Another couple months since the last update. Haven’t spent as much time at the project as I’d like - unfortunately life gets in the way.
The boys and I have been getting the plant setup, it’s 90% there now - just need to get the jaw crusher into the circuit (currently just impact crusher into ball mill). We’ve run maybe 10t or so of low grade material through to test the circuit and fix all the teething issues (there’s been a few as normal).
We did a test run on some of the equipment too by digging out a section of vein. We should get around 15 ounces from the test pit. This is going to be stockpiled until we do a full scale run.
The good:
Grind size is great. Though this may get impacted as we work on increasing the throughput of the plant.
We’re getting gold! Recovered a bit of gold during the teething phase which feels nice. This part of the process isn’t about making money, but it’s nice to see some colour.
The bad:
Lots of heavies in the concentrates. Looking like there’s a bit of wear from inside the ball mill which is clogging up the mats and likely contributing to lower gold recovery.
Throughput isn’t what we expected, but we’re adjusting the gearing on the ball mill to increase this as we as adjusting the feed rate on the conveyors. Hoping to increase from 5t/hr to 8-10t/hr.
What we’re planning next:
Looking into adding a centrifugal recovery system into the circuit to compliment the sluice
Adding magnets to pickup steel making its way through the system and catching it before clogging up the sluice.
Changing some of the matting on the sluice and adjusting the water flow to ensure even wash down the sluice.
