XRF Gun Readings Understanding. - Coin Community Forum

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Author	Replies: 5 / Views: 962
Raphael01 New Member United States 18 Posts	Posted 02/17/2024 12:07 pm All, I need the help of those who are using an XRF gun. Here is the story: I buy silver from a lot of different places, and 2 of them are ebay and Mercari. I am not always very confident when I buy there, and I test all my purchases using an Olympus XRF Venta Element-S that we use at work. So far, everything is great, but I really get 3 kinds of readings and I have some questions. 1 - The first situation is that I put the gun on the coin or the bar, I push the button, the gun immediately shows Ag 99.99 on the screen and, while the gun analyze the material during 3-4 seconds, it stays as is. 2 - Same operation and the gun immediately detects another material (C210 is what I got couple of times so far). The main composition is CU (copper), over 70%, and a lot of other stuff. Here it's easy as well, it's not silver. 3 - Here is where I need to understand. I do the same operation and the gun immediately shows Ag 99.99. Ag 99.99 stays on the screen for maybe 5-7 seconds, the gun continues to analyze the material, and start finding others things. When the analyze in completed, the result is usually above 98% of Ag, and some other stuff that I don't exactly remember (one of them also states "no Spec"). What does that mean? Does it mean that the coin or the bar is not fully silver made? Does it mean that the XRF can have a certain degree of error? Does it mean that the more the gun is active, the more it get information from everything around? I will be happy if some of you could help me with that. :) Thank you, Raphael Report this Post to the Staff

Spence Moderator United States 34409 Posts	Posted 02/17/2024 12:59 pm @raphael, first welcome to CCF. Second, I'm going to move your thread over to the main section as I'm hoping this will get more folks with experience in XRF to see your question. This current subforum is for folks who use metal detectors out in the field to dig up coins. "If you climb a good tree, you get a push." -----Ghanaian proverb "The danger we all now face is distinguishing between what is authentic and what is performed." -----King Adz Report this Post to the Staff
Raphael01 New Member United States 18 Posts	Posted 02/17/2024 3:04 pm Hi Spence, Thank you! :) I hope that someone will be able to help me to understand. Report this Post to the Staff
Raphael01 New Member United States 18 Posts	Posted 02/18/2024 9:00 pm A small up... If someone uses a XRF Metal Analyzer and can help me. :) Report this Post to the Staff
Sap Moderator Australia 16827 Posts	Posted 02/18/2024 9:41 pm I don't use a portable XRF, but am familiar with the theory (we have a benchtop XRF for soil analysis in our lab). The degree to which XRF penetrates various substance may be the issue here. As a general rule, the further "down" the periodic table you go, the shallower the x-rays penetrate. In the noble metals group on the periodic table, copper is on top, then silver in the middle, then gold at the bottom. So x-rays will pass right through even a thick piece of copper, while they will be blocked by just the few millimetres surface layer of pure gold. Silver is halfway between - for a thick ingot, the x-rays shouldn't make it all the way through, but it does depend on both the thickness of the piece of silver and the intensity of the x-rays, which in turn derives from the power level of the machine. What I suspect is happening, with your "98% silver" reading of a silver ingot, is that a tiny percentage of the x-rays are passing right through the silver ingot, and the XRF is picking up "contamination" from whatever is underneath the ingot - the table, benchtop, floor or whatever it's sitting on when you run the test. I think it's safe to conclude that the "98% silver" item is in fact pure silver, if for no other reason that nobody who is making fake silver ingots would make them out of 98% silver - there's no profit for them in doing that. Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise, you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. - C. S. Lewis Report this Post to the Staff
Raphael01 New Member United States 18 Posts	Posted 02/18/2024 10:21 pm Sap, you are the best, and your answer makes me feel better! :) In fact, out of maybe 20-25 items that I checked, couple of rounds had this kind of results (and one was finally 99.99 after 3-4 trials), but also all the 5 to 10 oz bars (3 bars total), and all the American Silver Eagles. The rest of the rounds and bars were all 99.99 right away. I was not sure how deep the X-rays could go, and if they would be able to catch another material under some sort of plating. On the other side, I was able to identify several fake bars (one of them was a 10 oz Morgan Design). Even if the bars were beautiful, the XRF immediately identified that they were fake (Cu 70%, Al 15%, Zn 9%, Si 2.5%, S 2%, P 1.5%, and Ni 1.5%). Report this Post to the Staff
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