pyrochris732 Posted March 12, 2011 Posted March 12, 2011 so I decided that the spray on rubber on the inside of my mill is not going to hold up to hours of ball milling. How safe in terms of sparking is brass grinding against the inside metal surface of my milling jar? I do not know what type of metal it is but i would imagine that brass against any metal still would not spark. Is that correct? Chris
dagabu Posted March 12, 2011 Posted March 12, 2011 I am of the opinion that carbon steel should never be used in a milling operation. I would line the drum with something rigid, aluminum sheet, Teflon etc.
pyrochris732 Posted March 13, 2011 Author Posted March 13, 2011 eh, i gave in and bought a lortone 6 lb jar for 40 bucks. At least with that i know its quiet, leak proof, and not metal. I'll use the metal jar for grinding up other stuff.
pyrochris732 Posted March 14, 2011 Author Posted March 14, 2011 dagabu, how much bp were you able to produce with the lortone 6 lb? I got 200 grams out of those 3 lb harbor freight ones so im guessing I should be able to get close to 1 lb with this 6 lber.
dagabu Posted March 15, 2011 Posted March 15, 2011 The 6# is able to do 1# at a time but it takes 24 hours to do so. The rule to fast grinding is to fill the jar 1/2 way with media and then just cover the media with the comp (tap and jiggle it down so it fills all the gaps).
pyrochris732 Posted March 15, 2011 Author Posted March 15, 2011 i dont actually have the lortone tumbler, just bought the jar. I modded an old heavy duty tumbler with a 1/4 hp motor to spin a 6" diameter jar at about 80 rpm, so I should get fast bp in 2 hours or so.
Mumbles Posted March 15, 2011 Posted March 15, 2011 I've found I got good BP in about the same time in my 4" harbor freight jar as I did in my 6" sponnen jar on the efficient mill. The rollers were close enough together that I could use the smaller jar if I wanted to test something, or only needed to mill a small amount of charcoal or KNO3 for a comp or something. I had caking issues so it typically took me about 4hr.
dagabu Posted March 15, 2011 Posted March 15, 2011 Hmmmm, I bet that would work well. My Lortone moved pretty slowly.
pyrochris732 Posted March 15, 2011 Author Posted March 15, 2011 yea, if the jar is anything like the harbor freight one, it will be super quiet and very well sealed.
NightPainter Posted March 30, 2011 Posted March 30, 2011 (edited) PrecisionBall, Brass, 5/8 In, Pk 25 http://www.grainger....VAW2?Pid=search Hope this helps. Add edit:I don't have anything to do with Grainger , in fact I just placed my first ever order for 316 stainless steel mesh. Edited March 30, 2011 by NightPainter
blair4547 Posted May 8, 2011 Posted May 8, 2011 I am new to this site, I know this is a bit off topic, sorry in advance. I finally burned up enough coffee grinders to consider buying a ball mill. From the assistance available on this site and some other I got a great education as to what that entailed, I considered a Harbor Freight special but after looking at the unit and reading about the issues associated with the mills I decided to build my own. I went on my household scavenger hunt and found an old furnace fan motor and housing in the basement. I originally intended to rob the motor if it was functional, but after looking the unit over finding the motor was good and looking at the configuration of the fan, bearings drive shaft and housing it became a fairly easy conversion from furnace fan to ball mill. I made my own PVC jar and used brass compression fittings (1.5”) for media. This mill really makes good powder, quickly and effectively. I can’t thank you folks for sharing your techniques and tricks which made my project successful. Thank you.
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