Factors you should consider before buying a Gold Testing Machine for your Business
Importance of a Gold Testing Machine
Testing gold is easy and fast today. And it’s essential to test every piece whether you buy or sell, should be tested for purity.
However, buying a gold testing machine for your business can sound tricky and a bit confusing even though you’re talking to some sales fellas or your business friends.
If you’re feeling confused or tricky on which gold testing machine to buy? Don’t Worry, You are not the only one. Most jewellers, bankers and business owners get confused with a wide range of options that are available from different brands.
We will try to break it Step by Step to help you decide, which one is the Best for your Business and would help you prevent losses while you buy old gold or increase your customer satisfaction and trust to whole new level while you sell the next glittering jewellery to your customers.
Knowing the Best Pure Gold Detection Technologies:
There are 3 Major types of gold detectors available:
- Proportional Counter Detector – Gas filled with hermetically sealed technology.
- Silicon Pin Diode Detector – A Special silica based detection that evaluates literally every metal on the earth.
- Silicon Drift Detector (SDD) – Similar to the above Silica based detection with special
The above detectors detect very precise presence of elements in a given sample. However their range of metals and precision of detections varies and so does the price of the equipment on which detectors it is based.
If your bank or small retail jewellers need to focus on customer satisfaction, quick testing times and need second guess, Choose the equipment with a Gas proportional counter (also called GPC detector). The cost of the equipment ranges from 5 – 7 Lakhs depending on the brand and other features you choose.
If your retail jeweller with good amount of old gold purchase or a old gold buying company or a bank with large quantum of gold loans to be sanctioned. Then Si Pin Detector based machines are the Best, they have the power to detect all the metals that could possibly used to fake or make spurious jewellery. Also it can detect some prohibited metals which can alarm the owner for any suspiciousness of the ornament. Although its a bit pricey compared to GPC machines, but its the best long term investment for any business who transacts their business on gold. While gold prices are always going up, the new techniques to fraud or cheat is always trending in the market. So to be futuristic and fully protected, Invest in gold testing machine with Si Pin diode based detector.
If your any other business than the above like – Large buyer of gold, bullion, refinery or large scale manufacturer of ornaments, Then SDD based XRF Gold testing machines could be your best bet. It has all the advantages of Si Pin detection and on top of it, SDD detectors need lesser testing time as their stability in detection is very high. And it can read the lowest level of content, say less than 0.05% of any metal in the sample.
So based on your use case, choose which detection technology will be idle for you. Once you’re firm with this, you will be almost close to making your final decision. Unless this aspect is clear, it becomes very difficult to decide.
Geometry available for a Gold Checking Machine:
Let us talk a little more precisely about this.
X Ray mounting could be in two ways – One bottom to top and another Top to bottom geometry. Traditionally there are two schools of thoughts here. Some feel bottom up is good in precision, and some think top down is good in precision. The fist between these two types is never ending.
Bottom up is most popular and covers nearly 3/4th of the XRF based testing machine market. Since it’s very easy to use and requires less or no training to use. Whereas top down is popular among labs where dedicated and trained professionals are required to test the samples as it takes time and expertise to use these equipment.
Collimator Types & Sizes best for Testing Gold:
Collimator sizes define the area of readability and depth of penetration into samples. Collimators ensure the right amount of X-rays to cover the sample area.
Smaller collimator ranging from 0.3 to 1 mm, gathers less data, which means the accuracy and stability could be compromised. So smaller collimators are more popular in Coating Thickness reading, because they could measure the coating more precisely than the purity of the sample.
Whereas larger collimators ranging above 4mm and 6mm could cover more area, but might not penetrate sufficiently. Hence they might get more data to process, but the depth of the penetration is highly compromised.
In such cases customers will fail to detect coated jewellery accurately. The optimised collimators are between 1.5mm to 3mm, which means they have the best of both – Deeper penetration & able to generate more data for processing the result more accurately and also detect coated jewellery frauds without any failure.
There are fixed and multiple collimator based XRF gold testers available. Multiple collimators might require additional knowledge of the operator to choose the right collimator for the right sample whereas a fixed collimator can suffice almost all types of samples and jewellery without much effort. Furthermore the cost and maintenance of multiple collimators is higher and hence one must buy it only if their need arises.
Now that we have covered the top 3 factors that you need to know before you shortlist your next favourite gold testing machine for your business. The next few points are more commercial and business in nature.
