RME has a vision for a new mill operational paradigm made possible by RME's fast, safe Mill Relining System. This vision can be moved forward into reality at any time with or without guidance from recent development in measurement and predictive modelling tools._x000D_
Some new liner designs can degrade SAG mill performance because of mill volume loss, ball strike (rotational speed limitations) and other issues often brought about by optimising liners for life and without a backward glance at metallurgical consequences. Freshly relined mills can initially produce as little as 80 per cent of their maximum throughput, that maximum occurring toward the end of the liners' wear life._x000D_
RME's proposition is to design new liners for maximum commercial performance. This may mean more frequent changes of liners but with liners designed to yield optimum grinding, metallurgical and profitability performance._x000D_
In other words, mill liner profiles and mill relining speed become key operational controls and not simply must do' maintenance functions. Taken to the extreme, liner profiles may prove capable of tuning' a grinding plant for maximum profitability in any metal price environment._x000D_
This paper provides an update regarding RME's fast, safe Mill Relining System technologies and outlines RME's vision of a liner profile versus profitability' model as a function of metal price, developed intuitively or by using a combination of new measurement and modelling technologies. These new measurement and modelling tools provide the opportunity to predict the optimum commercial outcome, off-line in the virtual world, before committing to an expensive liner experiment._x000D_
FORMAL CITATION:Russell, J, 2006. Advanced grinding mill relining methods, in Proceedings Metallurgical Plant Design and Operating Strategies 2006, pp 47-65 (The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy: Melbourne).