While on break during my recent orientation training at Round Mountain Gold Mine, I was looking around the training room and spotted what appeared to be either a prop from Pirates of the Carribean or a worn ball off a bearing on one of the big haul trucks here at the facility. When I asked the instructor what it was he told me that they used the steel spheres at the mill-----as media for grinding the rocks down. The SAG mill (semi-autogenous grinding) pulverizes the rocks so that the gold particles can be removed. This "tumbler" is just a tad bigger than the 'ol rock polishing tumblers. The mill is 36 feet across and processes approximately 10,000 tons of ore-bearing rock per day!!
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