Flour grinding mill use various power sources, namely:
- Convertible mills
- Electric mills
- Manual mills
Manual mills are manually rotated to confer the grinding energy. They are a great choice because they have a low probability of nutrients damaged due to heat building up.
Electric powered mills, obviously use electricity. Their power is more consistent, so grinding is easy and faster as less labour is required.
Convertible grinding mills can be converted from manual to electric or vice versa. Grinding can be done with or without power as needed.
There are a variety of mechanisms for beating, grinding and crushing grain into flour from coarse to fine textures. Soft, oily, hard or wet items can all be grinded. There are two grinding mechanisms which dominate the grinding market, namely:
- Burr
- Impact
The most common is the burr. Two grinding plates are used here, one that is fixed and the other that is rotated by the power source. A gap between the burrs helps in shearing and crushing the grain. Impact mills use two flat stainless steel heads that spin very fast within one another. Hard and non-oily grains are handled by this mill and only coarse flour is produced by these flour grinding mills.