[circlencircle]

Originally Posted by Murray B

Is this a mold to cast plastic at normal pressures and temperatures? Some manufacturers cast their chips from polymer. Such a mold could be made from brass. Even so, nobody would cast one at a time so they would still need a set. Do you know how many of these molds are in a set? One picture I have seen was for a low-pressure casting machine that cast six chips at a time. Is that $7500 price for one mold or a set?

I don't know exactly what is created from the $7500 but it is BC's standard price whether its for a casino or a private retailer and the end product is cable of modern, high volume manufacturing. I have never seen a picture of a mold so I can’t say exactly what it looks like. The next time I talk with Dave Endy I will get some specific information.

As far as the pressure.... Well, my understanding is that clay chips are typically made with pressures of around 10,000psi and that is what this mold is for..

[Murray B]

Sorry I did not make myself more clear. Please take a look at the information at http://www.antiquegamblingchips.com/steel_mold.htm

What is commonly called a mold is a die by my thinking. On the website I pointed to it is called a "cup". Now do you mean it is $7500 for a cup or for a complete set of cups? The injection machine shown uses four "hobs" (apparently similar to a "clay's" cup) and I assume the "clays" are also made several at a time. Imagine pressing 10,000 chips, one at a time. The rumour, and it is only a rumour, I heard is that the chips are often pressed with six sets of "cups". If that is true and they were $7500 each then a complete set would cost about $45,000.

Sadly, there does not appear to be any more details about casino cheque fabrication on the net. Please post anything that you find.

[Murray B]

Postscript:

According to the T.R. King site, "Each chip is hand pressed in a fifteen cavity mold..." see http://www.trking.com

To give a sense of perspective, according to Gambling Magazine http://www.gamblingmagazine.com/articles/05/05-36.htm,
"Foxwoods has ordered replacement casino chips totaling approximately one million units for its Connecticut casino and has renewed a contract with Paul-Son..."

I wonder how many cavities a Paulson machine has? Could be as little as six if it was rotary like a gatling gun. That is how a rotary pill-press works.

[circlencircle]

Originally Posted by Murray B

Sorry I did not make myself more clear. Please take a look at the information at http://www.antiquegamblingchips.com/steel_mold.htm

What is commonly called a mold is a die by my thinking. On the website I pointed to it is called a "cup". Now do you mean it is $7500 for a cup or for a complete set of cups? The injection machine shown uses four "hobs" (apparently similar to a "clay's" cup) and I assume the "clays" are also made several at a time. Imagine pressing 10,000 chips, one at a time. The rumour, and it is only a rumour, I heard is that the chips are often pressed with six sets of "cups". If that is true and they were $7500 each then a complete set would cost about $45,000.

Sadly, there does not appear to be any more details about casino cheque fabrication on the net. Please post anything that you find.

What I am saying is if all goes well with the samurai chips, Bluechip is going to make a mold for $7500 and manufacture a minimum of 50,000 chips with it. As you said, can you imagine doing that with a single die? At this point I assume multiple dies are made. Again, I will talk with Dave about this specifically next time I call.

What I really think is a large steal plate is made that has the mold engraved into it multiple times and serves as a "stamp", for lack of a better word, where as multiple chips can be made at a time. For some reason I remember Dave saying the older molds made 6-8 chips at a time, but this is not a quote and I may be wrong. Anyway, this would indicate to me that the modern versions would include many more.

[Murray B]

Now I'm getting a little confused, are you saying that there are new machines that do not use cup inserts at all?

I believe the old type machines would be classified as warm isostatic presses. It is not hard to see how a flatbed one of these could take 6 or 8 or even fifteen cup sets. I can also see how they could make a rotary one (like a tablet press) that could mass produce chips with only six positions. What I cannot yet wrap my brain around is how they are going to press thousands of chips in a single cup machine. They must be using some process that I have not read about.

If and when you find out more please describe the process in greater detail because it sounds very interesting.

I wonder why the smaller casinos all seem to use the stock mold designs if they could have their own for $7500. They must be awfully cheap.

