Drop Ball Testing

Background and Standard Procedure

30/06/2022
Drop Ball Testing Overview
 Grinding media is designed to balance hardness and toughness for optimal results
 Too hard → Excessive breakage → High Media Consumption
 Too tough → Excessive wear → High Media Consumption
 Customers may desire higher toughness or hardness depending on operation applicability

 DBT is a standardized testing method for QA/QC purposes

 Performed to ensure quality and suitability for typical mill conditions
 Not a reliable predictor of media consumption
 Not able to simulate all mill conditions
 Extreme mill conditions may cause breakage

 This presentation includes

 Explanation of J-Tube test
 Details on ME Drop ball test and procedure
 Example of ME Drop test reporting
J-Tube
 Developed in 1985 by U.S. Bureau of Mines
 Designed to simulate typical SAG mill ball-on-ball impacts
 Multiple balls resting in bottom of J-Tube; Impact from top ball knocks bottom ball into conveyor

 Advantages
 Produces many impacts quickly
 Impacts are of variable intensity simulating mill conditions
 More balls per test

 Disadvantages
 More ball for test = less individual impacts per ball
 No distinction between high and low energy impacts
 Highly variable – low repeatability
 Does not simulate the most severe impacts that typically cause ball breakage in SAG milling
 Impact intensity diminishes as ball gets further down the line
ME Drop Test
 Free-fall type drop test
 Steel balls are dropped approximately from 10 metre
height onto a steel plate base (made of same material
than a mill liner)
 The testers are used for quality assurance and are not for
mill condition simulations involving thousands of balls
interacting

 Advantages
 Every ball drops between 2,000 to 3,000 times
 Every impact counted is consistently maximum intensity
and represents severe SAG milling conditions
 ensures that standard production balls will perform in
most applications with occasional mill upsets
 Lower variability → better repeatability

 Disadvantages
 Time consuming
ME Drop Test - Procedure
 Pass/Fail test for each production batch
 6-12 balls from each production batch randomly selected
 SAG balls dropped from height of 10 meters
 Standards for passing:
 After the Test ball shows no breaking or spalling

Photo shows a typical result after drop testing 

 Thank You

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