Dryblowers club. Who's in.

Seems to be a few working or about to work a dryblower. I'll start with pic's.


First POS.




In action years ago.

Geez Steve,
starting to show our age ..

mate of mine doing some sampling prior to going in with the bigger machine


Time to rock and roll--vid


only trouble now is that I have a heap of maintenance to do before I get back out.

regards
oneday

There should be some good pic's come up. Will be interesting to see the many and varied types of dryblower. Funny you should mention age, got a birthday early next week.


Getting back on site a couple of weeks ago.

just check the screen mesh--12mm--might see if I can go down to 6mm or 8mm screen-stainless to see if we can smash a bit more clay befor it drops through onto the riffles.

Just gotta find someone who sells the mesh?

regards
oneday

Ray
Ill have a look at work, might have some laying around.. what size do you need?

oneday wrote:just check the screen mesh--12mm--might see if I can go down to 6mm or 8mm screen-stainless to see if we can smash a bit more clay befor it drops through onto the riffles.

Just gotta find someone who sells the mesh?

regards
oneday

I,ve got a large 1mm stainless screen ya can have mate if its any good to you.

hey steve
heres mine currently got a block out the back of cue, looks similar design to yours but only running 4 trays


back at home at the moment making a few modification's and repairs. on the look out for some more ground running at least 0.3 - 0.5 g/t and a lot of it. run about 500t a week
cheers Tom

Hi Tom,
That looks like the one thats on Gumtree. It's a copy of the Waters brothers by the look. I have an original Waters but it has had some serious mods.
I ran mine for 8months straight a few years ago and didn't have any break downs. Got a couple of things to do on it now but it will be back in action next week.
If you are interested in some ground in the Pilbara I can put you in touch with the right people. Lots and lots of acreage and large bits have been found. Has the usual tin and rubbish though.
I have just bought a large magnetic head roller which I am going to set up on a belt to run the oversize over to detect later.


Ray. Just make sure you don't loose bigger nuggets in the oversize by using a smaller screen size plus you are concentrating the dirt down by removing the larger bits ie: 10t per hour with all sizes over the boxes might be 12/15t per hour after classified or more. Need to make sure the bellows/blower can handle the concentrated dirt.
I reckon with the smaller size the clay balls will just roll off the top deck. I had a look at the video of the dryblower in action but couldn't make out any type of feeder for the boxes. First noticed the dirt coming off the conveyor was very broken up, not a consistent stream. Might just be the conveyors are traveling quickly or the boxes can take a lot more dirt.


Hopefully any one with some good dryblowing experience can add to this thread as you can never stop learning.

Steve

hi Steve
we had a lot of problems with the silver grass bogging up the shuts and consequently the staggered effect of the dirt coming of the conveyors, but once I got the shuts working properly u had to keep up with the discharge otherwise u bogged up the conveyors,

we don't have a problem with loosing oversize nuggets coz we haven't detected any.

Most of the clay balls are getting through the 12mm screen and bouncing over the riffle trays and finally ending up on the discharge conveyors.

Currently I have been using Silk screening material as the fabric for the riffle trays. They are in need of replacing again and unless I can find something just as good I think I will stick with it.

I reckon the dry blower that I rescued will be the same as yours Steve--just needs a bit of work..just be mindful that they all loose gold.

keep the ideas coming. I reckon all 3 of us (at the moment) may need to catch up and have a good chin wag and throw a few ideas around.

regards
oneday

one thing I did notice about the waters dry blower was the width of the screen--if it was another 6-10" wider u would catch a lot more dry blowing dirt...I have a couple of chains to smash what ever clay balls comes into contact with it....may be this is only a problem in the Pilbara and when we get a heavy dew then u generally don't start befor 8.30am due to moisture content, however saying that we are usually greasing the machine and changing air filters plus refuelling the motor and throwing a lick of grease into the tractor.

just a few ideas to share. My biggest problem up here is finding a shaded area to do mods and repairs on the machines. slowly slowly.

geez Tom I know were to come if I need a float--also Tom have u takin a sample and panned your tailings to see how much u r loosing? if any.

regards
oneday

I'll do some pic's next week of how the boxes are constructed and material used. Haven't had to replace any in the whole time the machine has been running. The material is backed with stainless mesh, best to show a pic.

