is a regulator to ensure that the voltage can't exceed 7.4V. This can be either a step up or step down type. To choose the regulator, you will need to know the maximum current draw of the detector. The regulator can be either a switched mode or linear. My preference would be for a Linear regulator so as to minimize the introduction of noise into the detector, however for a linear regulator, the input voltage must be higher than the O/P voltage.

Terry

 

[kicksome]

Ok thanks for that I'll have a good look at these.

Just a quick question that's doing my head in a little and wondering if this will work:
If I got one of these:
https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/7-4V-80...rentrq:5339abc216b0a4b7fca7bf0affdd033c|iid:1

And got someone to solder on a deans connector plug onto the red and black battery wires on the minelab connection cable. Like in this photo
https://www.prospectingaustralia.com/forum/img/member-images/15324/1560473125_images_2.jpg

Would that work?

I went into jaycar and the man I spoke to didn't have too much of an idea about it, just warned me that going from the usual 6v to 7.4v might damage it. But I've read numerous times on here that the sd2000 can handle the 7.4v no worries?

Anyway if someone can clear that up for me then that would be awesome and if it's gets the green light I'll start ordering stuff

If the Detector can only handle an absolute maximum of 7.4V your proposed solution will probably kill the detector. A fully charged 7.4V LiPo starts at about 8.0V or more dependent on the battery.
What is needed is a regulator to ensure that the voltage can't exceed 7.4V. This can be either a step up or step down type. To choose the regulator, you will need to know the maximum current draw of the detector. The regulator can be either a switchewd mode or linear. My preference would be for a Linear regulator so as to minimize the introduction of noise into the detector.

Terry

Ohh ok thanks I didn't know the 7.4v lithium started at about 8v, I just thought that the 7.4 was maximum. That throw a spanner in the works then.

edit: I'm guessing its just the LiPo Variants that run a bit different?
Cause this one here https://detectormods.com/shop/63/lightweight-battery-kit is 7.2v and would it initially go higher than that?

 

[bicter]

Ok thanks for that I'll have a good look at these.

Just a quick question that's doing my head in a little and wondering if this will work:
If I got one of these:
https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/7-4V-80...rentrq:5339abc216b0a4b7fca7bf0affdd033c|iid:1

And got someone to solder on a deans connector plug onto the red and black battery wires on the minelab connection cable. Like in this photo
https://www.prospectingaustralia.com/forum/img/member-images/15324/1560473125_images_2.jpg

Would that work?

I went into jaycar and the man I spoke to didn't have too much of an idea about it, just warned me that going from the usual 6v to 7.4v might damage it. But I've read numerous times on here that the sd2000 can handle the 7.4v no worries?

Anyway if someone can clear that up for me then that would be awesome and if it's gets the green light I'll start ordering stuff

If the Detector can only handle an absolute maximum of 7.4V your proposed solution will probably kill the detector. A fully charged 7.4V LiPo starts at about 8.0V or more dependent on the battery.
What is needed is a regulator to ensure that the voltage can't exceed 7.4V. This can be either a step up or step down type. To choose the regulator, you will need to know the maximum current draw of the detector. The regulator can be either a switchewd mode or linear. My preference would be for a Linear regulator so as to minimize the introduction of noise into the detector.

Terry

Ohh ok thanks I didn't know the 7.4v lithium started at about 8v, I just thought that the 7.4 was maximum. That throw a spanner in the works then.

edit: I'm guessing its just the LiPo Variants that run a bit different?
Cause this one here https://detectormods.com/shop/63/lightweight-battery-kit is 7.2v and would it initially go higher than that?

I'd only be guessing as I've never seen or used the one from detectormods (Woody) The site doesn't actually mention that it is a LiPo.

My best guess is that it would have some form of regulation within the battery box. Give them a call and find out

 

[kicksome]

Yeah I'll give them a buzz and see what they have to say.