[Murf]

Originally Posted by Murray B

I wonder why the smaller casinos all seem to use the stock mold designs if they could have their own for $7500. They must be awfully cheap.

Well, this might be one reason...

If Paulson has lets say, 12 chip making presses, each with six or seven cup molds. The price to set up one of these 12 machines (which, I bet, is all that would need to be used for a 50k order) is $7500. In a casino sized order, where chips are ordered in the high hundreds of thousands, it is safe to assume that most if not all of the 12 chip making presses are being used at once for that order. If that is true, then 12 custom mold setups would need to be made, making the cost 12 x $7500 = $90,000. It might make sense why smaller casino's dont drop 100k on a custom mold, or, I could be totally off on this.

[circlencircle]

Originally Posted by Murray B

Now I'm getting a little confused, are you saying that there are new machines that do not use cup inserts at all?

I believe the old type machines would be classified as warm isostatic presses. It is not hard to see how a flatbed one of these could take 6 or 8 or even fifteen cup sets. I can also see how they could make a rotary one (like a tablet press) that could mass produce chips with only six positions. What I cannot yet wrap my brain around is how they are going to press thousands of chips in a single cup machine. They must be using some process that I have not read about.

If and when you find out more please describe the process in greater detail because it sounds very interesting.

I wonder why the smaller casinos all seem to use the stock mold designs if they could have their own for $7500. They must be awfully cheap.

Dont get me wrong on this steal plate idea. It's a guess, I dont really know how it is done...

[Murray B]

Okay I don't know for sure how it is done either. But I will hazard a guess.

Let us suppose that Acme Chip company has an 8 cup press and has six sets of 8 cups in various patterns. Two patterns belong to Acme and four to casinos that they work for. Let us also suppose that they have some single cups for small casinos. Is there any reason that they could not mix these cups according to their list of orders? Odd quantities could be evened by producing chips using the Acme patterns for stock.

This sort of scheduling is fairly easy by computer as long as there are regular orders.

Lets consider a hypothetical example. Acme gets an order from The Really Big Casino for 10,000 chips. RBC has their own set of eight cups in their very own pattern. They also get an order for 1000 chips from The Really Small Chip Sellers. So they put 7 RBC cups and the one RSCC cup in the machine and press a thousand chips. This gives them seven thousand RBC chips and 1000 RSCC ones. Then they change to all eight RBC cups and print 375 more sets of eight chips for a grand total of 10,000.

As far as I can see this means that anyone who wants to purchase RBCs pattern must buy the Intellectual Property rights to the pattern and all the existing cups. Rumour is that this can cost upwards of $40,000 but I have no way of knowing if this is true or not. The secrecy that pervades the Chip industry makes it difficult to find out anything. If you find any more information about this please let us know.

[Oldcycles]

This is a really great disscusion.
I don't know if any of you saw the show about beating Vegas with the guys that made tokens in there garage?
The casinos could not tell the difference.
A CNC machine could make the dies fairly cheap (couple thousand at the most?).
And having worked in a stamping plant I know a person can crank out an awfull lot in an 8 hour shift (metal).
I know there is a lot more involved and know hardly anything about clay but just thought I would toss this info in.

[Nanook]

Originally Posted by Oldcycles

This is a really great disscusion.
I don't know if any of you saw the show about beating Vegas with the guys that made tokens in there garage?
The casinos could not tell the difference.
A CNC machine could make the dies fairly cheap (couple thousand at the most?).
And having worked in a stamping plant I know a person can crank out an awfull lot in an 8 hour shift (metal).
I know there is a lot more involved and know hardly anything about clay but just thought I would toss this info in.

I saw that show too. It was pretty interesting. I think that they did mention that due to scams like the one this guy pulled off they have changed their procedure to regularly check the inventory of tokens. At the time of this scam they were not checking this very closely.

I wouldn't try and scam the casinos. If you are just wondering if it would be possible to figure out how to make chips, sure I think it is possible. I do think that you would spend quite a bit of time and money before you had any return though. I would bet that is why new players are not coming into the game.

AB