While I don't have the time, patience, nor resources to follow along, I must say that your penchant for sharing knowledge is a real gift, it's kind of beautiful. I wish ppl could be shaken from their pop culture trance, and experience these truly enlightening gems.
I have been playing around with it most of the day and it seems to be doing fine. Though at the moment I am limiting the rpm to 500 and using 1cm steel ball bearings as grinding media. To go faster or use different media I will probably put the blades on that I was talking about in the intro
Are you sure this design is going to work? The speed of ball mills is usually limited by the centrifugal forces that would make the grinding material and media stick to the grinding cylinder, effectively stopping the grinding process.
It might seem to do fine on the outside, but ball mills only work if the media have the chance to fall onto the material. When centrifugal forces rise, they stick to the outside and don't grind anything at all. You would need to attach the blades to a non-moving axis (which would mean that you either have to drive the container with a hollow shaft, or drive it like in a normal ball mill, with a friction wheel touching the wall of the container)
instead of drilling a hole in the nut to lock it, I think you can tighten the 1st nut to the desired location and then hold it and tighten a 2nd nut against the 1st and that should hold the nuts in place (neither nut should move when very tight against each other)... done on both sides - 2 extra nuts would save time and be good for people without the drill and skills you have.
A great How To video. What sort of materials shouldn't you use for the drum? I realize that glass and paper products are out. LOL. Also is there a set speed for whichever your milling. Like a speed chart for example? Or is it basically suck it and see? Because everybody's setups would be different. Thank you for taking the time to share with us all.
Hi Robert, what's the advantage of Ball mills for small volume experimental work, over something like a mortar and pestle (except for the obvious lack of muscle required)? I'm also a bit confused that when making biochar carbon nanostructures that one of the first things that's often done is to smash them up! I can understand that intimate contact is required and therefore small particles, but doesn't something like this also destroy the structures achieved from the carbonization process? I presume for more precise control of particle size, something like a 3 roll mill is required?
hiya mate - you do get more homogeneous mixes with a mill as you just can't supply the power or evenness by hand - you get tired long before a machine - with the detail of structure we are talking about - nanometre range - you probably can't smash them up that much
and make sure the distance between the outer edge of the blade and the wall of the container is smaller than the diameter of the grinding media. Then, the blades would keep the media from sticking to the wall of the container and enable them to do some grinding work. I recommend using a blade that covers the entire length of the container, so that the media cannot slip past it anywhere.
Please tell me what the results are, once you've built it. I was working on a homemade high-performance (1400W) planetary ball mill, but lacked the resources to machine the necessary parts or have them machined. Your design might provide a solution, as one should be able to produce it more easily.
sure. But the cheapest 3d printer is £2,000 and you have to buy the printing material which is plastic and not up to the stresses here. my lathe was £200 and I am using steel. And as for a safety mechanism, beyond a shield against flying parts what would you suggest?
Hi. I am following all your work with deep interest.GRAPHITE Q1. Is your ball mill in conection with making graphite powder from flake? VARIABLE SPEED: I have obtained a number of speed controllers AC&DC suitable for controling small motors ie.Power tools universal motors,fan,magnetic stirrer and all other whirlygigs you have mentioned in videos.I will be testing these over the next two weeks and will report. Best if no one rushes to buy ebay
depends on the balls you use but - yes i have been using it quite a lot as it happens - i also made some rollers the same length and used it as a roller mill
Hai sir, I want to make nano particles below 50nano meter which mill is better & I am planing to make vibration ball mill to make 50nm particles please suggest sir did i selected right one are not. Like this I am trying please visit below link.
we just started learning how to craft parts with lathes and milling machines at school. I think 3d printing and molding is way better to make parts... but i still like that :P. nice stuff. be carefull with that. you should have somekind of safety mechanism.
Drilling a hole for a pin is a great idea. But the green loctite requires a blow torch to remove. having said that its military grade and costs 90 us dollars per 3 ounce bottle so... yeah the whole and pin would be the deal :)
there would be mate - you are never going to home build a machine as good as one you can buy unless you have a very sophisticated workshop and are happy to spend a lot on materials and time to build something - this is meant to get close enough - but not to be perfect
Good point, an ultrasonic cleaner seems like the best way to go. Convert product to liquid and it should do ball mill work in less time and more efficient.
Im having a HELL of a time with drying my Ferric Chloride! It does NOT crystallize easy at ALL. You basically have to cook it down and it turns into a thick hard puck of chocolate looking materials. I am wondering if perhaps I should build one of these. I realize I would first have to pulverize the puck into a manageable size to give it a chance. I have a load of polished chromium steal shafts for mechanical assemblies. I wonder if allowing these to tumble like so many logs around in this thing would work well. its funny I actually built a 30 gallon tumbler years ago for turning malted grain. It worked wonderfully.
try to recrystalise it by boiling down to just less than the solubility limit then letting it cool - the ferric chloride should drop out of solution as nice green crystals pour off the liquid and air dry - then try again - chocolate brown doesn't sound right
Thank you Robert I will try that. I have noticed that all of my Iron (III) is a touch darker than amber. Yes it has behaved very strange indeed. I followed Nerdrage process to the tee adding one the washing of the nails in acetone as some that were not rusty appeared to have a slight oily film. The process of evaporation that I used was just that.. More of a evaporation than a boiling down. I used a large flat pyrex dish like a casserole dish. and put it on a hot plate with a series of fans mounted on top to aid in evaporation. never hit boil. It just reduced to chocolate syrup then turned hard and lumpy. Weird.... Same thing happened when I made aluminium chloride but it was a white puck. Bunny thing is I did actually recrystallise the Aluminium at a boil and it came out of solution as expected. Thank you again. you are always a big help to me.
