A hammer mill uses swinging hammers on a rotating shaft to shred or crush materials into smaller pieces. They can be used for various industrial, research, agricultural, and residential applications, including grinding grain for livestock feed and recycling operations. Small hammer mills can be used in laboratories or to grind foods and spices, while larger ones can even pulverize entire cars.
A hammer mill is a machine used to shred or crush materials into smaller pieces. The basic design of machines of this type involves a rotating shaft to which swinging hammers are attached. This assembly is enclosed by a drum which holds the material to be pulverized. A hopper feeds the starting material into the drum. The hammers gradually break up the material until it is small enough to pass through a screen with openings corresponding to the desired grain size.
Many types of hammer mill are used for many industrial, research, agricultural and residential applications. A hammer mill can be small enough to sit on a counter and run on household current, or large enough to destroy entire cars. Some of the larger hammer mills may use a large diesel engine of 2,000 horsepower or more. The rotary shaft axis of a hammer mill can be constructed in either a horizontal or vertical position, although a horizontal configuration is more common.
Farmers sometimes employ a hammer mill to pulverize grain for livestock feed. These machines have the advantage of being able to process many types of materials as well as producing particles of various sizes simply by changing the exit screen. A hammer mill of this type can operate at approximately 1,800 rpm with the hammer tips moving at 60 mph (90 km/h) or more. The particles produced in this way will be very uniform and tend to have a spherical shape.
Industrial uses of hammer mills include many types of recycling operations, including pulping for papermaking, biofuel production, and stone crushing. Grinding grain for ethanol production or pulverizing fruit in juice production are other possible uses for a hammer mill. A sawmill may employ a hammer mill for the purpose of grinding waste into mulch or material for making fuel pellets.
Metal recycling operations such as scrap yards often employ large hammer mills to grind scrap metal into small pieces for separation and processing. Large hammer mills are capable of grinding entire cars at once, pulverizing them into fist-sized pieces, and can process many tons of scrap metal every day. Other types of hammer mills are used to recover recycled asphalt, electronic components or old tires.
Small hammer mills are sometimes used in laboratories to grind materials for substrates or experiments. Other small hammer mills can be used to grind foods or spices, and food waste is often processed by these machines. The common waste disposal is a variant of a hammer mill with a disc with fixed teeth and grinding surfaces instead of swinging hammers.
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