and paints. Ball mills rotate around a horizontal axis, partially filled with the material to be ground plus the grinding medium. Different materials are used as media, including ceramic balls, flint pebbles, and stainless steel balls. An internal cascading effect reduces the material to a fine powder. Industrial ball mills can operate continuously, fed at one end and discharged at the other end. Large to medium-sized ball mills are mechanically rotated on their axis, but small ones normally consist of a cylindrical capped container that sits on two drive shafts (pulleys and belts are used to transmit rotary motion). A rock tumbler functions on the same principle. Ball mills are also used in pyrotechnics and the manufacture of black powder, but cannot be used in the preparation of some pyrotechnic mixtures such as flash powder because of their sensitivity to impact. High-quality ball mills are potentially expensive and can grind mixture particles to as small as 5 nm, enormously increasing surface area and reaction rates. The grinding works on the principle of critical speed. Critical speed can be understood as that speed after which the steel balls that are responsible for the grinding of particles start rotating along the direction of the cylindrical device, thus causing no further grinding. Ball mills are used extensively in the mechanical alloying process in which they are used for grinding and for cold welding, producing alloys from powders. The ball mill is a key piece of equipment for grinding crushed materials, and it is widely used in production lines for powders such as cement, silicates, refractory material, fertilizer, glass ceramics, etc., as well as for ore dressing of ferrous and non-ferrous metals. The ball mill can grind ores and other materials, wet or dry. There are two kinds of ball mills according to their ways of discharging material: grate type, and overfall type. Many types of grinding media are suitable for use in a ball mill, each material having its own specific properties and advantages. Key properties of grinding media are size, density, hardness, and composition. Size: The smaller the media particles, the smaller the particle size of the final product. The grinding media particles should be substantially larger than the largest pieces of material to be ground. Density: The media should be denser than the material being ground. It becomes a problem if the grinding media floats on top of the material to