JKTech offers a unique testing methodology for the quantitative characterisation of steel media wear in SAG and Ball mills.

The methodology and related equipment was developed by researchers at the Dept of Mechanical Engineering at McGill University in Canada under the direction of Dr Peter Radiszewski and as part of the AMIRA P9N project.

The Steel Media Wear Test methodology combines the results  of two separate testing procedures that characterise both the abrasive and corrosive wear of steel media respectively, to produce one total wear prediction. 

The first test is called the Steel Wheel  Abrasion Test and employs a custom designed test rig, appropriately called the SWAT, and is based on the standard Rubber Wheel Abrasion Tester (RWAT). The new SWAT is designed to overcome certain shortcomings of the RWAT relating to insufficient stress levels to truly reflect those experienced by grinding media in operating mills. The test procedure involves ore of a given size being fed by gravity into the gap between a rotating steel wheel and a stationary section of the steel to tested for wear. The mass of the steel section is measured before and after the test to determine wear and delivers an abrasive wear parameter k₁.

The second test characterises the corrosive wear of steel media by employing a standard 200 mm diameter x 300 mm heated and rubber lined batch grinding mill, with a standard tumbling procedure involving the steel media to be tested and appropriate ore slurry. The corrosive parameter produced here is k₂.