I know 2 other guys that are dryblowing and have the same prob's with the clay. Looks like a trommel/clay breaker first might be the only solution. But it all depends on how much you loose in the clay compared to the cost of setting up the other gear.

The dirt that I am dryblowing has lots of fairly large rocks in it so that breaks up the clay as they bounce around the screen. I still have chunks of clay drop off into the oversize so I pick these up and run them over the screen again. Might have to do it a couple of times but it ends up with most of it going through.
Good idea to do a catch up as well.

yep mine runs fine stainless mesh aswell seems to do the job, I ran a heap of tailings back through my small dryblower by hand and picked up nominal amount of fines and no nuggets but panning shows there is a lot of fine gold traveling through with the clay.
by weight 80% of gold recovered is picker size and up im sure there would be as much flake size gold as pickers so I recon total recovery would be around 60%
I found if I cut my feed rate back by half the % of fines goes up and my total grams per tonne goes up maybe 10% but overall grams/hr dropps by 50% as not running the volume. so have been keeping it loaded up to get the throughput.
im not to worried about loosing big nuggets as the area im working is shallow ground that has already been flogged to death with metal detectors any chunks are long gone.... biggest so far about 3 grams
also doing a few modds to the boxes to seal them up better and giver her a bit more puff hope that helps.
there is not a lot of info out there so pretty much learning from my mistakes so yea keen to get all the info on the subject I can

Reckon you are spot on with the 60% recovery, but for a few liters of petrol and diesel it's pretty good value.

Biggest bit I have had come through the dryblower was a long skinny 14 gram bit. Always get a couple 2 to 5 gram bits per clean out. Main reason is all the tin from the old camps stop them being found with the detector.

hows all the mods goin Tom?

Some mates in Bunbury have modified theres to the shite house and have it up for sale coz its not big enough to do what they want. Teck screws and welding was pretty shoddy. They have completely rebuilt theres from the bellows up --they r chasing something that can do at least 40-50t per hour.

best way to see how much u r loosing is to sample your discharge pile. I usually put 5 x 20l buckets full through a Keene 151 dry blower and then wash the concentrates through a gold cube.

regards
oneday

I see the bloke in Perth-Glen is now having a go at building 6 screen decks-- dry blowers--geez hope he doesn't use wood and teck screws..

regards
oneday

are these dryblowers from perth any good.i see a lot of plywood?

TALKED TO A COUPLE OF BLOKES THAT HAVE THEM AND THEY ARE A VERY BASIC MACHINE THAT WONT HANDLE THE RIGGERS OF THE PILBARA --- u will have to modify them to get them right.

u need to have a high primary air filter out of the dust,

i know of one in perth that has been completely overhauled by its new owners and is for sale.

regards
oneday

how much. I saw secondhand one for $27000 .

yea is a good design but needs beefing up and a few mods to get running right, working mine over at the minute.
fully welding, close in the engine bay a bit, new engine, improved air filter, sealing up the boxes better, tweaking the conveyor. pretty simple stuff but needs doing if you are running some serious volume

In hind sight I would recommend going 6 trays to get more volume through, this would also give you a wider shaker deck. the 3.5hp motor wouldn't run it only just runs 4 tray

the one for sale @ $27k you can have new for $18 but will still need more work as above, pity they don't come properly setup from day one.

overall I think it would be hard pressed to come up with a design of my own and build it for under $20k,

Was talking to a fella in Kal today who also builds a decent machine.

He can make whatever u want and he was saying that he has an order for a 100t per hour dry blower--now that's serious dirt being sorted.
U would have to load it with a cat980 to keep up..now that is worth a looks see.

regards
oneday

IF ANYONE NEEDS MESH

http://www.interscreen.net.au/wiremesh.html

Regards
Oneday

went up for a play over chrissy, how you getting on steve?

Geez TOM thought u would have put the poly pipe in for the air filter--up the side of the dry blower, above the height of the loader bucket so u suck in reasonably clean air.

nice gold by the way.. Its always nice to see pieces travel up the gold wheel and fall in the cup.

regards
oneday

Nice going Tom, good setup.

Smooth set up, well done and keep it up, gold always looks sweet lol
Happy hunting
Steve, Lea and Buddy