Over the last 70 years plus, the Keene family has been the leader in the world of portable dredging. The first sump system and triple sluice dredge was☺ developed on a 8” submersible dredge constructed by Ernie Keene in the early 1950’s. In the later 1970’s we came out with the world famous keene triple sluice. In the late 80’s we introduced the three stage sluice system, as well as many other innovations and firsts. In 2016, we have developed the “Super Max Sump Dredge”. This out performs all other dredges in the world for micro fine gold recovery. The entire dredge was built with “state of the art technology” to include new floats, frame, pumps, power jets and more. The sluice box is oversized to control the material and allow the fine material as it is classified into a slower velocity zone. The best method for collecting the super fine gold requires several things, 1/8th inch and minus classification, The material needs to be spread out over a long wide sluice. The water speed under 4 feet per second. The sluice box needs to be set up with a variety of different riffles to accomodate a variety of conditions such as water flows, varing percentages of solids, different size and shape gold and black sand content.
We have also found that the use of corse woven wire creates much more drag on the material and really helps slow the material down and drops the heavies out of suspensation far better than the old punch plate system. The large 8 foot long by 24 inch wide sluice box captures 98% of the heavy material and disseminates the clays and conglomerate material. The oversized box provides a smooth slow slurry as it is classified into the sump located at the end of the main sluice.
The sump was engineered by computer aided design optimizing seamless flow of fine material being drawn into the sump and pumped into the side boxes. One of the main keys to making the sump work correctly is to use the custom made heavy woven wire to create the proper drag on the finer material and allowing the coarser non value material to pass over the sump. The sump creates a slight vacuum on the screen that pulls 100% of all the finer values into the sump, then pumped into the side boxes. By pumping the minus 1/8th material into a controlled flow environment, all the super fine gold up to 500 mesh can be recovered from the side sluice boxes.The side sluice boxes are constructed with a 10” wide header box that flares up 17 inches wide and is 5 feet in length. The sluice is lined with our world famous “Miracle Mat”, ribbed capets and expanded metal.
The new float and frame assembly are newly designed. The frame is precision made on a C&C Mill and water jet machine. Constructed out of a lightweight tubular steel for superior strength. The floats are by far the most advanced floats in the industry providing a tapered long nose with cupped runners allowing the dredge to cut through fast water effortlessly. The floats are constructed of cross link polyethylene material with brass inserts casted into the top of the floats to secure the frame. The universal frame sections makes this dredge easy to set up and disassemble. To assemble the dredge frame, you will need only a 9/16th wrench and socket.
The standard model is powered by two GX390 Honda engines with our new PHP500 pumps that provides superior performance at depths to 35 feet. The pumps are equipped with a 1 inch accessory port that drives a pair of 2.5 inch suction systems with ball valves that are equipped to meter the flow to the side sluices. The side sluice boxes can also be used as a primary clean up concentrator. Traditionally you would have to take several buckets of concentrates and process the material taking hours depending on the concentrating equipment available. With the super max, cleaning the concentrates is a breeze. Simply take the concentrates from the main sluice and
run them through the side boxes. The side boxes should not produce no more than a few cups full of concentrates. At the end of the day you may only have a small amount of concentrate reducing the need for secondary clean up equipment.
