Foxy's Latest Project.
After reaching saturation point concerning Brexit and Covid, I thought I would escape for a while and concentrate my energies on a project in the workshop.
Most members might find it as interesting as removing wax from their ear with a hairgrip, but for the odd one or two I thought it might prove interesting and different, so I'll post my progress.......or lack of......
How to Build a working Metal Detector....Hopefully!....
Before I jump into the technical stuff I must point out that building a metal detector is not a new thing for me, I managed to build a reasonably decent BFO (Beat Frequency Oscillator) detector back in the eighties.
Again, just last year, I found a decent drawing on the net that appeared to be more sensitive that my previous version, so on and off over the last twelve months I've been assembling it, unfortunately after extensive testing, studying the drawing until I went blue in the face, and fault tracing I've been unable to find what the problem was.....
This was the circuit.....
A metal detector needs a search coil.....The bit that skims the surface of the ground and picks up any fluctuations in either RF waves or Magnetic waves when metal is located. In most cases it is the hardest bit to construct, so before I start this kind of project, I see if I can produce a good search coil, the circuit is usually the easiest bit for me....supposedly. This was the search coil for my first attempt...I was quite proud of it...