Laboratory mills are sample processing equipment widely used in scientific research fields, including chemistry, pharmaceuticals, food analysis, materials testing, and life science. Laboratory mills use particle size reduction (pulverization) to grind or homogenize wet, dry, hard, soft, elastic, brittle, and fibrous materials.

The raw samples are placed in the grinding chamber or containers, and then the samples are ground, pulverized, and mixed by grinding media such as balls or blades. A variety of mills with different grinding methods have been developed for sample processing. Disk, hammer, mortar, planetary ball, rotor, and cutting mills are available to achieve coarse, mid-range, and fine results.

The disk mill crushes materials in the middle of the two disks through the relative rotary motion of the moving and fixed grinding disks. The hammer mill crushes and grinds various materials through the high-speed rotating hammerhead. A mortar mill consists of a mortar and a pestle, which is used to manually grind and crush materials against the walls of the mortar. The planetary ball mill operates on the principle of impact and attrition, where the grinding balls in the milling jars are subjected to high-energy impacts from the rotating milling jars and the sample material. Rotor mills, also known as ultra centrifugal mills, reduce the particle size of the sample by the impact and shear action between the rotor and the stationary ring sieve. The centrifugal acceleration throws the sample outwards with great energy and the sample is pre-crushed by the impact of the wedge-shaped rotor teeth moving at high speed. Fine grinding then takes place between the rotor and the ring sieve. The cutting mill consists of a high-speed rotor and rotating blades. When the material passes through the mill, the knives on the parallel-section rotor grind it with a powerful cutting action. Cryogenic mills, also known as freezer mills, are a type of unit that freezes a material prior to reducing its particle size.

Power, speed, and cleanliness are key parameters when purchasing a mill. In addition, the throughput, reproducibility, and throughput of the instrument as well as the option of a cooling system (if required) are important. Amerigo Scientific offers many types of mills and a wide range of consumables and accessories including grinding jars, grinding balls, blades, grinding containers, seals, and safety devices to meet the need of processing different samples.