Ball mills are a common name in the manufacturing industry, owing to their versatility and usage potential. They are used as tools for blending, mixing, grinding (coarsely as well as finely), and refining mineral product qualities. Furthermore, they are an inseparable element of laboratories because they help change the form of an element for conducting thorough studies about its nature. As a result of its popularity amongst industrialists, ball mills have been redefined and equipped with advanced facilities that increase their functions incredibly.
While a number of mill types have come up in the market due to this process, the operating principle of every product distributed by ball mill manufacturers remains the same. The mill chamber is filled with balls and input materials at an angle of 30-50 degrees. As the chamber rotates the material within it collides with the sliding chamber walls and the heavy weighing balls, thereby causing them to be ground. This working principle can be broken down into three forms or rather motion types:
Cascade Mode Motion
It is the mildest form of grinding balls process, as it does not circulate the material at all and rather uses the balls for performing its functions. The grinding material is rotated at a certain angle in a closed path, meaning that the slope of the rotation is very close to horizontal. The ground material remains in its position while the balls continuously circulate and cascade around the reference point.
Mixed Mode Motion
Ball mill manufacturers often suggest that this mode of grinding is apt for carrying out basic intermixing tasks. The balls move between the outer layers of rotation and its inactive core. Much of the material and ball circulation occurs around the “inactive core” as opposed to inside the core.
Waterfall Mode Motion
As the name suggests, such a mode of grinding ensures that all the material and balls circulate in the chamber at a parabolic trajectory. The grinding materials (input mineral and balls) follow the same circular movement and sprinkle towards the core in a free flight after reaching certain heights. It is the most efficient type of grinding and mixing as it ensures that the entire material is shuffled.
The three different modes of ball mills make them the essential equipment for a number of industries that deal with the extraction of minerals, synthesis of new compounds, and for processing of raw natural resources. Here is a list of some of the industries that use a wide variety of machines produced by ball mill manufacturers around the world:
Pharmaceutical Industries
Probably the least recognized contribution in the pharmaceutical business is that of the ball mills. They are used for finely grinding minerals and chemical compounds. In certain cases, it also serves as a tool to extract minerals from their ores.
Defense Weapon Manufacturing
Special rubber balls are used to synthesize the metal combinations required to produce warfare and defense mechanisms. This is done because the quality of the homogenous mixture needed for the process can be lost after the constant collision with hard balls.
Paint Processing
The metallic and fine finishing paints used to embellish houses are in fact composed of a number of minerals. Since they cannot be mixed in their solid form, they are finely ground in ball mills and then dissolved in an unreactive liquid.
One must consult an experienced ball mill manufacturer India before performing a purchase of mill machinery, as not every kind of ball mill is equipped enough to perform specific functions. Additionally, companies can also increase the facilities of a ball mill by ordering certain modifications in the manufacturing process.