Grain boundaries are well known to be the predominant pinning centers in MgB 2 superconductors. To study the effects of grain boundaries on the trapped field properties of MgB 2 bulk, we prepared MgB 2 bulks by a spark plasma sintering method using a ball-milled starting powder. The trapped field was maximized for the bulk made from the ball-milled powder with crystallite size, τ, of 27 nm; the highest trapped field, B T , of 2.3 T achieved at 19.3 K was 1.2 times larger than that of the bulk made from the non ball-milled powder (τ = 50 nm). The degradation of the trapped field for the bulk from finer powder (τ = 6 nm) originated mainly from the lowered T c. The critical current density, J c , and the pinning force density, F p , were also maximized for the bulk from τ = 27 nm. The competition between the increase of the numerical density of grain boundaries and the degradation of superconductivity determined the vortex pinning properties for the MgB 2 bulks with mechanically refined grains. The scaling analysis for the pinning force density suggested that the change in the dimension of the dominant pinning source from 2D (surface) to 0D (point) was induced by grain refining. Although the nanometric impurity particles such as MgB 4 , MgO and Mg-B-O were created in the bulk during both ballmilling and spark plasma sintering processes, we considered the point-contact between the refined grains was the predominant point pinning source.