Flattening Warped Chips (2 Viewers)

That's what I mean. 1,500 minty chips that need to be flattened?!
Yep! The primary $5s I had needed some flattening. It wasn't all the chips but there were definitely some in there that created wobble.
 
Has anyone ever tried flattening with a sous vide instead of an oven? My thought is that you can control the temp in the range that is needed very well. Water would transfer heat better than air. I think biggest concern is messing up the inlay
 
@Colquhoun trick of using the heating pad works wonders. My advice is the same as many other members. Use the least amount of heat and least amount of pressure required to do the job. I don’t have a temp readout for my knock off heating pad so I just set it to medium for 10 mins- no preheat but I’m sure different pads are all different.
 
Has anyone ever tried flattening with a sous vide instead of an oven? My thought is that you can control the temp in the range that is needed very well. Water would transfer heat better than air. I think biggest concern is messing up the inlay
I might be concerned about water getting under or damaging the labels with a 20 minute soak. Not really sure my clamps would appreciate that either.
 
I might be concerned about water getting under or damaging the labels with a 20 minute soak. Not really sure my clamps would appreciate that either.
With a sous vide, the item isn’t getting wet because it’s in a plastic bag, right?
 
Initially I was thinking you’d raw dog it with no bag but you could probably use a bag. Probably have to make sure the crease isn’t where the clamp is
 
Initially I was thinking you’d raw dog it with no bag but you could probably use a bag. Probably have to make sure the crease isn’t where the clamp is
I was thinking you could use the sous vide to warm the chips then dump them out of the bag and clamp.
 
I feel like the labels would be okay if they were submerged in water. People soak chips when cleaning. Here we’re doing the same thing but the chips are compressed which also would somewhat prevent the labels from soaking up water. I feel like as long as you give them time to dry properly, they would be ok.

I have no experience removing labels so I have no idea how easy/hard it might be to remove them if soaked. I might have to search for some crappy chips to test this out
 
With a sous vide, the item isn’t getting wet because it’s in a plastic bag, right?
Normally, yes. Getting the rig in a bag big enough and extracting the air feels like it would be a greater challenge than the verified-successful heating blanket.

I was thinking you could use the sous vide to warm the chips then dump them out of the bag and clamp.
I'm not sure how quickly the chips would cool, plus you would need to be 100% certain that your clamping rig was perfect if you were tightening down on soft chips. "Oops, that one is out of line" would trash the chip.
 
Normally, yes. Getting the rig in a bag big enough and extracting the air feels like it would be a greater challenge than the verified-successful heating blanket.
You can bag the chips and then clamp from the outside. Probably have to use a metal clamp also
 
You can bag the chips and then clamp from the outside. Probably have to use a metal clamp also
You want to make sure the chips remain in-line for equal pressure. I'm not saying it cannot be done, but it feels to me like it would be more effort than it's worth.

As a fan of cooking sous-vide, I love the perfect temperature control. I'm not a fan of putting a wood clamp in water, and I'd be concerned with corrosion with metal - but that is just me, and the clamps may be perfectly fine.
 
With the heating pad method, I’ve always heated first, then took the warm chips and stacked them in a rack, then transfer to the clamp.
I got the hang of it fairly quickly and was able to soon clamp them without any offset chips.
 
Does this work for ceramic chips too? Any experience with This method and Ceramic chips? Will clamping alone do the job or is baking at elevated temp a necessity? I ordered a chip clamp earlier this AM so now need some direction as to how to achieve the desired results. Thanks!
 
Anyone out here who takes payment to flatten warped chips? I have about 100-120 Paulson THC Solids that could use it.
Do you have a picture of your chips to see what you are dealing with? I have everything but haven't needed to flatten anything yet.
 
I’m getting ready to do 3+ racks of MINTY 🫢🤐😏 greens solids. Just got the last of my “warp flattening kit” and am firing up the oven right now. I’ll post pics when completed. With 300+ chips, it may take a bit.
 
I'll do em for you..

Send me a dm. I've flattened tens of thousands.

Like everything, 1st time you do a so so job in 3x the amt of time. By the 4th or 5 time you are doing an expert job in 1/3 the time
I’ll send you a DM with some pics once I get the chance!
 
I’ll send you a DM with some pics once I get the chance!
No need to take pics on my account (unless you want to that is)
It is somewhat difficult to get a good pic of it, but you can see it easily. All you have to do is take a barrel and hold them with your thumb on bottom and index finger on top and hold them up to the light about 8" away from your face. Look at the chips with the light in the back and see if you can see slivers of light coming through the stack of chips. If they are all flat, you won't see any. If they are warped you will see some or even a lot of light. It does not take much and the stacks will wobble. Pic below shows what I am talking about really well. The most efficient way to flatten is to just flatten them all. It takes way too much time to try and sort and you will wind up missing some anyway which will defeat the whole purpose of flattening.

 
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No need to take pics on my account (unless you want to that is)
It is somewhat difficult to get a good pic of it, but you can see it easily. All you have to do is take a barrel and hold them with your thumb on bottom and index finger on top and hold them up to the light about 8" away from your face. Look at the chips with the light in the back and see if you can see slivers of light coming through the stack of chips. If they are all flat, you won't see any. If they are warped you will see some or even a lot of light. It does not take much and the stacks will wobble. Pic below shows what I am talking about really well. The most efficient way to flatten is to just flatten them all. It takes way too much time to try and sort and you will wind up missing some anyway which will defeat the whole purpose of flattening.

Here’s a pic of my rack of warped chips!
 

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Agreed! A spacer that is too small or off-center can produce a dent in the face of the clay and make a ridge:
View attachment 1470854

And not using a spacer (or using any chip with a mold) can “telegraph” the mold into the adjacent chips. It’s ugly:
View attachment 1470855
Can you share what temperature and time you used when that transfer occurred?
 
The temp is whatever the high setting on the heating pad was. However, the problem was the amount of pressure I used in the clamp, and the fact that the spacer was a bit off-center. When clamping, only a small amount is needed…just a bit more than what holds the chips in the clamp. Less is definitely better.
And use flat spacers.
 
I’m now experience SOME chips, in this case a rack of RHC, get absolutely putty-like. I noticed they sounded weird when I took them out of the heating pad and I was able to very easily bend one with my fingers. I flattened them immediately with very light pressure. they’re perfect now, but that was rather scary. 😱
 
I’m now experience SOME chips, in this case a rack of RHC, get absolutely putty-like. I noticed they sounded weird when I took them out of the heating pad and I was able to very easily bend one with my fingers. I flattened them immediately with very light pressure. they’re perfect now, but that was rather scary. 😱
I’d be surprised if you didn’t have concave edges now
 

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