Slick plate or not.

I'm in the process of changing a few things on my 2 tiered highbanker. I already have the 10 inch dream mat but I'm debating if I should have a slick plate or not. I do have some cat walk mesh and was thinking of having that at the top without miners moss. Any thoughts on the Benefits of having a slick plate or not.

If you have the 20mm vertical cat walk, I would DEFINITELY! run that first at the top with an air gap, and no moss needed underneath. And use the angle that you attach it with to clamp the mat down.
Maybe read my topic on the Wal banker vs teared hopper. Under prospecting equipment etc.

Oops, the slick plate. I've never had any luck trying one under my classifier. But I would still run the mesh b4 the matt.

Really??? That's all?

Are you running the dream mat yet or seeing where you should put it in your sluice? The best person to ask with your particular configuration is Dustin. I'll throw my opinion in though think about how the dream mat operates. The mat relies on horizontal water flow with enough velocity to drive the vortex to move material into the pot. Having the mat sit under a classifier dropping water vertically onto it won't run the top of the mat. So you'd need to design the water flow to hit the mat at operating speed either by direction from the hopper or placed further down the sluice and let water build velocity over a slick plate. The question then becomes if you put an additional capture area in front of the mat like your mesh will it slow the water and stuff what you are trying to do.

A slick plate will allow the water to accelerate and the gold to stratify prior to hitting the mat in a smooth flow. If you add a capture area like mesh or whatever you decide to use it must allow the water velocity needed to correctly run itself and the mat as there is no point both capture areas working at 50%. They must compliment not fight each other. A drop riffle immediately prior to the mat might be a good option as it won't significantly affect the velocity or smoothness of flow but will drop out large gold.

Jon

Can you show us some pics of what you have and perhaps put up a youtube vid of how the water flows in it?

When I converted to the dream matt, the clamp that holds it down became like a jump that the water hit and the flow over the first two rows of cells was disrupted a bit. So I stuck some big expanded mesh in there to smooth the flow out. That worked fine.
So on mine it has on the bottom tray about 15-20cm BIG catwalk mesh, prob 25mm high, then the dream matt.
If you were to have a slick plate I would maybe try to set it up so the height was the same as the height of the dream matt, so there was no upward jump.

But just call Dustin, he knows what will work with it.