A way to quiet a ball mill is to fix on the outside something like carpet in the areas that will not interfere with operations the vibrations get spent in wiggling the carpet fibers rather than making pressure waves in the air.
Hi Robert Thanks for the reply. If I use a drum with inside diameter of 5", how fast should it rotate and what size balls (stainless steel) should I use? is there a preferred ratio of "balls to powder"?
+Hugh McAllister mate - you will just have to read around a bit - the answer to your question are in just about every paper published on this subject - try a google scholar search with ball milling in the search bar
So how about modifying a used upright washing machine? you could limit it to just the spin cycle. Of course you will have to set it on it's side so you can replace the big drum with a smaller drum resting on rubber wheels for balance. remove the water pump since you won't connect it to the water main. The transmission uses a rubber/plastic coupler designed to break off so you won't damage the transmission or the motor. probably overkill but they are cheap and simple.
![ช้างศึกสู้ต่อไป!! พาเปียโน ดูบอลไทยครั้งแรก ตกรอบแบบโคตรเสียดาย!! l [Nickynachat]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/4WloIH645Lg/mqdefault.jpg)
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While I don't have the time, patience, nor resources to follow along, I must say that your penchant for sharing knowledge is a real gift, it's kind of beautiful. I wish ppl could be shaken from their pop culture trance, and experience these truly enlightening gems.
Nathanfenn1 i have hopes that will happen mate - I am glad you like the vids
I have been playing around with it most of the day and it seems to be doing fine. Though at the moment I am limiting the rpm to 500 and using 1cm steel ball bearings as grinding media. To go faster or use different media I will probably put the blades on that I was talking about in the intro
Your presentation skills inspire confidence. Well-done.
Electro thanks mate
Sounds a good idea especially if you needed a big one
Looking forward to your findings. Many thanks.
Are you sure this design is going to work? The speed of ball mills is usually limited by the centrifugal forces that would make the grinding material and media stick to the grinding cylinder, effectively stopping the grinding process.
It might seem to do fine on the outside, but ball mills only work if the media have the chance to fall onto the material. When centrifugal forces rise, they stick to the outside and don't grind anything at all. You would need to attach the blades to a non-moving axis (which would mean that you either have to drive the container with a hollow shaft, or drive it like in a normal ball mill, with a friction wheel touching the wall of the container)
Thanks for the video. Were you humming the Thunderbirds theme at 6:18? 😂
i will be most interested to see how you get on and yes it is to form powder from flake
Thanks for that. I was thinking fixed axle and friction wheel drive.
instead of drilling a hole in the nut to lock it, I think you can tighten the 1st nut to the desired location and then hold it and tighten a 2nd nut against the 1st and that should hold the nuts in place (neither nut should move when very tight against each other)... done on both sides - 2 extra nuts would save time and be good for people without the drill and skills you have.
A great How To video. What sort of materials shouldn't you use for the drum? I realize that glass and paper products are out. LOL. Also is there a set speed for whichever your milling. Like a speed chart for example? Or is it basically suck it and see? Because everybody's setups would be different. Thank you for taking the time to share with us all.
It's a try it and see mate. Good materials would be stainless steel, hard plastics and Teflon coated stuff. It will depend on what you want to do.
Hi Robert, what's the advantage of Ball mills for small volume experimental work, over something like a mortar and pestle (except for the obvious lack of muscle required)? I'm also a bit confused that when making biochar carbon nanostructures that one of the first things that's often done is to smash them up! I can understand that intimate contact is required and therefore small particles, but doesn't something like this also destroy the structures achieved from the carbonization process? I presume for more precise control of particle size, something like a 3 roll mill is required?
hiya mate - you do get more homogeneous mixes with a mill as you just can't supply the power or evenness by hand - you get tired long before a machine - with the detail of structure we are talking about - nanometre range - you probably can't smash them up that much
and make sure the distance between the outer edge of the blade and the wall of the container is smaller than the diameter of the grinding media. Then, the blades would keep the media from sticking to the wall of the container and enable them to do some grinding work. I recommend using a blade that covers the entire length of the container, so that the media cannot slip past it anywhere.
Please tell me what the results are, once you've built it. I was working on a homemade high-performance (1400W) planetary ball mill, but lacked the resources to machine the necessary parts or have them machined. Your design might provide a solution, as one should be able to produce it more easily.
sure. But the cheapest 3d printer is £2,000 and you have to buy the printing material which is plastic and not up to the stresses here. my lathe was £200 and I am using steel. And as for a safety mechanism, beyond a shield against flying parts what would you suggest?
