8 replies to this topic

[BlackSky]

Hi guys,

I know most here may say to use a ball mill, But in fact I'm looking for a fast and efficient milling tool since the ball mills takes hours to mill a small amount.

Is there any fast milling tool even if it costy ?

Thanks

[Mumbles]

Are you looking for single materials or BP? For single materials, I'd suggest something along the lines of an air or hammer mill, both are pretty costly. For something like BP, I'm not really sure. Mortar and pestle maybe. I've heard good BP can be made from a mortar and pestle in 5-10 minutes, but it is limited by batch size. They have automatic mortars and pestles. I am sure there is some sort of lab grinder that would be efficient and acceptable for BP.

[Skarphedin]

Hi guys,

I know most here may say to use a ball mill, But in fact I'm looking for a fast and efficient milling tool since the ball mills takes hours to mill a small amount.

Is there any fast milling tool even if it costy ?
Thanks

Do you use a real ball mill or a rock tumbler? I have a small ballmill built with support from L. Sponenburghs book. 150 gr fast BP mill dust is ready in 3 hours, charcoal stars in 15-60 minutes depending on the effect I want. Potassium nitrate and charcoal is reduced to very fine dust in 30 minutes. I'm pretty happy with that performance.

To save time you can build a larger mill with space for two jars at the same time. Also by increasing the diameter of the mill jars you increase efficiency. Just scale your mill to the desired capacity.

Some also use various electrical or hand operated grinders to grind single chemicals. I use a small almond grinder to grind charoal used for spark effects. Charcoal used for BP is just tossed in chunks in the mill.

If you plan your pyrotechnical activities, milling time is not that problematic. Many very time consuming activities easily fills the time until the mill is done, like ramming hummers!

[Mortartube]

Make sure that your chemicals are fairly fine anyway before they go into the ball mill. A coffee grinder is ideal and sieve them before they go in. This will cut down the milling time.

Edited by Mortartube, 23 January 2007 - 11:06 AM.

[phildunford]

I'm in the process of building an experimental orbital ball mill.

These are used in chem labs and are much faster than conventional ball mills and grind very fine.

They are however VERY expensive to buy, hence my attempt at construction.

I've never heard of a pyro using one but I'm pretty sure they would work well..

example of one here but no prices - and yes they do come in various sizes...

Edited by phildunford, 23 January 2007 - 12:46 PM.

[pyrotrev]

When I was working in soil science we had a disc mill that was frighteningly efficient (think 75g of ROCK to 200 mesh in minutes). Imagine a short large diameter ball mill jar made of something hard (carbide or alumina) with a cylindrical lump of the same material maybe 1/2 the inside diameter (=500g) rattling around inside, the whole thing being shaken in a rotary direction at 3,000 rpm. Not sure I'd want to put anything more than single chems in one though!

[BlackSky]

Sorry guys. I did't reply immediately because I want to give a chance to most of the members to give their suggestions.

Mumbles
Are you looking for single materials or BP? For single materials, I'd suggest something along the lines of an air or hammer mill, both are pretty costly. For something like BP, I'm not really sure. Mortar and pestle maybe. I've heard good BP can be made from a mortar and pestle in 5-10 minutes, but it is limited by batch size. They have automatic mortars and pestles. I am sure there is some sort of lab grinder that would be efficient and acceptable for BP.

Thanks Mumbles .
Actually, I'm intending to improve my BP. But I don't want to mix the BP component and grind them togather. So, I need a single material mill.
I think that Hammer mill is OK but I can't find any site giving a price of it.

Skarphedin
Do you use a real ball mill or a rock tumbler? I have a small ballmill built with support from L. Sponenburghs book. 150 gr fast BP mill dust is ready in 3 hours, charcoal stars in 15-60 minutes depending on the effect I want. Potassium nitrate and charcoal is reduced to very fine dust in 30 minutes. I'm pretty happy with that performance.

To save time you can build a larger mill with space for two jars at the same time. Also by increasing the diameter of the mill jars you increase efficiency. Just scale your mill to the desired capacity.

Some also use various electrical or hand operated grinders to grind single chemicals. I use a small almond grinder to grind charoal used for spark effects. Charcoal used for BP is just tossed in chunks in the mill.

If you plan your pyrotechnical activities, milling time is not that problematic. Many very time consuming activities easily fills the time until the mill is done, like ramming hummers!

Thanks for your help Skarphedin.
Most of pyrotechnical activities came after preparing the BP and this is why milling the BP materials is a boring thing for most of us.

Mortartube
Make sure that your chemicals are fairly fine anyway before they go into the ball mill. A coffee grinder is ideal and sieve them before they go in. This will cut down the milling time.

Thanks Mortartube for the advice . I'm doing this since I use the coffee grinder as a second stage of grinding the charcoal after I crush it with the mortars and pestles.

phildunford
I'm in the process of building an experimental orbital ball mill.

These are used in chem labs and are much faster than conventional ball mills and grind very fine.

They are however VERY expensive to buy, hence my attempt at construction.

I've never heard of a pyro using one but I'm pretty sure they would work well..

example of one here but no prices - and yes they do come in various sizes...

This is great , I wonder if you can put some picture of your project.
And thanks for the link.

pyrotrev
When I was working in soil science we had a disc mill that was frighteningly efficient (think 75g of ROCK to 200 mesh in minutes). Imagine a short large diameter ball mill jar made of something hard (carbide or alumina) with a cylindrical lump of the same material maybe 1/2 the inside diameter (=500g) rattling around inside, the whole thing being shaken in a rotary direction at 3,000 rpm. Not sure I'd want to put anything more than single chems in one though!

Thanks pyrotrev. But as I think that most of Disk mills may lose some of the disk material and mixed it with the one you are milling.
Do you have any link related to this type of mills ?


Thank you all guys for your great help.

Edited by BlackSky, 25 January 2007 - 01:07 AM.

[pyrotrev]

The people who made the mill I used to use seem to have gone out of business, but try this- http://www.hk-lab.com/default.htm. Contamination is not a problem if you're using a much harder material for the mill chamber than what you're grinding.

[BlackSky]

Thanks pyrotrev for the link.