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Flow Electronics registered as a (Pty) Ltd company in 1971 with the aim of developing electronic devices for special applications.
Once Flow Electronics began operations, the development of specialized electronic equipment work was done for a variety of industries (SA Defense force, Armscor, SA Post Office, EFKA Electrical etc.) of which the most significant areas were military applications and electronic sorting. Development work on a new electronic sorting machine was also contracted out by Gunson Sortex S.A. (a subsidiary of UK Based company SORTEX Ltd) to the newly formed company became Flow Electronics’ major customer.
The product range of Sortex covered optical sorting machines for agricultural products, diamond mining products, etc. and adding to its product range, a newly developed x-ray diamond recovery machine.
It was from these “early days” that Flow Electronics became recognized as a reliable company, never missing a deadline and only supplying equipment of a very high standard.
To put Flow Electronics on a strong and more diversified basis P. Wolf started to look at other markets and the need for reliable Toll Plaza equipment and installations was evident. From 1985 to August 1992 Flow Electronics Toll Equipment business grew. The design and patent of the Piezo Electric-based Vehicle Classification Systems as well as Good aftersales service to the toll industry, helped Flow to secure, the opportunity to install and commission an imported Toll Plaza System at Mariannhill, an additional tendered for four Toll Plazas making up a total of 52 lanes and several medium-term Toll Plaza maintenance contracts. In fact, in those days Flow’s equipment was used in most South African Toll Plaza’s.
Flow’s involvement in general electronic design and manufacture had taken a back seat at this time due to the high workload from the traffic sector, however, long-standing product lines continued to be manufactured and P. Wolf designed many electronic sorting elements during this time. Namely, Sorters utilizing a variety of different physical properties of different products to be sorted, upgraded, separated, recovered etc., such properties included in the optical field, be it in the visual, IR or UV spectrum, reflection, absorption, specula-reflection, colour, refraction, backscatter etc. Radiometric properties, magnetic susceptibility, electric conductivity, x-ray spectrum analyses, x-ray / UV induced luminescence, IR absorption and so on.
Although Flow’s venture into the “Traffic Electronics” market had been very successful, Wolf’s interest in the electronic sorting technology had never died. With Traftec (Pty) LTD (partnership with Polar Air (Pty) Ltd back in 1992) having taken over much of the company’s financing of Toll Contracts, the basis for business expansion was established and, finally in August 1992, the decision was made to add Electronic Sorting Equipment to Flow Electronics’ product ran.
The new Diamond Recovery Machine of revolutionary design caught the attention of many visitors at the Electra-Mining Exhibition ’92. A sale for six machines was secured during the first week! Production started in mid 1993, certain designs were finalised and in some cases, protected by patents.
The first six electronic sorters left Flow’s workshop on schedule in October 1993.
Flow’s new Diamond Recovery Machine had quickly become a great success. The first ten machines were sold by the end 1993 and a further ten machines were put into production. Flow also added different models such as double stage and re-concentration machines to it’s product range in order to satisfy market demands.
Within two years Flow Electronics sorting business grew into a business of its own and from December 1995 the diamond sorting business became known as FLOW SORT (PTY) LTD, company fully committed and dedicated to stay ahead in diamond sorting technology. At that time every DeBeers diamond mine used these X-ray recovery machines!
Over the years Flow introduced the western-world’s its first all wet X-ray diamond recovery system, modular design of X-ray diamond recovery machines making for easy cost-effective service and maintenance. Flow introduced an indirectly cooled, long life X-ray source thus substantially reducing sorter operating costs. Flow goal was to make a sorter operation fully automatic, have reached a development level that makes them truly “hands-off”. It is needless to stress the importance of such a feature regarding security and performance stability.
A developed optical scanning system (SA Pat. No. 2011/07547) presents yet another breakthrough in X-ray-based diamond recovery technology. It allowed not only for the recovery of low luminescent type diamonds which are well out of the reach of conventional diamond sorters, but also the detection of micro-diamonds which is of great importance in diamond exploration.
Flow has now incorporated an automatic tracer dispensing and tracer recovery system in all new sorter models. This system is available as an upgrade to all Flow Sort ™ machines ever produced, right back to the first machine (No 001) built in 1992.
What does this system do? It automatically inserts tracers into the sorter and automatically, in real-time, collects all tracers that have been ejected into its concentrate chute. And automatically stops a sorter from further operation if a tracer gets “lost”.
However, ensuring that a sorter is operating at its optimum performance is yet another matter, automatic or not!
