
Ore dressing plant generally adopts three-phase crushing process to crush ore: coarse-crushing, medium-crushing and fine-crushing. The most commonly used ore crushers are
jaw crusher,
hammer crusher,
impact crusher and
cone crusher. 2.1m or 2.2m gyratory crusher is often used in coarse crushing (primary crushing), while 2.1m or 2.2m standard cone crusher for medium crushing, and 2.1m or 2.2m short-head type cone crusher for fine crushing. Through the coarse crushing, the size of ore is less than 1m, and after medium crushing and fine crushing, the size becomes less than 12mm. The product with suitable size will be transferred to the final product pile while product with unsuitable size will be transferred to the crusher for re-crushing. This forms a closed cycle.

The ore mill grinds the materials into fine powder by means of knocking and abrasion between the medium (steel balls, steel bars, gravel) and ore. The purpose is to dissemble the ore and achieve the proper size for the next ore processing.
Ore grinding can be divided into grinding with media and without (self-grinding). It can also be divided into dry grinding and wet grinding. If the minerals with the unsuitable size return to the mill for re-grinding, it is called closed-circuit grinding. If the minerals is not returned to the mill or transferred to other mill for re-grinding, it is called open-circuit grinding. The most common ore mills in mining are
ball mill,
raymond mill and
high pressure suspension mill. The selection of is according to customers’ requirements and the nature of the minerals.
Generally, the whole ore production line consists of
jaw crusher,
ball mill, classifier, magnetic separator, flotation machines, thickener, dryers and other major equipment, with
feeder, bucket elevator and conveyor can be composed of a complete ore production line. This production line feature with high efficiency, low energy, high capacity, economical and so on.
Big ores are fed to the
jaw crusher evenly and gradually by
vibrating feeder through a hopper for primary crushing. After first crush, the material will transferred to other crusher by
belt conveyor for secondary crush; the crushed materials will then transferred to
vibrating screen for separating. Then, the materials will be transferred into the
ball mill evenly for ore grinding.
After ball mill grinding, the ore fine material into the next process: classification. Because of the weight of solid particles is different, the speed of precipitate in liquid is different, according to this principle, spiral classifier can washed and classified the mixture ore. After classifying, ore particles are sent to flotation machines, depending on the mineral characteristics with different chemicals, making the needed ores and other materials to be separated.