An Overview on Used Ball Mill

Ball mills are hollow cylinders lined with hard steel or rubber.  In mining, they are continuous feed and discharge.  Other industries prefer batch mills. Ore comes from the rock crushers in the form of small pebbles with sand.  Ball mills accept this material and rotate continuously, lifting and dropping their load of steel balls, gradually pounding the ore into flour.  Ball mills can be designed for wet or dry grinding.  Wet grinding is most often used for mineral beneficiation.

Ball mills, like mine hoists, are very tough, heavy-duty machines.  Properly maintained, they can easily outlast the profitable portion of a cyclical market, sometimes even the entire life of a mine. As a result, used ball mills can be obtained from depleted operations or shuttered facilities.  These can often be removed and delivered to a new project for a fraction of the cost and time required to obtain a new mill.

Advantages of used Ball Mills

• They can often be acquired in much less time at much lower price than new
• Significant savings can be applied to the remaining operation
• Many vendors are available that can still supply needed replacement parts
• It is not necessary to use the manufacturer’s technicians for commissioning

General Description

The operation of ball mills is simple in concept but tricky in practice. The history of ball mill development has been a story of competitive innovation between manufacturers vying to produce more efficient designs to capture market share.  The object is to grind as much ore as possible at the lowest possible cost. 

The mills carry a charge of steel balls as their grinding media.   Ore is fed into the mill by means of a conveyor or feed box and chute.  Water is often added and the contents of the mill slosh around in an abrasive slurry.  Liners in the mill are configured with lifters to grab the balls, carry them toward the top of the mill and drop them on the mix of balls and ore below.  Over time, the ore is pulverized into a powder fine enough that chemical reagents can dissolve the metal content.  Feed rate and mill speed are adjusted so the appropriate fineness is achieved before the slurry slops out of the discharge end for conveyance to further processing.  Often this output is classified and coarse materials returned to the mill.

There are many professionals specialized in putting used ball mills back to work.  Consider a used ball mill for your next mineral processing project.