Flow’s latest generation of X-ray diamond recovery machines came equipped with an Automatic sorting parameter Calibration Stabilizing System. With this system Flow essentially supplies with each sorter a “computerised” X-ray diamond recovery expert. It does not only set up a sorter for optimal diamond recovery efficiency at optimal throughput but also ensures that such optimal set-up is continuously checked and automatically adjusted if necessary!
Due to their robustness, compact construction and simple, hands-off, automatic operation, many of the company’s Flow Sort ™ XR and TSXR machines have been installed into standard 20-foot shipping containers. Such containerised Flow Sort ™ machines make a very secure and highly mobile X-ray diamond recovery module, which has gained popularity with prospectors, diggers and diamond miners alike.
Today Flow Sort ™ offers container diamond recovery plants fitted with two double pass (TSXR Flow Sort’s), which equates to four individual sorters, together with chutes, Flow’s high-security self-locking concentrate bins, tailings feeder, etc. All fitted into a single standard 20’ shipping container!
To summarize the above; when you deal with a FLOW company you deal with a proud +50-year-old family* business that has over +50 years of experience in the design and manufacture of electronic sorting equipment.
The question now to ask is if there is more that can be done. Is there still space for further improvements?
Our answer is yes!
Selling over >700 Flow Sort X-ray diamond recovery machines, (over and above the 250 X-ray diamond recovery units sold by Gunson Sortex – designed by W. Schaub and P. Wolf) in a total of 18 countries, covering practically all the diamond-producing countries in the world.
Flow can only guarantee field work done by Flow Sort / Flow Electronics employees or by one of our official agents. Work done by any other party or the use of any non Flow approved parts may not only invalidate your products warranty but also affect the efficiency of your FLOW machine and may even jeopardize the all important X-Ray Radiation safety standard built into our products!
Over the past 52 years, FLOW has designed and manufactured high-tech equipment for various industries. However for the past 20 years FLOW SORT (FLOW ELECTRONICS) exclusively manufactures diamond recovery equipment.
FLOW ELECTRONICS (FLOW SORT) was founded by Peter Wolf in 1971. FLOW has been involved in the design and manufacture of electronic sorting machines ever since! Today FLOW has grown to become the biggest manufacturer of x-ray diamond recovery machines in the western world!
Peter Wolf, the founder of FLOW, has designed and built over 800 (eight hundred) X-ray diamond recovery machines. Some 250 units via GUNSON SORTEX (commonly referred to as “A SORTEX”), FLOW has sold further 620 machines (commonly referred to as “A FLOW SORT” or as a “WOLF-MACHINE”). It will be hard to find another company which comes even near to our expertise in electronic diamond sorting! Just for interests sake note that FLOW holds over a dozen patents relating to electronic sorting in his name. Now Caroline keeps the Wolf family tradition going. She just added an optical scanning system (SA Pat Appl. No. 2011/07547) to the already impressive list of FLOW SORT innovations.
No. They do however have one thing in common: Wolf was involved in the design of both and both became trade marks in X-ray diamond recovery!
Be sure that YOU know what you expect your X-ray diamond recovery machines to sort! Then invite the machine manufacturer/supplier to quote as per YOUR specification and insist on a guarantee that the equipment offered will perform to your specification!
You can obtain, at any time, precise information from any FLOW SORT machine connected to a FLOW SORT monitoring system.
NO. Such nonsense has been circulated by our competitors. Not with much success when we look at the number of sorters sold over the past 20 years and compare it with the number of “dry” sorters sold over the same period of time.
In order to successfully recover diamonds by means of the luminescence properties they exhibit when exposed to X-rays it is essential that each and every particle that passes through such a sorter is exposed to X-rays and at the same time is visible to an (optical) luminescence detection device. If the ratio between ‘large’ and ‘small’ particles becomes too large then there is an ever-increasing probability that a large particle will shield a smaller one from X-rays or prevent the luminescence of a diamond from reaching the sorter optic!
NO! It’s just another rumour created by FLOW’S competitors! We did prove the opposite on many occasions!
A FLOW SORT machine fitted with our patented optical scanning system can properly detect diamond luminescent levels well below what other sorter makes can.
Do not attempt to set-up or test any FLOW SORT X-Ray Diamond Recovery Product with luminescent tracers which have not been officially approved by Flow Sort. If in doubt if the tracers that you are using have been approved by FLOW SORT please verify with us before using them.
Flow Group, comprises of two formidable companies and was established in 1971. Flow Electronics, the Sole Manufacturer and Distributor and Flow Sort the Originator and Designer of the Flow X-Ray Diamond Recovery Machines.
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