How about a smaller tumbler like they use to polish rocks,,,??
How about a smaller tumbler like they use to polish rocks,,,??
P & M Recycling - Specializing in E-Waste Recycling.
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^^ lmao
I never did get to tumble my meat in that one. Bought and flipped it for a tidy sum.
Sweet, you flipped a meat tumbler! A guy just can't make this stuff up! It writes itself!
Miked
The commercial process usually involve crushing down to about 0.5-1", ferrous and non-ferrous are seperated by magnets and eddy current and sent to a smelter.
The organics may be incinirated then smelted as is, or reduced in size even more and go trough flotation seperation (shaker table).
The horrible truth is, that recovring and refining metals by your self from e-scrap, will require you to run several hundreds Kilo's per day in an extremly efficient process to make it worth while.
There are sveral components though, that are richer then others and are easily seperated from boards. Those components can be sold outright or processed by yourself reletevly easy.
You can see in my website few examples of them under electronic scrap.
Thank you for your input Sam! I tend to have to much fun at my own expense. It helps me relax after a long day.
I do look forward to picking your brain, thanks for sharing what you know!
Joe
Okay back on subject.
Sam great site you have put together.
Mechanic the thought has went through my head about those little rock tumblers, I have seen them at harbor freight, but think it is way to small and I doubt it will hold up well. I was thinking of trying it but just figured it would be a waste of money.
Your suggestion did get me to thinking of a mid scale sized mill. Somewhere between the lil' rock tumbler and a 20 gallon tank.
A freon tank is what I am looking at. It is just the right size for my first attempt at this! The freon tanks also make great buoys for crab traps and such.
I think I need to concentrate on a furnace also.
I am intrigued by these modern day mining methods of escrap
Yes.
I would suggest you to fisrt think of building a small inciniration unit + back burner for the nasty fumes.
You most control the fumes, otherwise your neighbours (and the EPA) wouldn't be so happey. Check your loacl and federal lews regarding plastics inciniration.
Burning the feed will let you mill it in a fraction of the time then it would have taken without.
After inciniration + milling you can either: Smelt, Leach or another mechnical seperation as suggested above.
No doubt the buyer was happy to no longer have to pound his meat, and instead tumble it!
What about a lawn roller? Already have most of the bearing setup ready to go, or could possibly hang it as is, and cut in a door.
I'm keeping my eye out for an electric concrete mixer. HF sells them but not cheap enough for me to buy new. I hope it will work for a cheap small mill. Mike.
I have one that I use to make potting mix, garden soil, oh and mix cement in but it would not work out well!
For one, it is loud as a penned up rooster without anything in it.
They would not hold up well turning for a few days at a time.
A mixer is made to just mix for a short cycle with a large volume.
I am happy to see refiners coming on the forum to offer there help. I will be taking this more serious and not waste your time with my jokes. Again I say thank you.
Have found quite a few ball mills on youtube. Some using materials/designs I would have never thought of.
Happy Birthday Joe!
Recyclable Material Merchant Wholesaler
Certified Zip-Tie Mechanic
"Give them enough so they can do something with it, but not too much that they won't do nothing."
Here's some pictures of my homemade ball mill, first I incinerate the chips then run them through the mill after milling use that electric magnet to separate anything magnetic then into some acid to get rid of other base metals before going after the values.
The gear reducer is 60/1, the front plate used to seal the unit fits inside the drum then held in place with strong backs secured from the outside.
For a ballmill, you want it to be a large diameter & small width.
The balls have to rotate with the side of the ballmill, then at almost the top, drop down onto the scrap at the bottom of the mill & crush the scrap.
Like in the wiki picture
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball_mill
A rock polisher or small dia ballmill is just going to polish the scrap untill its dust, that'l take ages.
So, maybe 3 foot dia & 10 inches wide
Ball mills come in all sizes, some use rods instead of balls to grind the ore, e-scrap is treated as you would ore.
My mill is about 18 inches in diameter by 30 inches long and only has 6 balls, the trick is having a lifter bar welded to the inside of the drum to lift the balls to top dead center before falling onto the chips.
Here's 4 large mills located at one of the sites I visited to have a look an a crane.
Last edited by gustavus; 10-30-2011 at 11:36 PM.
Thanks for the pictures and thoughts. That is a nice setup you made there. I like the drive shaft setup, is that gear box from a PTO?
You mention lifter bar to lift the balls to top dead center. Would a length of angle iron up on edge to make like a scoop do the trick? Or maybe just a flat iron standing on edge with a bead along the top edge?
What was milled in them huge mills? I will guess corn or grain.
Angle iron or flat bar will do the trick, when the mill is set for off loading the bar is resting top dead center so as not to interfere with unloading., the gearbox is something I had laying about and the drive shaft is made up from I believe bits and pieces from a tractor PTO.
The drum for the mill is a crop off of an oil line pipe and is heavy wall, the bung to unload came from a metal barrel, the wheels that the drum ride on came from an old cart.
The balls came from a real ball mill like that shown in my second picture, they're about 3 inches in diameter.
Those large mills above were used at a mining operation to mill the ore, they belong to one of my neighbors. I suspect that he has replaced the armor plate tiles inside and will offer them fro sale it they are not already on the market as mining is not his line of business.
Is there a poor man's way to pulverize scrap--other than putting it in a trash can and smashing it to bits with a sledgehammer. I'm trying to break up misc. plastic parts, electric plugs for instance, to quickly and cheaply seperate out aluminum and brass. It's not economical to spend hundreds on a ball mill or similar device for this purpose, and smashing the parts with a sledge hammer takes too long and is too much work. Surely, someone has developed something workable for this type of low-yield, low-profit seperation, right? Or, is the best solution simply to chuck these metal-ladden plastic parts into the shred pile and be done with it?
Last edited by martyweil; 06-09-2012 at 12:03 PM.
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