Water in ball mill or grind dry?

robzom27

Greenie
Dec 29, 2010
15
1
Hello everybody! I was just wondering everybody's setup for grinding ore. I have found a nice-looking vein that has a little fine gold and some silver. I have crushed it down to 20 mesh and have started grinding it down in my ball mill with 3/4-inch chrome ball mills. Is a dry grind acceptable? Should i add water? I'm grinding about 10lbs right now for a small experiment. I have used water before, but it makes such a nasty mess when retrieving the ore. Does anyone have any experience at this that would share their knowledge?
 

arizau

Bronze Member
May 2, 2014
2,485
3,871
AZ
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Beach High Banker, Sweep Jig, Whippet Dry Washer, Lobo ST, 1/2 width 2 tray Gold Cube, numerous pans, rocker box, and home made fluid bed and stream sluices.
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Prospecting
Hello everybody! I was just wondering everybody's setup for grinding ore. I have found a nice-looking vein that has a little fine gold and some silver. I have crushed it down to 20 mesh and have started grinding it down in my ball mill with 3/4-inch chrome ball mills. Is a dry grind acceptable? Should i add water? I'm grinding about 10lbs right now for a small experiment. I have used water before, but it makes such a nasty mess when retrieving the ore. Does anyone have any experience at this that would share their knowledge?
I'm pretty sure standard use of wet grinding of ore is as a stage in a continuous feed circuit. eg. Coarse feed slurry in fine product slurry out for further processing. That was what was done at the mine I worked for.
Re screen your product and re run the oversize through the "ball mill".

Good luck.
 

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