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Statistics Saturdays: Sampling

11
Rightwingconspirator3/15/2014 7:35:57 pm PDT

re: #10 Fairly Sure I’m Still Obdicut

Our industry has by necessity gotten pretty good at it. My small part is “pin sampling” from a great big melt, maybe a kilo or two of scrap gold. What we do as a refinery is a pin sample. That is a glass vacuum tube that sucks up molten metal from the big crucible in the furnace. That big melt will become a few bars that will be nth checked (via a small drilling from the bars) but should in aggregate match the pin sample. In the end we have the cross check of the actual refining result. Much cross checking occurs.

Gold is heavy so it settles as it freezes. Refining margins are under a percent so accuracy is a must. Often the melt is paid for based on assay not end result.

From time to time we can mess up but the money drives the careful nature of the sampling and cross checking.