Souped up 6lb tumbler ball mill

Budget ball mill. How to turn a lemon into decent lemonade-
I Picked this Chicago Tools brand 2 jar 6lb tumbler up at the Harbor Freight Tools down the street for $49.99 new in the box. They can be found online at several vendors, but Harbor is the cheapest I've seen, and they have a store near me. These rock tumblers are a quick and easy way to get your feet wet with ball milling black powder, but at 60 rpm, they take a long time to make bp hot enough to lift shells correctly... I'm impatient man! So here's what I did with my new one.
The rpm can easily be increased to 100 rpm with several turns of electrical tape on the drive roller. The motor won't overheat and the belt won't slip as long as only one filled jar is used at a time.
The 4" jar is "optimized" per the pro recommendations by VOLUME at 50% 1/2" lead media, 25% BP, 25% air AFTER milling. The "after milling" volume part is apparently important. From what I can gather, the optimal speed for a 4" jar is around 92 rpm with optimal charge volume. FWIW, the 4" jars require approximately two hundred .50 caliber lead balls, the 4" jar weighs 6.5lbs fully charged with the lead media and ~150g of 75:15:10. It yields decent bp in 4 hours at 90-100 rpm, instead of 12-24 hours at the normal 60 rpm. But still only around 200g per batch optimized. These jars can do more than 200g at once, but then it's back to 12+ hours of mill time if you fill it with to much BP. After many batches, 150-200g works best for me and my charcoal.
6" pyro ball mills or larger are definitely the way to go if you burn through a lot of bp, but these rock tumblers come in handy too. The Chicago brand 6lb tumblers come with 2 jars, I'll use the 2 new jars to mill individual chems other than BP, using alumina or steel media. The jar on this mill now is an old one I had laying around, so now I have 3 jars, which is nice.
In my experience, the single jar 3lb version of these rock tumblers can't turn a full jar past about 65 rpm reliably. If you're gonna get one of these tumblers, do yourself a favor and spend the extra money on the dual 6lb version as seen in this video. Oh yeah, and buy several replacement belts, you're gonna need them, trust me..... the belts that come with them are very poor quality, utter garbage, the included belt broke within 4 hours of turning at this speed. It's required to get AFTERMARKET belts of higher quality. Don't waste time or money on the stock belts, end of story there. I've had good luck with belts found on ebay...

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[CAIDMASTEROFPYRO]

isn't it 40% not 60%

[Swervedriver71]

@CAIDMASTEROFPYRO hi, yep it seems it would be 40%, but 100 actually equals 166.66% of 60. So 100rpm is a 66.66% increase in rpm over 60 rpm. I just rounded it to "60%".

[SpenceDLoco]

I have the same tumbler, but something is not working - the rollers only move if you give them a turn with your fingers first, but it always seems to stop for no reason after 5 minnutes - do you think it's the belt? it's a couple of months old - never needed it until now...

[Swervedriver71]

Your belt is slipping... You may be able to compensate for a little while by loosening the bolts to the motor and sliding the motor over a bit to re-tighten the belt, then re-tighten the bolts. Your belt won't last much longer, time to find a replacement. Try looking up "tumbler belts" on ebay.

[luthmhor]

Do these ball mills last? (obviously the barrel is replaceable). And can you stick your own barrel in there? Like an empty peanut butter jar or something?

[Swervedriver71]

If you buy from Harbor Freight Tools, you can get a 1 year "replacement" warranty for a few extra dollars. They of course will wear out eventually, sooo if it "breaks" before one year passes, you return it for a brand new one. The jar lids do wear out eventually, as do the cheap plastic bearings. I've made around 30 lbs of BP and mine is still working. It will break before my warranty runs out, whether it wants to or not... :)

[ashpardy180]

I bet hockey tape would do a better job again..

[SuperMoore55]

i have a 3 pond just like that one and it keeps busty the belt any help

[menu12345]

I'm selling a 3 pound ball mill for $30. Please message me if you are interest

[joey5731]

can i use nickles insted of ball to grind bp

[FalthProductions]

why?..



[lovegunz1]

ok actually dont but extra belts just buy heavy duty rubberbands you can get 1000 easily for around $3 verse 5 for each replacement belt.

[believerJona]

I tried this on my 6lb ball mill and increased the rpms to 88. I use 200 nickels as media and it works great.

[rab1515151515]

huh. i just got a 3 lb ball mill and i tried this method to increase the rpm and its doing just fine. i did use a slightly different method however. i used 2 inch wide electrical tape horizontally instead of vertically, cutting many 3 or 4 inch pieces instead of one long 2 inch wide strip. my mill runs nicely at around 90-92 rpm with out the motor slowing down audibly .

[pyrogirl1985]

My belt broke in 2 hours of this speed, and I can't seem to find a good belt dealer on ebay, do you have any links i could look in on?

[9DragonMaster]

@luthmhor I FOUND THAT PEANUT BUTTER JARS ARE NO GOOD FOR MILLING, THE MEDIUM SLIDES ON THE PLASTIC, TRY TO USE A TIN CAN LIKE A PAINT CAN. LOWES N HOMEDEPOT HAVE EM. CHECK OUT MY CHANNEL FOR MY BALLMILL PROJECTS, CANT WAIT TO MAKE THE FRAME FOR MY "TREADBALLMILL"