Tipples or Bins, Good Question ?

Lets talk about coal mining, then you can think if the same would apply to mining gold, silver or zinc ores.
The several coal mines that I've know had small n.g. cars and track to get the coal from an under ground mine to the tipple. I named it a tipple, because here was a group of several "chutes." Much of the coal was in large pieces, thus needing to be run over a screen or several screens and sorted by size.
Size was from very large pieces named "lump coal" and used for home heating. Next was "engine coal," a comfortable size that would be used by railroad crews to build steam pressure on a locomotive. Then there was a "pea coal" which was used by mechanical stokers. Stokers automatically feed the coal into a furnace for heating business buildings or large homes. Last would be the smallest pieces names "slack." I guess you might say the "Slack" was a size from dust up to something you could not burn, because oxygen can not float between & around or create a burning area. "Slack" would just smolder at the best if you got it to burn.
The Tipple operation directed & sorted specific sizes to a chute, so you had lump size, engine size, pea size, and slack in individual chutes.
OK, in the mining of precious metals, how small do you want the ore ??
The simple method was to crush all the rock ore, using a ball mill or stamps. The smallest size available was mixed with acids or cynide washes. The end product was a "concentrate" that contained the precious gold or silver + zinc. This powered concentrate was then shipped to a smelter where a process by heat, ended up with the solid metal.