 

[mbasko]

Batteries are advertised at their rated nominal voltage i.e.
- 6v SLA batteries will charge up to 7.2 to 7.5v. This is more likely governed by the charger used.
- 7.2/7.4v Lipo & Li ion battery packs will charge up to 8.2 to 8.4v. This is governed by the charger &/or protection circuits. 8.4v is absolute max for these.
Once load is added to the battery the volts should dip slightly before settling then gradually reducing during use. The Lipo & Li ion batteries will maintain an optimum or higher voltage for longer which is one of their benefits as well as being lighter, quicker charging, longer lasting etc.

I've never personally tried it but the SD detectors (+ all Minelab detectors) will just shutdown once max. voltage is reached. Newer models (I think from the GP series) are internally regulated.
Here's an example:

My 2000 handles 8 volts no problem whatsoever. I have actually used Ismael's Sakina variable Regulator to wind voltage up from 6 volts to over 8 volts to a point where the 2000 shuts down, and then as you wind voltage down the 2000 fires up again.

Pretty sure AuMan (Mick) will confirm this. Regardless his battery system can be adjusted to output between 6v to 8.4v if concerned as can other regulated systems.

P.s as far as I know (I've used some before) Woody's batteries were/are 7.4v camcorder li ion batteries. They will charge to a max of 8.4v as per other li ion packs.

Also if you did want to use a generic Lipo 7.4v battery pack but didn't want to connect it to your detector at the fully charged 8.4v you could look for a Lipo smart charger that has Terminal Voltage Control(TVC) where the charger allows the user to change the end voltage. These chargers can be more expensive but it's one way you could control what voltage you are putting on the detector. You could set the charger to say 7.4v which would still give you about ~85%+ of the run time. Also make sure if using these packs that they are protected so they shut down if the voltage gets below 3v per cell. Lithium batteries don't like low voltage or high voltage & need to between about 3 to 4.2v per cell.

 

[Redfin]

Good advice from Mbasko and Stayyer. DON'T modify it..... Never mind what Kingswood said

In my defence, I was just going with the OP wanting to keep costs down
How would this go: https://detectormods.com/shop/63/lightweight-battery-kit
Price seems quite reasonable

I have used one of them for years. Excellent. Add the quest wire free from Nenad for a really good lightweight reasonably priced solution.

I used one for years with a SD 2200, never had a problem with them, also allowed me to mount a small speaker on the arm cuff, so was free, no need for a harness.

 

[kicksome]

Just called them and it sounds decent enough. only weighs 350g and comes with velcro so it can connect to the side of the unit. I'm starting to think that this will probably be better than me mucking around trying to find something else - where as this is an all-in-one setup that has the power and headphone cable connected. I'll have a sleep on it but it seems the easier option

 

[kicksome]

Good advice from Mbasko and Stayyer. DON'T modify it..... Never mind what Kingswood said

In my defence, I was just going with the OP wanting to keep costs down
How would this go: https://detectormods.com/shop/63/lightweight-battery-kit
Price seems quite reasonable

I have used one of them for years. Excellent. Add the quest wire free from Nenad for a really good lightweight reasonably priced solution.

I used one for years with a SD 2200, never had a problem with them, also allowed me to mount a small speaker on the arm cuff, so was free, no need for a harness.

https://www.prospectingaustralia.com/forum/img/member-images/232/1560482517_2200.jpg

That looks nice Redfin, the pouch for it is a good idea, little protective housing :Y:

If I got a speaker for it I was told these go well for the price: https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/AROMA-A...890337?hash=item1cbbec00a1:g:IOQAAOSwt6NbussF

 

[ironrock]

Kicksome; i bought 2 li-ion batteries off woody around 5 months ago, at $180 a pop, these give upto 12 hours use on a single charge, they are great because i finally got rid of that brick that you have to lug around on ya back, it dose`nt offer wireless but that's no drama for me, they are professionally made and the headphone jack is real tight, and i would highly recommend!!!!
And almost forgot, i use the 2200d!

