[King Bass]

(above) Pellatized polyester resin used to make Chipco Chips

Don't know if covered before, and probably irrelevant today, but here's an old 1996(?) lawsuit when Chipco was first starting out as a company. Looks like they tried to go cheap with materials, and got burned. Chicpco was awarded $884,332 in compensatory damages for breach of contract.

Brief Synopsis

"Chipco International Ltd. manufactures gambling chips used in casinos made from polyester resin pellets. Chipco decided to purchase its resin from a new supplier, Adell Plastics Inc. It manufactured millions of gambling chips using the new resin but its customers began to complain about the quality of the chips. Chipco was forced to replace large numbers of its chips at considerable expense. Chipco claimed the resin was the problem and sued Adell."

http://www.ca1.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/...ON=97-2131.01A

http://www.adellplas.com/index.php

[checkm8r]

Interesting. I wonder if the same type of thing (i.e., changing out suppliers) could be behind the apparently higher number of spinners found in recent Chipco sets.

[circlencircle]

I was told recently chipco used to (in the very beginning) actually buy ceramic slugs from General Electric and then simply printed on them and marketed them as Casino chips. GE was producing these ceramic slugs for some other use...



cnc

[PocketRocket]

I think you may have companies mixed up. First of all the case cited is 10 years old. And I think the company that had what people here are calling "spinners" was Nevada Jacks, not Chipco. It was Nevada Jacks who told customers that they were making a thicker chip so that it would be like the Chinese imports.

Originally Posted by checkm8r

Interesting. I wonder if the same type of thing (i.e., changing out suppliers) could be behind the apparently higher number of spinners found in recent Chipco sets.

[Nevada Jack]

'Spinners' are present in chipco chip as well. It is inherent in manufacturing this type of chip. Look into the WSOP replicas.

[dannyocean]

Yeah, a lot of people have been talking about spinners in the 2005 WSOP chips.

[Spaceman Spiff]

It may be a potential defect, but it shouldn't be something that's inherent in the mfg. process, or if it is, they need to find out how to control it or at least measure it so the bad ones can be QA'd out.

I have a set of Egyptians with no spinners of note. Or if they are there I haven't noticed them. My friend has the NJ Skulls and there are probably dozens of blatantly obvious spinners. I can't speak to the WSOP set since I don't have any, so maybe something has happened to Chipco's process that caused them to pop up more.

Bottom line, it's a manufacturing defect, not a "feature" of ceramic chips.

[MeridianFC]

Whatever it is I've got it in ChipCOs that go back nearly 8 years. Defect sure, but it's there.

[SingleMaltFan]

Originally Posted by Spaceman Spiff

It may be a potential defect, but it shouldn't be something that's inherent in the mfg. process, or if it is, they need to find out how to control it or at least measure it so the bad ones can be QA'd out.

I have a set of Egyptians with no spinners of note. Or if they are there I haven't noticed them. My friend has the NJ Skulls and there are probably dozens of blatantly obvious spinners. I can't speak to the WSOP set since I don't have any, so maybe something has happened to Chipco's process that caused them to pop up more.

Bottom line, it's a manufacturing defect, not a "feature" of ceramic chips.

not a single spinner in my NJ's $500 chips (100 of 'em) but almost everyone of my other 1230 total $1/$5/$25/$100 has some degree of concavity (is that a word?) to it...(some more obvious than others...but its there)

was there a different manufacturing process between the yellows and the rest?

malt

[Spaceman Spiff]

Without knowing the process, my guess it has more to do with what materials the yellow is made of.

A lot of this is a guess, but I do have a little experience in injection molding. I'm fairly sure ceramic chips are injection molded because that's where that little nipple on the side comes from. Paulson's and other clay chip are compression molded, so no nipple.

My theory is that you get a spinner when the chip comes out of the mold too soon or in some other way isn't allowed to cool properly. Perhaps whatever colorant they use to make the yellow chips helps the whole chip cool and set faster and that's why you don't see spinners in those. The different colorants and additives used in molding and extrusion can make a world of difference in the final properties of whatever you're making.

So when these come out, the edges cool fast, but the centers may still be warm enough to be fluid. That allows them to sag rather than set up into a nice, flat chip.

Again, this is all speculation since I've never seen a chip molding operation, but I think it's a decent theory unless someone else on the boards knows more about it.