A grinding mill has been used for more than 100 years now, particularly in the minerals processing industry. Its dimensions continue to grow. This trend is due to increasing throughput rates, lower investment costs, and reduced operating and maintenance requirements of the equipment. In selecting a grinding mill, design principles that largely rely on sizes of today’s equipment, known as the pantograph principle, does not mean a successful operation on ever bigger equipment. Modern calculation methods contribute considerably to the safe design of the large mills and became the standard tool of design engineers. In addition, the use of modern computer programs to size the machine to suit process requirements is very effective.
There are two design principles available today. One has cast conical endwalls that supports the weight of a unit on trunnion bearings. The other has slipper pad bearings at the circumference of the grinding mill shell. The development of this alternative design was due to the many mill failures because of cracked endwalls back during the sixties and seventies. Accuracy of calculation methods and quality standards for castings for such a heavy equipment were not yet done that period. Therefore, the introduction of finite element method and the improved manufacturing quality standards resolve the problems. The largest grinding mill built is the SAG mill with trunnion bearings and cast conical endwalls. Mill manufacturers who came from the traditional ball mill design adopted these alternative design principles, shell supported ball mills, even to their SAG mills.
Though most of grinding mills today are still built to the conventional design, it is quite interesting to know if how this alternative will be integrated. With the ever growing sizes of a grinding mill, both the volume and mass flows also increases rapidly. It is therefore crucial to not just consider the safe design of the structural parts of the mill but also the process requirements. Computer programs can help optimize the design of the components to best meet the operational requirements of such huge machine. Should you need one for your business, Classifier Milling Systems is a flexible fine grinding mill manufacturer with extensive expertise in the field which directly means customer satisfaction. Our systems include both the conventional and highly customized mills. As a leader in equipment supply and design, we are setting the new standards for modern grinding and milling processes.