[orthecreedence]

I found your comment fascinating (and frustrating). Dealing with bad inputs on a web form can be tricky. Dealing with bad inputs made of steel seems like a lot more work =].

What comes out of a steel ball mill? And why is steel made into (misshapen) balls before this process?

[taneq]

Oops, I meant to come back to this but stuff happened. It certainly was a lot of work to get it halfway reliable. I think they were working on adding a vibrating motor to keep things moving even if they weren't rolling - while I was there they just had a guy poke it with a bit of rebar every time things hitched up.

A ball mill is used to grind things into paste, usually for further processing. In this specific case it was a SAG mill (https://www.mogroup.com/portfolio/sag-mills/) and it was frikkin' huge, powered by a 10MW electric motor. It ground up ore-containing rocks from a mine which were then processed to produce lead and zinc. The balls roll around in the mill and help to grind up the ore, which I guess works better if they're round, which they will be before long due to wear and tear no matter what shape they go in. They come out as tiny ball bearings. It was quite an interesting project!