A hopper bolted on top of the mill does not solve it; those hold 20–40 kg, three or four minutes of work. Three rhythms share one line: the crusher streams material continuously, the vertical mixer works in 50–300 kg batches on a ten-minute cycle, the mill wants one feed rate all day. Below 500 kg/h a man with a shovel is the buffer. Above it the buffer has to be a bin — sized for 20 to 30 minutes of mill output: 170–300 kg at 500–600 kg/h, 270–500 kg at 1 t/h, 0.7–1.2 t at 2 t/h.
Volume is easy to underestimate. Mash sits at roughly 0.5–0.65 t/m³, so 300 kg needs 0.5 m³ of material; build 0.7–0.8 m³ so the bin keeps a working heel and still flows at the angle of repose. A 60° conical bottom, a slide gate, a paddle high/low level switch wired to the crusher, a vent to the dust collector and an inspection hatch turn a steel box into a working buffer — filled by the inclined screw already in the line.
The payoff is pellets, not elegance. A mill that always has material holds a stable die temperature — what gelatinises the starch and gives a durable pellet — and stops the amp spikes of a die fed in surges. One operator can run a 500 kg/h line when the bin sets the pace. Weiwei builds feed pellet lines from 200 kg/h to 1 t/h — crusher, mixer, screw conveyor, buffer bin, pellet mill, cooler — with FPL-150 at 100–150 kg/h up to FPL-500 at 2–2.5 t/h. Send your daily tonnage and running hours and we will size the bin with the mill, not after it: WhatsApp +8613526462915
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