The 3 Best Gold Gravity Separators

You have gold in your ore, but recovering it profitably is the real challenge. Many operations fail because they choose the wrong gold gravity separation equipment, or worse, they think one machine can do everything. This approach leads directly to lost gold and lost profits.

The top three types of gravity gold recovery equipment are the Centrifugal Concentrator for fine gold, the Spiral Chute or Jigging Separator for coarse gold, and the Shaking Table for final concentrate cleaning. The correct choice depends entirely on the size of your gold particles.

An effective gravity circuit is not a single machine; it is a team of specialists. Each piece of equipment is designed to target a specific gold particle size and has a specific role in the processing flowsheet. Understanding these roles is the first step to maximizing your gold recovery rate. Let’s build a decision-making framework based on the most important factor: the nature of your gold.

Before You Choose Equipment: Is Your Gold Coarse or Fine?

Using a machine designed for fine gold to capture nuggets is like trying to catch basketballs with a fishing net. The first and most critical step is to understand your ore.

You must determine if your free gold is primarily coarse particles (like in placer gold deposits) or fine, microscopic particles (common in lode gold veins). This single characteristic will dictate your entire equipment selection strategy. Mismatching the equipment to the particle size is the most common cause of poor recovery.

The ore characteristics define the problem you need to solve. Coarse gold is heavy and easy to see, but it can be trapped in large volumes of gravel and sand. Fine gold is invisible to the naked eye and requires grinding to be liberated, but once free, it is so light that it can be easily washed away by water if the wrong recovery method is used. Before you invest in any hardware, you must test your ore to understand the size distribution of the gold you need to capture.

Gold Type	Primary Challenge	Common Ore Source	Typical Recovery Goal
Coarse Gold	Processing high volumes of material to find relatively few, but valuable, large particles.	Alluvial Sands, River Gravels (Placer Deposits)	Bulk concentration followed by cleaning.
Fine Gold	Recovering microscopic particles from a slurry without losing them to the tailings stream.	Hard Rock Quartz Veins (Lode Deposits)	Multi-stage concentration and refinement.

How to Efficiently Recover Coarse and Medium “Placer Gold”?

When dealing with placer gold, your main task is to process large volumes of sand, gravel, and clay to concentrate the heavy minerals. You need high-capacity, robust, and cost-effective equipment for this bulk separation task.

For the roughing and cleaning of coarse and medium-sized gold, Spiral Chutes and Jigging Separator Machines are the most effective solutions. Spirals provide high-capacity, continuous bulk concentration, while jigs excel at capturing heavy nuggets that might be missed by other systems.

A Spiral Chute is a simple, non-powered device that uses flowing water and the force of gravity to separate minerals. As slurry flows down the spiral, heavy particles like gold move to the inside of the channel while lighter sand and silica are washed to the outside edge. It’s an excellent, low-cost tool for making a primary, bulk concentrate. A Jig uses a pulsating water column to fluidize a bed of material. Heavy particles, like gold nuggets, quickly sink through the fluidized bed and are collected below. Jigs are exceptional at capturing coarse, nuggety gold and are often used as “guardians” in a circuit to prevent these high-value particles from being lost.

How to Capture Easily Lost, Micro-Fine “Lode Gold”?

When your gold is liberated from hard rock through grinding, you are left with microscopic particles suspended in a slurry. These particles are too small for simple methods and will be washed away with the tailings.

The Centrifugal Concentrator is the most effective technology for capturing fine and ultra-fine free gold from a grinding circuit. It uses enhanced G-forces, often hundreds of times the force of gravity, to separate tiny gold particles that would otherwise be lost.

This machine is the workhorse of any modern gravity gold circuit. A slurry is fed into a rapidly spinning bowl, pinning the heavy gold particles into riffled concentrating rings while lighter gangue material is washed away. For maximum effectiveness, a centrifugal concentrator should be placed in the grinding circuit to treat a portion of the cyclone underflow. This stream is already naturally enriched with the heaviest particles, creating a perfect, high-density feed for the concentrator. This machine is not designed to produce a final product, but rather to pull a small mass of high-grade concentrate, which can then be sent for final cleaning.

