Lortone 33b or clone

[val77]

for a best safety,use ceramic media and mill the chemicals one per one

[Mumbles]

You will want to find the real composition of the ceramic media before committing to anything. If someone tells you they're pure Al2O3, I'd probably start wondering about how much they really know. It might be likely that they have no idea what they really have, or don't necessarily deal with honest suppliers. Legitimate pure alumina balls are actually quite expensive. High alumina (90+%) is said to be the best for non-sparking properties. Ceramic media still makes me a little uneasy. The majority of ball milling accidents that come to mind were using ceramic media. It's unclear if the media was the cause of the accident in all cases though.

 

To me, lead is still the safest media available. It does have its downsides of course too.

[mabuse00]

High alumina (90+%) is said to be the best for non-sparking properties

The stuff I found is stated to have 91%.

 

Considering what Dagebu wrote about smaller media being more effecient:

 

I just read through Mr. Sponenburghs text and he actually suggests (page 11) "balls between 1/2 and 1 in diameter"

 

Now most of you guys use very large mills, I just ordered the small lortone 33b, which only has a barrel with barely 4 inch internal diameter. The falling height and momentum of the balls will thus be much smaller than with larger jars.

Mr. Sponenburgh recommends steel or lead for small mills.

 

That coincides with Skylighters recommendation.

 

What kind of media do you guys use in your SMALL mills?

Edited November 20, 2012 by mabuse00

[dagabu]

The stuff I found is stated to have 91%.

 

Considering what Dagebu wrote about smaller media being more effecient:

 

I just read through Mr. Sponenburghs text and he actually suggests (page 11) "balls between 1/2 and 1 in diameter"

 

Now most of you guys use very large mills, I just ordered the small lortone 33b, which only has a barrel with barely 4 inch internal diameter. The falling height and momentum of the balls will thus be much smaller than with larger jars.

Mr. Sponenburgh recommends steel or lead for small mills.

 

That coincides with Skylighters recommendation.

 

What kind of media do you guys use in your SMALL mills?

 

Go ahead and use 1" steel balls in your mill, ignore my suggestions. Good luck...

 

-dag

[Col]

balls of steel..in more ways than one

I find 1/2" lead does a noticeably better job than alumina in a small jar, i use 3/8" alumina for milling individual white chemicals that i dont want turning grey.

[mabuse00]

I did not say that I prefer steel balls.

 

I find 1/2" lead does a noticeably better job than alumina in a small jar, i use 3/8" alumina for milling individual white chemicals that i dont want turning grey.

 

Thanks. That coincedes which what you would expect from theory.

From all I read up to know it seems like 12mm lead is indeed the best solution here?

Lead filled copper pipe might be an alternative, I'ge got both pipe and lead scrap here.

 

I'd like to have a second set of balls for other chems though - in this case I would prefer the Aluminiumoxide media, but I assume I need bigger ones, 16 or 20mm or even bigger to crush the material. What size would you think to be optimal for the small jars?

[Potassiumchlorate]

I have one ballmill that is designed for ballmilling and one Lortone, that was made to polish about 2 kilos of rocks at a time. I can use at most 2 kilos of media and ½ kilo of composition in it. It takes it 6-12 hours to mill ½ kilo to the fineness that the real ballmill needs to mill 1 kilo.

[Bobosan]

I had 35lb in mine

 

Ditto here using .600 dia 50/50 lead/linotype balls in a 15lb Thumler tumbler barrel at optimum media charge.

[schroedinger]

For that mill you should probably go for smaller Media.

Best would be some 1cm Lead media, hardened lead. You can get it easy at Ebay, Ger.

If you got lots of quite coarse chemicals or homemade charcoal. Take also some 2cm ceramic media.

Look up "labtecbonn" at ebay, he got both.

 

Don't go for Steel (exept if your making fine Al-powder).

 

To improve the Security of your ball mill, it can be usefull to add a little bit of ethanol/watter or just ethanol and flushing your bucket with CO2 while milling