An Easy to make Ball Mill.
Nothing is very critical in the design of a Ball Mill and it can be made virtually any size. The one pictured here is quite large and holds up to 10 pounds of chemicals.
Ball Mills simply consist of a motor that turns two drive shafts that a container sits on.
Inside the container are a quantity of Lead-Antimony Balls that grind the chemicals into a fine dust.
Below are several additional images to give you an idea how to put one together.

The drive shaft layout of the Mill. All the parts used are available at any hardware store. The pulleys, drive shafts, bearings & motor can all be purchased as replacement parts for a Swamp Cooler. The belts and 3/4" rubber hose were purchased from an automotive parts store. As new motors are expensive, it's certainly worth a trip to the local junkyard to remove one from an old clothes dryer.

A close-up of the lower pulley, belt & bearing arrangement.

 Side view of the Ball Mill. Note the small wheel that the container rests on. The Mill is tilted up at a 30 to 45 degree angle. This keeps the chemical powder and the lead balls in the bottom of the container.

Front view of the Ball Mill. As stated before, the basic design is simple and can be scaled down to a small coffee can sized container, or scaled up to something larger. The container should be strong plastic as it takes a beating will a pile of Lead balls bouncing around inside.

 The motor we used runs at 1750 RPM, and using the pulleys shown, it rotates the container at about 1 revolution per second (about 60 RPM). The hardened Lead-Antimony  balls are available on our commercial Ball Mill page, and can be found by Clicking Here. The more balls you use, the faster and more efficient the grinding will be... but be sure not to make the container so heavy that the motor won't be able to turn it. If you can't find a container that works for you, try a short length of large diameter PVC or ABS pipe with slip-on end caps. It's easily fabricated, rugged, and very inexpensive.
The Mill should grind most chemical powders into a fine dust in a couple of hours.
NEVER, EVER put Flash Powder, or any other pyrotechnic composition into the Ball Mill.
 The impacting Lead balls will detonate the mixture and create a tremendous explosion.
The ONLY exception to this is Black Powder. It is the ONLY pyrotechnic mixture that can be ball milled.
If you are going to be grinding Black Powder, you must ONLY use Lead balls as they are completely non sparking. Steel Ball Bearings and ceramics will spark and ignite the Black Powder mixture.  Everything else you want to mill must be an individual chemical,
and the mill must be cleaned before changing to another chemical.