Hi. I am following all your work with deep interest.GRAPHITE Q1. Is your ball mill in conection with making graphite powder from flake? VARIABLE SPEED: I have obtained a number of speed controllers AC&DC suitable for controling small motors ie.Power tools universal motors,fan,magnetic stirrer and all other whirlygigs you have mentioned in videos.I will be testing these over the next two weeks and will report.
Best if no one rushes to buy ebay
Have you tried it? I would have thought at 2000 rpm centrifugal force would come into play and there would be zero work from pounding balls?
depends on the balls you use but - yes i have been using it quite a lot as it happens - i also made some rollers the same length and used it as a roller mill
Will do
Hai sir, I want to make nano particles below 50nano meter which mill is better & I am planing to make vibration ball mill to make 50nm particles please suggest sir did i selected right one are not. Like this I am trying please visit below link.
we just started learning how to craft parts with lathes and milling machines at school.
I think 3d printing and molding is way better to make parts... but i still like that :P. nice stuff. be carefull with that. you should have somekind of safety mechanism.
Drilling a hole for a pin is a great idea. But the green loctite requires a blow torch to remove. having said that its military grade and costs 90 us dollars per 3 ounce bottle so... yeah the whole and pin would be the deal :)
probably mate
I did a ball mill with washing machine motor but it reach critical speed every time how can I fix it?
interesting video, wouldn't that kind of ball mill exceed critical speed? That would have some inefficiencies right? Big fan since 2012
there would be mate - you are never going to home build a machine as good as one you can buy unless you have a very sophisticated workshop and are happy to spend a lot on materials and time to build something - this is meant to get close enough - but not to be perfect
Good point, an ultrasonic cleaner seems like the best way to go. Convert product to liquid and it should do ball mill work in less time and more efficient.
nice plan mate
Im having a HELL of a time with drying my Ferric Chloride! It does NOT crystallize easy at ALL. You basically have to cook it down and it turns into a thick hard puck of chocolate looking materials. I am wondering if perhaps I should build one of these. I realize I would first have to pulverize the puck into a manageable size to give it a chance.
I have a load of polished chromium steal shafts for mechanical assemblies. I wonder if allowing these to tumble like so many logs around in this thing would work well.
its funny I actually built a 30 gallon tumbler years ago for turning malted grain. It worked wonderfully.
I did it again
try to recrystalise it by boiling down to just less than the solubility limit then letting it cool - the ferric chloride should drop out of solution as nice green crystals pour off the liquid and air dry - then try again - chocolate brown doesn't sound right
Thank you Robert I will try that. I have noticed that all of my Iron (III) is a touch darker than amber.
Yes it has behaved very strange indeed. I followed Nerdrage process to the tee adding one the washing of the nails in acetone as some that were not rusty appeared to have a slight oily film.
The process of evaporation that I used was just that.. More of a evaporation than a boiling down. I used a large flat pyrex dish like a casserole dish. and put it on a hot plate with a series of fans mounted on top to aid in evaporation. never hit boil. It just reduced to chocolate syrup then turned hard and lumpy. Weird....
Same thing happened when I made aluminium chloride but it was a white puck.
Bunny thing is I did actually recrystallise the Aluminium at a boil and it came out of solution as expected.
Thank you again. you are always a big help to me.
Clown Whisper coolio
normally I put iron wool into HCl and the crystals just drop out
A way to quiet a ball mill is to fix on the outside something like carpet in the areas that will not interfere with operations the vibrations get spent in wiggling the carpet fibers rather than making pressure waves in the air.
cool idea thanks
Your welcome Robert, I posted my first video working on a battery. Just the first half but the rest should come in a few hours.
cool mate - i will go have a look
Hello i have a problem with mi ball mill when i put it on. And the container start tu make a little jumps
it's probably slightly out of alignment or too light - try more grinding medium in it - or a heavier medium - i use lead filled rods
can you make nanometer size particles?
+Hugh McAllister yes mate - i have used ball milling to make nano phosphor and nano copper
Hi Robert
Thanks for the reply. If I use a drum with inside diameter of 5", how fast should it rotate and what size balls (stainless steel) should I use? is there a preferred ratio of "balls to powder"?
+Hugh McAllister mate - you will just have to read around a bit - the answer to your question are in just about every paper published on this subject - try a google scholar search with ball milling in the search bar
So how about modifying a used upright washing machine? you could limit it to just the spin cycle. Of course you will have to set it on it's side so you can replace the big drum with a smaller drum resting on rubber wheels for balance. remove the water pump since you won't connect it to the water main. The transmission uses a rubber/plastic coupler designed to break off so you won't damage the transmission or the motor.
probably overkill but they are cheap and simple.
No. They just unscrew together lol
dear sir
please let me as a member and how
thanks in advance
prof of solid state physics
Ahmed hamalawy