Planetary Ball Mills

A Planetary Ball Mill are smaller than common a Ball Mill and mainly used in laboratories for grinding sample material down to very small sizes. A planetary ball mill consists of at least one grinding jar which is arranged eccentrically on a so-called sun wheel. The direction of movement of the sun wheel is opposite to that of the grinding jars (ratio: 1:-2 or 1:-1 or else).

The term Planetary Ball Mill is derived from its unique kinematics: the grinding jars, which are mounted on the main rotation sun disk, rotate in the opposite direction around the centre of this disk.

Due to this movement, the sample is comminuted very effectively and fast by impact, shearing and friction forces resulting from ball-to-ball and ball-to-wall collisions.

With the planetary movement, the grinding bowl filling is subject not only to the force of gravity, as in the case with conventional ball mills, but centrifugal and coriolis forces further increase the kinetic energy of the grinding parts.

Apart from the classical mixing and size reduction processes, the Planetary Ball Mills also meet all the technical requirements for colloidal grinding and have the energy input necessary for mechanical alloying processes. They are widely used in:

• Geology and Mineralogy
• Ceramics
• Chemistry
• Biology
• Pharmaceuticals
• Metallurgy
• Material Technology
• Analysis Preparation