Abdul Milazi
2 July 2007
Johannesburg — INDUSTRIAL electronic engineering company Saflec has enhanced its metal detection system with a unique walk-through contraption known as the Goldfinger, which can find even the smallest of metal particles in a human body. This feature, which is supported by a proprietary technology, is helping the company pick up business from mining companies both locally and abroad.
Saflec chairman Bill Young says the company already has 30 of these units working all over the world, and as far away as China and Thailand. The company's best-selling product, though, is still the popular and commonly known 2000 Walk Through Metal Detector, which accounts for 20% of total sales.
Saflec exports to the UK, Pakistan, Bulgaria, the UAE, Taiwan, China, Poland, Malaysia, the US, India, Zimbabwe, Mali, Guinea, Uganda, Rwanda, Namibia, Mauritius, Mozambique and Zambia.
The company's turnover for the year to the end of February was R8,6bn, up from R5,9bn last year and R6,5bn in 2005.
Saflec holds world patents on its equipment and supports more than 60 agents worldwide. The company also leads the metal detection field in respect of the wide range of products it offers and the number of world "firsts".
"For example, we were the first to use fibreglass in a mono construction to build walk-through metal detectors. We are the most advanced company in the world in the difficult task of detecting gold and precious metals in very small amounts," Young says.
Saflec also manufactures the world's most popular hand-held scanner, the Garrett Super Scanner. "When used properly, it is extremely effective in detecting even the smallest of metallic objects," Young says.
"The Garrett Super Scanner operates in a very low frequency range and is completely safe for all scanning situations, including pregnancies and also for electronic devices such as pacemakers."
He says the company has a compete range of metal detectors covering all security needs and industrial metal detectors which are widely used in mining and industry throughout the world.
"Saflec is also very flexible in its manufacturing process and is capable of custom-designing metal detectors to suit specialised applications. Our standard range is made from durable fibreglass, and designed with ease of installation and maintenance in mind," Young says.
Saflec's range of walk-through metal detectors covers a wide range of applications in the security industry. These consist of relatively inexpensive but reliable units for general security use for weapons detection as well as theft, to highly sensitive detectors of precious metals.
Saflec has been in business for 22 years. Young says the secret of its success may be found in the strong bonds of loyalty that exists between staff -- and the ability to react to a situation immediately with the minimum of delay.
"Saflec is an industrial electronic engineering company mainly engaged in manufacture and development in the field of metal detection and computer solutions for a wide variety of control and monitoring in industry and security," says Young.
Saflec also manufactures a range of industrial metal detectors for the protection of machinery, including crushers and saws in industries such as mining, coal plants and sawmills.
The detectors are available as standard to suit all standard conveyor belts, but in addition, the flexibility of Saflec's manufacturing process allows them to custom-design metal detectors for specific applications.
The detector coils are available in various forms to suit each specific application, and Young says Saflec's staff have a wealth of experience in the application of industrial detectors. The units are designed to be robust and constructed in modular form for ease of maintenance.
The Goldfinger heralds a new era of high sensitivity, analytical precious-metal detection and comprises a highly sensitive metal detector coupled to a computer.
Young takes up the story of the way in which the Goldfinger was developed: "We have been designing and manufacturing walkthrough metal detectors for over 26 years and each time we bring out a new model, which works better than the previous one, we take it to companies who are handling gold and precious metals and ask them to test it and give us their opinion."
He says that the new version of the detector was at first unsatisfactory and did not do the job, so it was back to the drawing board.
"We began noticing strange phenomena with the metal detectors. For example, when we had people walking through without any metal objects on them, and with the metal detector set at a fairly high sensitivity, with some people it would go off and with others it did not."
Saflec engineers then set up monitoring equipment to see what readings they would get with the same experiment, only to find that everybody had a different reading, and this they called the body effect.
"We began to understand why we were so unsuccessful with trying to find gold on a body. It was because the body gave off a bigger signal than the gold did, so in effect the gold was hiding behind the reading of the body. That was the first hurdle we had to cross," Young says.
Then next step was to design a metal detector that could find a small piece of metal. "About this time several factors finally pointed us in the right direction. First, we were active in the food processing industry, scanning prepared foods for unwanted metal and these detectors could find exceedingly small pieces of metal, but unfortunately come with relatively small apertures, too small to put a person through."
Saflec engineers then tried to apply the principle of this metal detection system in their bigger detectors.
"We started to wind new coils in the induction balance method, and after many failures we finally got it right. But it was back to square one as far as finding small pieces of gold was concerned."
Young says after enlisting the help of a computer company, the Saflec team realised that they needed to separate the body from the piece of gold they were trying to find, and let computers do the rest.
"This consisted of testing all people using the metal detector and lodging their individual readings in a data bank. When a person walks through the metal detector they identify themselves to the metal detector by means of their thumbprint. This then sets the metal detector to their specific reading and any deviation from that reading either up or down causes the alarm to go off."
He says the system is run entirely by a computer, which prevents collusion between security and staff.
"The security staff are unable to tamper with the settings of the detector and only one very senior person is allowed to change settings. It gets a lot more complicated than that, but then that is only for the client's ears," Young says.
On after-sales service Young says: "We normally don't have service calls as the hardware is very reliable. In fact, we have never made a hardware repair. Problems come from what is known as finger trouble, where unskilled people fiddle with the computer and somehow lose the settings. But we have a solution for that -- we advise the client to install a modem.
"Then we can set the system working again by telephone from our Johannesburg office."
He says there is only one other company in the world that makes something similar to the Goldfinger.
"The custom-designed software allows for complete control over all employees passing through the metal detector," Young says.
"The identification system used with the Goldfinger can be either bar-code card or pin number based, as any item carrying metal components cannot be carried through the metal detector," he says.
Saflec's major local clients include BMSC Engineering, Doculam, Eriez Magnetics, Fidelity Security Services, John Elliott Security, Lonmin Platinum Mines, Rustenburg Platinum Mines and R&D Screening.
Major export clients include Thermatool, Inductotherm, Danway and Activity Corporation.
"We are completely overhauling the present hardware and software of the Goldfinger, which will be aimed at upgrading existing systems," Young says.
"In the industrial range we are designing an intelligent metal detector for industry which will ignore nuisance metals such as beer and soft-drink cans, which cause no damage to processing equipment but severely hamper production."
Year-end export sales to February dropped to R262m from R777m last year, but Young says that Saflec will pursue exports aggressively once all the upgrades have been completed.
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