[H4tfan]

There's a thread on the Chiptalk forums about home game security. The posts in the thread point out that when money is involved everyone in a game should not be trusted and just as important, everyone needs to be protected. Anyway, I started thinking about chips with individual serial numbers. For the most part it seems like overkill, but it interests me enough to try.
I have an old friend who laser engraved his chipset with denominations and they turned out very nice. His lasered chipset is very similar to the faux clays. I was curious if the lasers could penetrate the ABC ceramic chips. I attempted to laser a serial number and a denomination into an ABC ceramic sample. It worked and the results were exellent. The following photos are of a sample ABC ceramic that was laser engraved:


The following photos are a couple of faux clays with laser engraved denominations:


I attempted to laser a true plastic chip as well. The plastic doesn't burn. It melts into liquid pool and makes a mess of the artwork. The material used for the faux clays will laser pretty good. The artwork is crisp and full. The ceramic material can laser to near perfection. The artwork on the ceramic is very fine and exact. The serial numbers are small, but very easy to read. I was suprised to see how deep the laser could cut into the ceramic. I thought the ceramic would be too hard for the laser to penatrate. Anyway, It was fun.

I'm not sure if I'll do this yet. It seems crazy to put serials on a chipset, but it would make for one hell of a secure chipset.