How to Purify Your Gold Concentrate to the Highest Grade?

Whether your concentrate comes from a spiral, jig, or centrifugal concentrator, it will still contain other heavy minerals like pyrite or black sands. To create a high-purity, smeltable product, you need a final cleaning step.

The Shaking Table is the essential finishing tool for purifying gold concentrates. It uses a combination of gentle water flow and vibration to precisely separate gold from other heavy minerals, achieving a final product of over 95% purity.

A shaking table is a low-capacity, high-efficiency cleaner. It is a critical mistake to try and feed it the entire plant’s material flow. Its sole purpose is to treat the small volume of concentrate already produced by your other machines. On the table’s deck, the materials separate into visible bands. The heaviest particles (gold) are captured by the riffles and move to one collection point. Lighter sulfides form a separate “middlings” band, and the lightest waste rock is washed off completely. A skilled operator can adjust the table to achieve a near-perfect separation, turning a “dirty” concentrate into a high-value product ready for smelting.

How to Combine These Devices into a Complete Process Flowsheet?

These pieces of equipment are not competitors; they are teammates. Assembling them in the correct sequence is how you build an efficient gold processing plant that maximizes recovery across all particle sizes.

A complete processing flowsheet integrates different gravity devices for roughing, scavenging, and cleaning. The specific combination depends on the ore type, but the principle is to use high-capacity machines for initial concentration and high-efficiency machines for final upgrading.

Here are two common, effective flowsheets:

Typical Placer Gold Flowsheet (Coarse Gold)

1. Screening: A trommel or vibrating screen removes large rocks and washes the sand and gravel.
2. Roughing/Concentration: The screened material is fed to a bank of Spiral Chutes or Jigs to produce a bulk heavy mineral concentrate.
3. Cleaning: The rough concentrate is then sent to a Shaking Table for final separation and purification.

Typical Hard Rock Gold Flowsheet (Fine Gold)

1. Crushing & Grinding: Ore is crushed and then ground in a Ball Mill to liberate the fine gold.
2. Coarse Gold Protection: A Jig is often placed in the grinding circuit to immediately capture any coarse gold nuggets the moment they are liberated, preventing them from being ground down or lost.
3. Fine Gold Recovery: The ground slurry is pumped to a Centrifugal Concentrator to recover the fine gold particles.
4. Cleaning: The high-grade concentrates from both the jig and the centrifugal concentrator are combined and cleaned on a Shaking Table to produce the final gold product.

What Are the Prices for These Gold Gravity Separation Equipment?

Understanding the budget is crucial for planning your operation. The processing cost is a key factor, and the initial capital investment in equipment is a major part of that.

The price of gold gravity separation equipment varies widely based on capacity, materials, and complexity. Spiral Chutes are the most affordable, followed by Shaking Tables and Jigs, with Centrifugal Concentrators being the most significant investment due to their mechanical complexity.

It is important to view these prices as an investment relative to their role in the recovery circuit. A machine that costs more but recovers significantly more gold provides a fast return on investment. The following are typical factory-direct price ranges. Please note these are estimates, and you should always contact us for a precise quote based on your specific capacity requirements.

Equipment Type	Role in Circuit	Complexity	Typical Price Range (USD)
Spiral Chute	Bulk Roughing	Very Low (No moving parts)	$1,000 – $5,000 per start
Shaking Table	Final Cleaning	Low	$3,000 – $15,000
Jigging Separator	Coarse Gold Roughing	Low to Medium	$5,000 – $30,000
Centrifugal Concentrator	Fine Gold Recovery	High (Precision mechanics)	$15,000 – $100,000+

Conclusion

Stop looking for a single “best” machine. Instead, analyze your ore to understand your gold’s particle size. Then, build a complete gravity separation system with equipment chosen for specific roles: high-capacity roughers for bulk concentration and high-efficiency cleaners for final purification. This systematic approach ensures you recover the most gold possible.