 

[kicksome]

Kicksome; i bought 2 li-ion batteries off woody around 5 months ago, at $180 a pop, these give upto 12 hours use on a single charge, they are great because i finally got rid of that brick that you have to lug around on ya back, it dose`nt offer wireless but that's no drama for me, they are professionally made and the headphone jack is real tight, and i would highly recommend!!!!
And almost forgot, i use the 2200d!

Awesome sounds good mate I guess I'll be doing something similar. $145 for the kit with the charger isnt bad all. With buying that and probably more coils down the path I better actually start finding some gold to equal out the cost

 

[pinfire opals]

My opinion get it modded, with the frequency position switch added it becomes a small gold machine. The several i have owned have all been modded, and the one that wasn't, became modded after doing tests between modded and standard. That is my 2 cents worth. Noel.

 

[Rockwall]

Ok thanks for that I'll have a good look at these.

Just a quick question that's doing my head in a little and wondering if this will work:
If I got one of these:
https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/7-4V-80...rentrq:5339abc216b0a4b7fca7bf0affdd033c|iid:1

And got someone to solder on a deans connector plug onto the red and black battery wires on the minelab connection cable. Like in this photo
https://www.prospectingaustralia.com/forum/img/member-images/15324/1560473125_images_2.jpg

Would that work?

I went into jaycar and the man I spoke to didn't have too much of an idea about it, just warned me that going from the usual 6v to 7.4v might damage it. But I've read numerous times on here that the sd2000 can handle the 7.4v no worries?

Anyway if someone can clear that up for me then that would be awesome and if it's gets the green light I'll start ordering stuff

If the Detector can only handle an absolute maximum of 7.4V your proposed solution will probably kill the detector. A fully charged 7.4V LiPo starts at about 8.0V or more dependent on the battery.
What is needed is a regulator to ensure that the voltage can't exceed 7.4V. This can be either a step up or step down type. To choose the regulator, you will need to know the maximum current draw of the detector. The regulator can be either a switchewd mode or linear. My preference would be for a Linear regulator so as to minimize the introduction of noise into the detector.

Terry

Ohh ok thanks I didn't know the 7.4v lithium started at about 8v, I just thought that the 7.4 was maximum. That throw a spanner in the works then.

edit: I'm guessing its just the LiPo Variants that run a bit different?
Cause this one here https://detectormods.com/shop/63/lightweight-battery-kit is 7.2v and would it initially go higher than that?

I'd only be guessing as I've never seen or used the one from detectormods (Woody) The site doesn't actually mention that it is a LiPo.

My best guess is that it would have some form of regulation within the battery box. Give them a call and find out

Yes, they have a built in regulator.

 

[Guest]

Gday

Some of the problems people faced with buying modified Sd detectors was that there was quite a few people doing them at the time, 5 or 6 that I know of some were doing the 4 position hot chip mod and some other mods as well, when people on sold them and did not have the instructions on how to use or set up the machine to make use of the mods and it caused some became wary of buying them, also at the time Minelab would not repair the modded machines anyway so they had to be sent elsewhere to have anything done, now minelab don't repair any of the the older sd machines at all as far as I know.

It all depends on what you are interested in doing with it as well, the Sd 2000 is well known for very good depth on large nuggets but not so good on the smaller stuff, so if you were using it for hunting deep ground then as long as you can get it to run fairly quietly you will get deep gold, but if you are chasing flychit then you are wasting your time and thats where the modded detectors came into play, from standard they used 1.92/2.037 Mhz (most common) and also 2.073/2.2 Mhz, the additional higher frequencies that were added were 2.4 and 3.0 Mhz, but even with the higher frequencies you still had the issue of not being able to get the detector to run quiet enough to hear the small targets anyway, later models became more able to handle the ground and run quieter so they found more small gold, but some had dubious depth ability.

If I were to mod an Sd 2000 I would purely be interested in depth mods only as thats its strength, and running a large dd coil, then its really a detector that is built for a purpose and not really a general use detector, adding things like a regulated battery system, audio enhancer/booster and so on will improve its performance for sure and will make it work better than it would have as standard so its a worth while exercise and an economical way to get into the detecting scene.

cheers

stayyerAU