Design of the 40 foot diameter SAG mill installed at the Cadia gold copper mine

The design of the 40-foot diameter SAG mill installed at the Cadia Gold Mine, New South Wales Australia, followed after two years of extensive laboratory and pilot plant testwork. This showed the Cadia ores to be hard and competent necessitating the use of both a variable speed mill drive and pebble crushing. The grinding power requirements were based on engineering in-house grinding software, pilot plant data and simulation using JK SimMet software. Surveys of the mill SAG during the first couple of months of operation were compared to those predicted. This paper reviews the findings and discusses some of the changes made to the SAG milling circuit.