# crushing flatpacks



## dthoreson81 (May 19, 2008)

what is the best method for crushing flatpacks to the point where they are refinable?


----------



## warrendya (Jul 5, 2008)

In some other responses to this question on the forum others have suggested a ball mill. They are pretty easy to make, I made a small one some years ago from a rock tumber to mill chemicals with. I was considering making a larger one to process flatpacks when I was gifted a wheat grinder someone had purchased for Y2K and never used. I took it simply for the motor, but after upon examination, it uses direct drive to spin a 6 inch diameter grinding stone against another stationary stone with a feed hole bored into the side. You can adjust the distance between the two stones to vary the flour size. What the heck I thought, I'll never grind wheat, so I threw in about a pound of chips just to see what would happen. Bada bing - flatpack flour in seconds. It would have taken hours in a ball mill to get this fine a result. Some large bits get by (the stationary stone is spring loaded), but 3 cycles of dumping the result through a kitchen wire mesh strainer and regrinding what remained reduced everything to dust.

So, my first batch is sitting in AP right now to get rid of the base metals. The flour is pretty hydrophobic at first and hard to get in contact with the acid - anybody know if a drop of dish soap to break surface tension would hurt anything?


----------



## Bernie Foley (Jul 21, 2008)

Hi,
I don't see why dawn dish soap would hurt anything. Make shure you do use exhauste vent to get rid of silicon dust while grinding and handling!
Silicosis(sp) is permanent lung damage!!..Good luck!....Post the results
you get as far as values......I'm looking at using a hammermill to do a bunch of lat packs..probly do them wet...Good luck....Bernie


----------



## bmgold (Nov 23, 2008)

I've used a cheap, hand powered coffee grinder to crush up some rocks for torch assay testing. It was slow but easier to get powder than just a mortar and pestle alone. I may give it a shot with flat packs. I expect that they would need to be broken up first and it would make some dust but should work for small amounts. It will most likely wear out pretty quick but it was cheap and since it has already been used to grind rocks, it can't be used for coffee anyway. 

Thanks for the idea.


----------

