Abstract: Up to now, the mandrel pipe mill has been used as the main type of pipe mills in the domestic seamless steel tube-making circles.Elaborated in the paper are the category and characteristics of the mandrel pipe mill, and type selection on the basis of different product size ranges.A discussion on the said type selection is made with examples of actual engineering projects.Finally, it is concluded that from the perspective of drive type of the mandrel, the retained-mandrel mill process will be the development trend;that speaking of the small or medium sized mandrel mill, although the 3-roll mandrel mill is capable of producing pipes with better wall thickness accuracy than that of pipes produced by the 2-roll mandrel mill, it requires higher initial investment than the latter;and that when it comes to the large-sized mandrel mill, the 3-roll mandrel mill will be a more reasonable choice due to its advantages as small flange area and shallow roll groove which provides small speed difference.