Five Months to New Ball Mill Installation Delivers Two Extra Weeks of Production

A Cement Producer in Nebraska needed to replace their two aging ball mills due to repeated cracking and weld repairs. In October 2017 a decision to replace their two mills with new mills was made by customer to avoid additional down time. Fatigue cracking is a common phenomenon that occurs not only in ball mills but other rotating equipment which is subjected to cyclical fully reversed bending. These cyclic stresses cause a finite life in all equipment under these conditions. The project began in November 2017, the replacement components were new trunnions, ball mill shells and internal components. The critical path work: removal and installation, was performed during January and February 2019. The project was originally set be in 42-day outage however the project released the first mill back to the plant in 28 days, giving the plant un-expected additional production of two weeks.