Portable Mill Longevity?

[Tom T]

 I’ve been eyeballing videos of the portable mills that are powered by battery operated hand grinders and was wondering if anybody here has used one, which might be best and what their life span might be.

TIA

[rvpopeye]

Different brands have different lifespans.  Mill running usage is  possibly a lot of load on the tool . Depends on load, might not be very long.  Or till the bushings or bearings wear out. Get brushless if you can , they are a wear item , get extras anyway.

I do have a battery grinder , it gobbles batteries . price in buying a bunch of them .

Some brands have chargers that will charge from a 12volt  car battery/alternator .

I don't do commercial work anymore but DeWalt , Milwaukee ,Makita  were the most visible on job sites no matter which tool.

I have a consumer Ryobi now , haven't used it that much but ,,,batteries is my hint.

[Aureous]

3 hours ago, Tom T said:

 I’ve been eyeballing videos of the portable mills that are powered by battery operated hand grinders and was wondering if anybody here has used one, which might be best and what their life span might be.

TIA

Some of the hand held angle grinder type sample crushers are very thin. The Russian made one (no longer avail) was pretty sh*t. The 'Muzz Muncher' and 'SampleCrusher' ones are pretty good and you pay more for the quality. Plenty of advice on Youtube to make your own. The internal chains are the only things to replace regularly and that depends on your use frequency of course. Not uncommon to only re-weld chain once a year, even if you use it weekly. Battery powered angle grinders need to be the better quality brand ones like DeWalt, Ryobi, Hitachi etc. Always have at least 2x spare batteries handy.

[1515Art]

I have this one;

and power it with a cheep harbor freight corded right angle grinder. The grinders held up fine so far as has the little mill, I’ve no doubt my cordless Makita would power it just fine.

the bearings and everything’s replaceable and the steel is thick enough to hold up and will powder the rock although to get it all to powder you need to screen it and make a couple passes through the mill.

here is the eBay link

https://www.ebay.com/itm/353373950334

 

[Tom T]

Thanks Art… that’s the one that caught my eye. I already have a corded harbor freight grinder but will probably be adding a Makita fairly soon because I’ve started replacing all my battery tools with the Makita 18/36 volt system…I already have 6 batteries…. Here’s a pic of what I found on the property… there’s tons of mineralized float quartz here and an abandoned mine at one end. The gold is about the size of a grain of rice.

[rvpopeye]

Getting all portable battery tools on the same battery is a wonderful thing..😍

Wait for Black Friday for battery deals.

 

I have a Makita drill that I got in the 90s still going strong. The batteries died but they were 12 volt so I wired it to plug into the rig batteries/solar charged.system .

 

 

 

[davsgold]

g'day TomT

Ok mine is not a battery operated angle grinder but it is a cheap $50.00 Ozito and it is lasting quite well, the chain links in the mill will do about 20kg of quartz specie material before they need changing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

turns it to powder in a single pass

change the chain links fairly quick and easy

cheers dave

 

[Aureous]

Bisalloy discs on the end of the chains do a treat on quartz. Bit more expensive but last 10x as long and pulverizes faster.

[1515Art]

8 hours ago, Tom T said:

Thanks Art… that’s the one that caught my eye. I already have a corded harbor freight grinder but will probably be adding a Makita fairly soon because I’ve started replacing all my battery tools with the Makita 18/36 volt system…I already have 6 batteries…. Here’s a pic of what I found on the property… there’s tons of mineralized float quartz here and an abandoned mine at one end. The gold is about the size of a grain of rice.

I’d say nice looking rocks and good find you are way ahead in this game picking out a mill will be the easy part I’m pretty sure they’ll all crush rock. I don’t know just how fast you are going to  go through the ore if you have a lot of it these little mills are more for sampling.