Planetary ball mills are commonly used at laboratory scale due to their simple set-up with high energy densities, good cleanability and high reliability of results as well as their low acquisition costs. Although planetary ball mills have been used for many years the influence of the parameters on the grinding process is still not sufficient understood, yet. In this work, the influence of the different process parameters is shown for dry grinding of alumina in planetary ball mills. An empirical parameter study is presented that can be used to identify optimal operating parameters and to build up a process model for planetary ball mills.