Gold Wash Project

Stay up to date with our news, tips and tricks, and more on our blog.

Let us know if you want to us to speak to any aspect of mining that you want to learn more about. We bring lots of experience in gold mining and love to talk gold wash plants.
Category:

Gold Wash Plant Maintenance 101: Trouble-free Mining

May 29, 2018 in Maintenance

Gold Mining Equipment Maintenance 101

Gold mining equipment is a great investment. Whether you are the beginning gold miner or a seasoned professional, a gold wash plant can change your operation for the better. However, just as it is important to change the oil in your vehicle it is even more critical to maintain your gold mining equipment. Always remember to choose a wash plant that has few moving parts and is as self-contained as possible. This will allow for fewer components to fail and less equipment that needs maintenance. Wash plant failure means downtime and less money in your pocket.
 
Whether you use a trommel or shaker/screen type gold washing plant you need to be vigilant about maintenance. Always consult the manufacturer of your gold wash plant regarding maintenance. 
 
If using a Gold Watch Project gold wash plant then a few simple things will keep you up and running for many long seasons of mining.
 

Here are 3 simple steps to help maintain your wash plant:

1. Make Sure the Bolts are Tight

First, when using a vibrating screen gold wash plant you must make sure your bolts are tight. The majority of the bolts on our machines are 3/4" grade 8. We only use premium grade 8 hardware on our wash plants which require a torque spec to 282 ft/lbs. These are top lock nuts on lock washers which offer the best security when high vibration is occurring.

2. Grease Bearings Daily

Second, Make sure the bearings are greased daily. Due to the extreme environment, your wash plant is in, it is important to only use bearings that are able to be greased. No sealed bearings on our wash plants. Only 100% easy to access, serviceable, American made bearings are in use on our wash plants.

3. Change Oils

Third, our wash plants are all direct hydraulic drive. No belts, transmissions or generators are required to run the wash plant. All gold watch project gold wash plants are self-contained direct drive hydraulically driven wash plants which means less maintenance or chance of equipment failure on your mining site. But you will need to change the hydraulic oil and engine oils. This timing will depend on which model you have and what environment you mine in.

If you follow these simple steps you will be off to a trouble-free mining season and have less downtime and more gold in your pocket

Contact Us

Water Needs for Gold Processing

February 4, 2018 in Mining Knowledge

Water Needs for Gold Processing

In this entry, we will discuss some of the basic water needs for a gold wash plant. Whether it is a trommel style wash plant or a screen style gold wash plant you need water to mine.

 
Water is a crucial item for the alluvial miner. Whether you are mining by hand or mining with a gold wash plant it is the same. You need water! And a lot of it! There are some misconceptions regarding water needs on different machines. When processing and sluicing aggregate material there is a science of water needs. If you want to process 50 yards of material per hour it will take a certain amount of water.
 
There are many studies that have been done with documents data to show how much water is needed to process X amount of material. These studies can be found with a quick online search. Proper water volumes are crucial to recovery. Too much water will produce gold losses as well as too little water.
 
There is also a different style of riffle design that has different water requirements. The commonly expanded metal riffle requires a certain amount of water whereas the Hungarian riffle requires 3-4 times the amount of water. This at first may make you think that one requires less but it can be confusing. The Hungarian or angle iron riffle can process 3 times the volume of an expanded metal sluice per foot width. So for the same footprint using a Hungarian riffle, you can process 3 times the amount of material. On the gold watch project gold wash plants often times we will utilize several types of riffles so that we can achieve optimal recovery in almost all situations.
 

The several ways to acquire water on a gold processing site.

Some will use a river and pump directly while others will make settling ponds. When it comes to water it is best if it is clean. Clean water will give you ideal recovery rates. However, this is not always achievable and you must improvise. This is often done with a series of settling ponds. Whether we are on site commissioning a machine in Africa or in South America it is important we set up ponds that have enough volume and proper layout for settling. When we offer our on-site consulting services or onsite setup and training this is something our engineers help the customer do.
 
When using a gold wash plant to mine in settling ponds it is important that the wash plant can recycle the water without clogging the machine. This is achieved by proper design. Many designs on the market are great in ideal situations but seldom do miners ever find themselves in "ideal" situations. It is important to have a machine that is robust and can efficiently run with recirculated water from a closed settling pond system.
 
In the next article, we will discuss gold wash plant maintenance. Stay tuned.

Mining Knowledge 101: What We Have Learned

February 9, 2017 in Mining Knowledge

 

This series of posts is an attempt to use the extensive mining knowledge we have obtained through years of helping set up mining operations to help you avoid the mistakes others have made.

As an engineer for GWP, I’ve had the opportunity to work at numerous placer mining operations around the world. Some succeeded, and some failed. Some had their equipment seized by hostile government agencies. Some were unable to establish an economical supply chain due to inadequate infrastructure, Ebola, and a civil war. Meanwhile, some seemed to do everything right. However, the vast majority of failures were the result of a single issue: inadequate and inaccurate sampling.

Continue reading »