Basic Information & Operation:
Ball Mills are a very efficient tool for grinding many materials into a fine powder.
To use the Mill, the material to be ground is loaded into the Neoprene barrel which contains grinding media. As the barrel rotates, the material is caught between the individual pieces of grinding media which mix and crush the product into a very fine powder over a period of several hours. Quite simply, the longer the Ball Mill is run, the finer powder will be. Ultimate particle size depends entirely on how hard the material you're grinding is, and how long the Ball Mill is run.
Our Ball Mills have been used by tens of thousands of customers for grinding glass, creating custom varnishes, making ceramic glaze, powdering various chemicals, and making Black Powder.
All Ball Mills operate only on U.S. standard 115 volts, 60 Hz.
Every Ball Mill is 100% tested, and run continuously for 24 hours before shipping.
They are designed to operate continuously without failure.
All Ball Mills come complete with your choice of either
Lead, Steel, or Ceramic grinding media.
( additional grinding media can be also purchased to increase grinding speed & efficiency. )

Helpful Ball Mill Hints:

Media Choice: The best overall choice for grinding media is Lead. Due to its heavy weight, it grinds chemicals & powders quickly and efficiently. If you are milling Black Powder, Lead is the only media you can use as it is completely non-sparking. Using either steel or ceramic media when milling Black Powder will cause an explosion. If you plan on grinding very hard materials (such as Glass particles) it is recommended that you use Steel media as it is both hard and heavy. When grinding Glass and similar hard substances, your starting material should be about as coarse as ordinary sand. The Ball Mill with then reduce it to a fine powder. Due to its small barrel diameter and lower impact energy, the 3 pound mill is not suitable for grinding Glass or similar hard materials.
Ceramic media is a good choice when you must keep your media contamination to an absolute minimum. However, because of its light weight, ceramic media can take considerably longer to produce desired results.
Contamination: If you are doing high purity work and are concerned with contamination from the barrel, several customers report they get good results by placing the media and material to be ground into a heavy (freezer type) zip-loc baggie, then placing the baggie in the barrel. The material will be ground and reduced to a powder within the baggie and never comes in contact with the barrel itself.
Milling Time: The longer a ball mill operates, the smaller the particles will become. They will even reach the sub-micron level if the mill is allowed to run long enough. Always use as little material in the barrel as possible for maximum grinding efficiency. The more of your material you place in the barrel, the more it will cushion the impact of the media, reducing the grinding action. Several small capacity runs are much better than one long run with your barrel packed to capacity with the material you want to powder.
The more media you use, the faster the material will be powdered. However, using more media will reduce the capacity of your mill.
In large 15 pound and 40 pound mills a mixture of two different sizes of steel media (1/2" and 3/4" steel balls) will produce much faster results than compared to milling with either size media alone.