Hammer mill
The workhorse. Impact milling that covers the majority of standard mesh work on freeze-dried muscle and organ material, at the throughput a commercial run needs.
Standard mesh ranges
Muscle cuts and most organ material
Production volumes
Hammer and cryogenic milling
Two Mills, in the Same Building as the Dryers.
Most freeze dryers in the country have no milling capability. They dry your material and ship it out to be ground somewhere else. We run a hammer mill and a cryogenic mill in house, with a milling scientist on staff.
Why in-house milling changes the job
The Mill Is Where a Powder Program Is Won or Lost.
When milling is outsourced, your material leaves an inspected facility, waits in another plant's queue, and comes back ground to that plant's usual standard. You get freight, delay, and a mesh that is close to what you asked for.
Doing it here removes all three. The material never leaves the building, the schedule is ours to move, and the spec belongs to the person who runs the mill. If a batch is not right, it gets rerun rather than reshipped.
See the Drying Side
The equipment
Hammer Milling and Cryogenic Milling.
Two different tools for two different problems. Which one your material needs is a spec question, not a preference.
Cryogenic mill
For material that will not behave at room temperature. Chilling the material before it is milled makes it brittle, so it fractures cleanly instead of smearing, heating, or clogging the screen.
Very fine mesh
High density requirements
High-fat material such as heart
Working to spec
If Your Spec Has a Number, We Can Hit It.
Coarse and fine mean different things on different lines: a powder that suits an encapsulation machine is wrong for a stick pack. Whatever numbers your program calls for, mesh, density, or dice size, we mill to the right specificity.
Mesh
The screen size your formulation, capsule, or blend needs, rather than whatever the mill produces by default. Coarse and fine are both normal targets here.
Density
Bulk and tapped density drive fill weight and capsule count. If your filler has a target, we mill to it.
Dice size
Quarter inch, half inch, and three-quarter inch are what customers ask for most. Dice size is a spec you set the same way you set mesh.
Fat content
High-fat material is the reason the cryo mill exists. Heart muscle is usually too fatty to mill conventionally.
A milling scientist on staff
Someone whose job is this problem, rather than an operator following a setting sheet written for a different material.
FAQ
Milling Questions.
Why does in-house milling matter?
Because the alternative is shipping your material to a third party. Most freeze dryers in the country have no milling capability, so the material leaves the facility, waits in someone else’s queue, and comes back milled to their standard rather than your spec. Our mills are in the same building as the dryers.
Hammer mill or cryo mill? How do you decide?
The spec decides. A hammer mill covers most standard mesh work. Cryogenic milling is what we reach for when you need very fine mesh, high density, or when the material is high in fat, such as heart, which smears rather than fractures at room temperature.
Can you hit a specific density and mesh?
That is the point of having a milling scientist on staff. Tell us the density and mesh your formulation or encapsulation line needs and we will mill to it, rather than sending you whatever the mill produced. Coarse is as legitimate a target as fine — not every application wants a fine powder, and we would rather have your actual number than an adjective.
Can you dice to a specific size?
Yes. Quarter inch, half inch, and three-quarter inch are the sizes customers ask for most, and dice size is a spec you can set the same way you set mesh and density. Tell us what the pack has to look like on shelf and we will cut to it.
Send Us Your Mesh and Density Spec.
Tell us the material and the finished specification, coarse or fine. If the job needs cryogenic milling we will say so, and if it does not, you will not pay for it.
Runs Start at 500 lb
USDA-inspected, Human-grade
Milling and Packaging in House
Prefer to talk it through? Call (970) 775-8677.