A Cross Wedge Rolling Process for Forming 70 mm Diameter Balls from Heads of Scrap Railway Rails

The paper describes an innovative technique for producing balls which are used as grinding media in ball mills. With this method, balls are formed from heads of scrap railway rails. The proposed two-stage technique is based on cross wedge rolling. First, a rail head is formed into a cylindrical bar with a diameter of 52 mm. Next, the bar is formed into four balls, each with a diameter of 70 mm. Given the two-stage design of the process, an innovative flat-wedge reversing mill had to be designed. The paper presents the design of such a mill. In addition, it also reports the numerical findings and experimental results of producing balls by the proposed technique.