Ball mill clean out

[Load77]

Any personal experiences from anyone here with ball mill clean outs, and retrieving a bunch of trapped gold?
I’ve read a few stories about it, but would love to here any personal experiences.
My ball mill is homemade, and has a conveyor belt liner. I’ve suspected that it’s maybe loose, or has some holes in it, and has trapped some material (maybe gold) between the liner and drum.

 

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[arizau]

How is the liner fitted and secured? Also, what are the dimensions of the unit?

 

[Load77]

It’s 24” diameter, 36” long.
I’m not positive how it’s secured, my brother built it. I think it has a couple bolts holding it in place

 

[russau]

The ball mill I made WOULD pack small amounts of rock and fine gold around the inside surface . I made a stainless steel perforated outlet to continually empty out the fine stuff into a tray for running over my Gold Cube and other devices used to separate fine gold from sluff ! And still it would pack up BUT I just let it run empty for awhile and let the Stainless Steel balls clean itself out! I also rapped the barrel for the ball mill with old bicycle innertubes to help quite it down ! My neighbors liked that last idea ! I might want to add that my ball mill was a small one (6 in. x 12 in. with 3/4 in. stainless steel balls))for my testing

 

[arizau]

With the ball mills I am familiar with, there is an access/man hole in them so that workers can go inside them to clean out and remove and replace worn out liner segments. You may be able to remove an end of your unit to access and remove the liner temporarily to clean the drum out.

Good luck.

 

[BlasterJ]

Also, it will sort of reach equilibrium if you are running it a lot. There will be trapped Gold, but material will still be going in and out.

 

[Joanne]

I have a question since we are on the topic of ball mills. What do you use for the "balls" to crush the ore? Most of my ore is chunks the size of a apricot so it seems like it would need a relatively large ball.

Thanks
Joanne

 

[russau]

I use used stainless Steel balls I get from bad and wore out industrial bearings that are cleaned very good to remove ALL the grease and oily stuff. I like using the Stainless Steel because it won't leave anything other than the material that I put into the mill barrel. Years back when I worked in a cement plant ,they used big steel balls (softball size) to crush the shale and limestone and they would have to replace them so often when they wear down.

 

[arizau]

I have a question since we are on the topic of ball mills. What do you use for the "balls" to crush the ore? Most of my ore is chunks the size of a apricot so it seems like it would need a relatively large ball.

Thanks
Joanne

Ball mills are meant for fine grinding (not necessarily "liberation") and their output is usually screened with oversize being recycled. Probably most "ores" that are processed in ball mills undergoes a floatation process to collect and concentrate the desired minerals. That said, a home made pipe pulverizer or an impact mill of some type is probably the best small scale method for "liberating" free milling gold IMO.

Oh and yep...cast iron balls up to softball sized or larger.

Good luck.

 

[Joanne]

I use used stainless Steel balls I get from bad and wore out industrial bearings that are cleaned very good to remove ALL the grease and oily stuff. I like using the Stainless Steel because it won't leave anything other than the material that I put into the mill barrel. Years back when I worked in a cement plant ,they used big steel balls (softball size) to crush the shale and limestone and they would have to replace them so often when they wear down.

Thank you. That makes sense.

Joanne

 

[Joanne]

Ball mills are meant for fine grinding (not necessarily "liberation") and their output is usually screened with oversize being recycled. Probably most "ores" that are processed in ball mills undergoes a floatation process to collect and concentrate the desired minerals. That said, a home made pipe pulverizer or an impact mill of some type is probably the best small scale method for "liberating" free milling gold IMO.

Oh and yep...cast iron balls up to softball sized or larger.

Good luck.

Ahhh, I have most of the parts for an impact mill but haven't tried to put it together yet. Obviously I didn't grasp that ball and rod mills were for more of a "finishing" process. Thanks for the answer!

Joanne

 

[augoldminer]

Oh and yep...cast iron balls up to softball sized or larger.

Good luck.

if you use cast iron ball you are going to have problems.

ball mill balls are made from abrasion resistant steel high carbon and high manganese alloy steel. and hardened.

soft cast iron balls would pickup gold on the surface of the balls and cause the gold to be ground so fine it would need to chemicaly processed to recover