Cheap Metal Detectors

Treasure hunters at heart love metal detectors, and spend hours on beaches or in fields, looking for hidden treasure.

Treasure hunters at heart love metal detectors, and spend hours on beaches or in fields, looking for hidden treasure. These have come down in price over the years, and now you can buy cheap metal detectors as a hobby or even as a toy for a child.

The history of metal detectors is full of drama. Metal detectors were crucial in the 20th century to uncover land mines, and since then and into the 21st century, metal detectors are the main component of security checks in airports and other places considered a security risk, to detect weapons; from a switchblade knife in an inner city school, to a gun or a bomb carried by a criminal or terrorist. Although metal detectors are used by building contractors to identify the location of steel rods and other important metal-related components in all different types of both civil and military construction, it is the hand held, ground-grazing metal detector that generates excitement, among adults and also among children.

Metal detectors work by creating a magnetic field which responds to the presence of a conductive, metallic object. Inside this piece of electronic equipment, an oscillator sends an alternating current through a coil. When this magnetic field comes near the magnetic current of another object, it triggers the sensor. The surveyor is holding the metal detector as an extension of the left or right arm, most commonly, and scanning the surface back and forth with the sensor head. When the sensor responds, the location of the metal detector marks the location of the metal object. Most metal detectors have both a sound alarm and a display which informs the user that it has detected a metal object. The sound most often is merely a change in the pitch of the constant scan sound, or the sound of beeps which increase in frequency as the sensor comes closer to the detected object. Headsets often come with metal detectors, so only the surveyor hears the sensor’s response. The display on the metal detector is most often a small LCD screen; the more advanced models provide more detailed readings.

Depending on the sensitivity and accuracy of the sensor, the metal object located by the metal detector could be as small as a coin or a ring, and a number of inches below the ground. Most metal detectors can be set to find specific metals, and exclude others. This is often used to exclude tin or other metals which probably constitute trash. The object found must be unearthed by the surveyor, so you need to be prepared to dig.

Cheap metal detectors start at under $20. Many electronics stores, specialty stores, and some toy stores carry them. The construction of the detector may be fully metallic, heavy or light depending on the metal, or combined with plastic components. The more lightweight and the more rugged models are, of course, more expensive. Many are adaptable in length, for surveyors of different heights. They all use a power source, some sort of battery, and they come in a variety of more or less ergonomic designs.