[TenPercenter]

Originally Posted by CaptLego

I was just wondering if anybody has made their own chips from scratch.


From time-to-time, I've seen postings on various boards about this, but I'm not aware of anybody actually doing it. Perhaps the link-meister has some leads?

I've heard of folks considering 3 different aproaches:
A) Wood.

• There a lot of beautiful exotic hardwoods, and it is an easy material to work with. On the other hand, it would require some kind of insert to get much weight, and strength would be an obvious problem -- they'd break easily.

B) Cast.

• Make some kind of mold, and use a casting resin. You could get some interesting patterns here... but again I wonder about getting good quality and weight.

C) Clay

• Somebody once posted about using that modeling clay like FIMO. It comes in lots of colors. You could make a big sausage with whatever edgespots --- and centerspots! --- colors you want, then slice it up into chips and bake it in your oven. Sounds interesting, but I don't know how you'd get any kind of accuracy or consistency in size and thickness. Also, I again wonder about the weight and durability.

I could also imagine just having a bunch CNC machined out of various metals (or other material). Then there's EDM, and a variety of other machining/molding options if you have access to a good model shop....

It's almost funny you should ask. One of the ads up there in the Google banner was for chip manufactutring equipment. I didnt look closely, but it was very expensive just for a hotstamping machine.