Know your vendor for buying your Gold Testing Machine:
It’s very important to know the background, experience and technical strength of the vendor you choose to work with. Because all these equipment require lots of exposure and knowledge to make it work for your business. Given the complicated nature of samples in India, it becomes even more important to be 100% sure about the technical capability of the supplier you want to buy from. Not just about the product, but also knowing the Gold industry, gold manufacturing and recycling process is required for your vendor to be well acquainted with, so that you’re always in safe hands.
Another most important factor is reliability and years of experience of your supplier. Many companies feel they could handle the complicated market, but soon realise that they can’t handle it and shut their businesses, Which then puts the customer into a trivial situation of dumping their equipment due to non-availability of services.
Other important steps one needs to surely be taking are:
Test at least 4 – 10 samples that you generally buy and sell. Test the samples on various machines and also get test reports from well known 2 – 3 labs and then compare the results to confirm the accuracy success. This can seem like a bit of a tedious task, but it will ensure that you get the best accuracy based machine for your business.
Check various maintenance and AMC packages from the vendors, it’s very important to keep the machine for long life in working condition. Most vendors keep the parts exorbitantly priced. Which makes the customer bound to spend such high costs when they need to keep the equipment running for a longer span of years.
Buying such Capital investment equipment needs extra effort and research. However if you know how to crack the step by step approach during your purchase process, you can get something that is, A rewarding Asset to your Business and an Impeccable tool for your Employees and services that your customer would love to buy more from you.
This is an initiative from Maxsell to create awareness with Buyers for Gold testing machines to pay attention to important details.
At the end here are some of the key extrinsic features you must look for before buying your Gold Testing Machine
Do you need a quick and accurate way to verify the purity of gold in any gold or precious metal sample?
Gold testing machines have a number of advantages that make them ideal for gold testing in every setting.
These are some of the advantages:
- Handheld
- Lightweight
- Lightweight For most samples, gold purity and entire alloy chemistry may be determined in 2-5 seconds.
- Samples that are completely non-destructive are the same during both analyses, with no damage or modification of any type.
- With no fears, examine one-of-a-kind jewellery! The laboratory-grade gold testing system has a fire assay accuracy of less than 0.1 percent.
- Compact Nature – Fully portable, the gold testing devices may be used anywhere: at the jewellery store to test and sort incoming gold waste, or after the melt is cooled and ready for purity testing.
Test a wide range of samples fast, correctly, and without destroying them, including:
- Bars of gold
- Pins made of gold
- Gold that has been scrapped
- Jewellery made of gold
- White Gold is a precious metal.
- The colour rose gold
- Alloys of exotic gold
- 12K, 14K, 18K, and 24K gold are available.
- Plated in gold
- The use of gold leaf
- Nuggets of gold
Accuracy – Gold testing machines help you boost business efficiency and address any gaps that lead to mistakes and revenue loss. Sell your gold for as much as it’s worth, don’t overpay for gold by much than a penny, and make absolutely sure your melts are exact. When you go to buy a machine, check the same sample in different machines and check which are the ones that are most close to the accurate value.
Latest Technology – Make sure that your machine uses the latest XRF technology to test the purity of the sample and does not harm it in any way. Also ensure that the gold testing machine is based on the High Resolution Proportional Counter detector technology.
Metals that it Can test: The machine should have the ability to detect all the following metals Au, Ag, Pt, Cu, Ni, Zn, Pd, Cd, In.
User – Friendly – If you plan on testing gold products frequently, you might consider purchasing an electrical gold testing machine. These electrical devices are simple to use with one button operation. Anyone from your staff can easily test the purity of gold and provide the results as soon as possible. This will reduce the number of people who have to wait for a long time to get their gold tested. At Maxsell we make machines that can share with you the test report with just one click of the button.
Result Delivery – It will provide you with a quick, comprehensive, and non – destructive evaluation of your gold or precious metal item. It tells you whether or not your item is plated. It also tells you the exact carat weight and percentage of gold, as well as other elements, in your piece. Having a feature of printed reports is vital for any gold testing machine as it marks the proof of the test. At maxsell our machines have inbuilt computers that give you the result in the form of a pdf that can be printed using a printer.
Robustness – Mostly these kinds of machines are used in very harsh conditions where there will be multiple users of the machine in the office or in a bank. In such cases durability and robustness of the machine is a major concern. Make sure that the machines you purchase are dust proof and splash proof. In the case of Maxsell machines we take immense care on durability.
At Maxsell we are one of the leading Gold Testing machine manufacturers in India and we are proud to say that we stand on all the ISO:9001 certified conditions to produce the best results.
Enquire here for purchasing your gold testing machine for your business.