What is a ball mill?
It is an industrial milling cylinder that grinds and blends larger material into smaller particles depending on its application. It is basically a rotating cylinder that uses grinding balls, ceramic or steel ball, or cylpebs for grinding different types of material. For decades ball mills has been the most typically used grinders in many industries.
Ball mill is the key equipment for grinding after crushing materials. It is the main device in many industries such as cement and chemical industries. Steel ball components occupy an important place in ball mill equipment, which guides the performance of the entire machine and affects the production volume
Types of ball mill steel balls
Forging steel balls: use better wear-resistant materials, such as 60Mn, 65Mn, whichh have the characteristics of good quality, good impact resistance, strong toughness and good wear resistance
Cast steel balls: The production of cast steel balls is relatively simple and the production investment is low. It has the characteristics of low energy consumption, high impact toughness, flexibility, etc., and it has attracted the attention of most users due to its mastery of easy operation
Hot rolled ball milled steel ball: It has good forming characteristics, small geometrical tolerance and stable quality. The wear rate is low, the service life is 2-5 times that of existing cast iron balls and forged steel balls, and the price is moderate
Ball mill steel ball material
High manganese steel: This material hasIt has high resistance, good manufacturability and low price. Its main feature is that due to impact or contact stress, the surface layer quickly hardens, and Its work hardening index is 5_7 times higher than other materials in market, the wear resistance Is greatly improved.
Low carbon alloy steel ball: The low carbon alloy steel ball has good toughness and low price. therewith, its service life is more than twice as long as low chromium casting balls
High chromium cast Iron: A wear-resistant material with excellent wear resistance, but low toughness, brittle fracture and expensive
High carbon and high manganese alloy steel: The material is mainly alloy structural steel containing chromium, molybdenum and other elements, with high hardness and good toughness. Under the same working conditions, its service life is more than twice that of high-manganese steel balls
In a ball mill, grinding is done through impact and attrition forces from grinding balls as they drop from near the top of the hollow cylinder. Depending on its design, it may use ceramic (alumina) or steel grinding balls. The latter is itself categorized into forged steel grinding balls and cast grinding balls.
Ball mills are used in several different industries including but not limited to mining, paint, ceramic, cement, chemicals, etc.
In mining, ball mills are used to convert mineral extracts to micronized homogenous powder that enables further processing, separation and/or purification.
Grinding balls, either ceramic or steel balls, rotate inside the ball mill to grind the material as they impact. For this reason, grinding balls shall have a higher hardness comparing to the material they ought to grind.
Inner surface of a ball mill is called liner. Liners shall be highly resistant.
SAG mill stands for Semi-Autogenous Grinding mill. Compared to balls mills, SAG mills are larger in diameter and smaller in length. They use larger sizes of grinding balls to grind mineral ores into finer particles. It is the very first stage of grinding in metal processing plants which is usually followed by ball mills.
In rod mills, ore particles are ground through friction and attrition with grinding rods. Like ball mills, rod mills are rotating drums. Nevertheless, grinding media in the two mills are different.
