Precautions for planetary ball mills during grinding process

Planetary ball mills can grind or mix solid particles, suspensions, and pastes with different particle sizes and materials using both dry and wet methods. If a vacuum ball milling tank is used, the sample can be ground and mixed in vacuum or inert gas. Through the use of many scientific research and enterprise units, the particle size of the planetary ball mill grinding material has reached the nanometer level, and according to user feedback, it has reached 30 nanometers (0.03 μ m) Left and right. This series of ball mills is widely used in geological, metallurgical, soil, building materials, chemical, light industry, medicine, electronics, ceramics, batteries, environmental protection and other fields.

With the rapid development of technology and the widespread application of nanomaterials, the discovery of mechanical alloying (MC) in the 1980s has given planetary ball mills a new mission. The basic process of mechanical alloying is the repeated mixing, crushing, and cold welding of several metal or non-metal element powder particles in a ball mill, gradually refining to the nanoscale during the ball milling process, and forming alloy phase nuclei in the solid state. Alloying certain substances that were difficult to achieve in traditional smelting processes in the past during ball milling. Many units have used our company's ball mill to produce various alloy powders, such as nanocrystalline hard alloy, Nd60Fe20Al10CO10 amorphous alloy powder, Al2O3/Al composite powder, etc.

Planetary ball mill is a commonly used mechanical equipment in the laboratory for ultrafine grinding of samples. When using a planetary ball mill for ultrafine grinding, the basic characteristics of the experimental sample, such as grindability, hardness, and strength, need to be considered.

1. Grindability: Grindability is a characteristic that indicates the difficulty of material crushing. There is a significant difference in the testing methods for ball mill grindability and roller mill grindability. The ball milling method is mainly applied in the mining and cement industries, and its difference from the roller milling method mainly lies in the grinding conditions, operating system, and methods of indicating grindability.

2. Hardness: Hardness refers to the resistance of a material to deformation. The strength and particle size of the same material are closely related. Regardless of the type of material, the finer the particles, the stronger the strength. This is because the particle size becomes finer, the macroscopic and microscopic cracks of the particles decrease, the defects are fewer, and the resistance to failure stress increases, resulting in an increase in crushing energy consumption. This is one of the main reasons for the high energy consumption of planetary ball mills during ultrafine grinding.

3. Strength: Strength refers to the resistance of a material to failure, usually expressed as failure stress, which is the force per unit area that a material experiences when it fails. Depending on the method of applying force during failure, it can be divided into compressive strength, shear strength, bending strength, and tensile strength. The same material has different measured strengths in different loading environments. The strength level is a reflection of the internal bonding energy of the material. In fact, the crushing process of the planetary ball mill applies energy to the material through external forces that are sufficient to exceed its bonding energy before the material undergoes deformation, damage, and even crushing. As a commonly used crushing and grinding equipment, planetary ball mills need to comprehensively consider the characteristics of the experimental samples to fully utilize the equipment.