Schematic Diagram of The Metal Detector Circuit,
Metal detecting with beat frequency oscillator is one of the simplest method. The circuit basically have two balanced oscillators. The first provides the reference signal, and the other acts as the detector element. The frequency for the reference is fix, and the other one varies depending on the presence of a metal. This reference oscillator can be built using various circuit topology : LC (inductor-capacitor), RC (resistor-capacitor), or quartz oscillator. The detector oscillator uses LC because the mechanism will use the magnetic induction property of the detected object, and the inductor component will detect the probe.
The NAND gates use CMOS 4011 chip, a low power component that is suitable for this battery-operated circuit. You can see that this chip is supplied by a 5V voltage coming from an LM7805L regulator. You might wonder what the purpose of this regulation is, since the power supply come from a 9V battery and the CMOS gates can handle the voltage of 3-15 Volt. The main purpose of the regulator is to keep a constant voltage source for the reference oscillator frequency stability, since the frequency is affected by the power supply voltage variation as the battery voltage drops in the long time of usage.
This circuit uses parts as follows :
U1: CD4011
U2: LM389
U3: 78L05
R1: 2.2k 5%
P2: 4.7k lin.
R3: 330k 5%
R4: 270k 5%
R5: 1k 5%
C1: 390pF (NPO)
C2,C3,C4: 10nF
C5: 10uF 16v electrolytic
C6,C8: 220 uF 16v electrolytic
C7: 100uf 16v electrolytic
C9: 100nF ceramic
P1: 4.7k log
L1: 22cm in diameter with 14 turns AWG 26
K1: SPDT toggle switch
J1= Headphone jack 1/4 or 1/8 inch
Other parts: 9v battery connector, speaker or headphones
