Problem with metasilicate and CPC chips (1 Viewer)

allforcharity

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Strange thing happened today when I was doing another large mixed batch of poker chips in the ultrasonic cleaner today. I believe a small amount of clay material reacted with the metasilicate solution and bled off the surface of the chip. Strangely enough, it only happened with a green coloured chip, and it didn't happen with older ASMs of navy, brown, off-white, orange, and black chips.

I do not suggest you use metasilicate with CPC chips without advanced testing. Take a small sample (a few ounces) of the detergent solution and put in a test chip - if there is an immediate change in colour of the detergent solution, dump the chip into some rinse water and do not proceed further. It might be worth doing this simple test with any ASM chip as well.

Any corroboration of this issue would be helpful.
 
Dye chemistry is fascinating and complex. The dye for green that can hold up to the chip manufacturing process may be a completely different type of chemical than the dye for orange. Go to Wikipedia for dye and you'll find at least ten chemical families. Your home chemistry experiment may have just discovered that the green dye is a different family than all the other colors, and reacts to your metasilicate where the others do not.

And I could be completely wrong.
 
Yes, apparently ASM/CPC chips are not recommended to use TSP or the "fake-TSP" (metasilicate) - I used a Simple Green and Water solution to clean a set of ASM chips and didn't notice any ill effect.
 
I have had no problems whatsoever with old ASMs. I have cleaned many hundreds with the same methods. It only happened to these green CPCs.

Oh, and Paulsons will stand the test of time in an ultrasonic cleaner. I had one white chip that looked like it had been sealed in road tar for 10 years. Spent more than 30 minutes in the ultrasonic with nary a problem.
 
yeah i sucked some color out of my Paulson Snappers using the chemical. (cant spell it and sodium mestillicate???? or something like that) I found out that 10 mins in a 100 watt ultrasonic is too much.
 
yeah i sucked some color out of my Paulson Snappers using the chemical. (cant spell it and sodium mestillicate???? or something like that) I found out that 10 mins in a 100 watt ultrasonic is too much.

10 minutes? That's really long. 99% of my Paulson solids come clean within 60-90 seconds, using the rolling salad spinner/chip cage method.
 
10 minutes? That's really long. 99% of my Paulson solids come clean within 60-90 seconds, using the rolling salad spinner/chip cage method.


Lol Yeah thats what i found out too! Hence the warning the ultrasonic looks like it cant do damage. It can!

yeah 90 seconds is the go. and i have the spinner too. works a treat!
 
Okay, just put another 1600 chips or so through the ultrasonic tonight.

Again, the same thing happened. Green ASM clay, reaction with the metasilicate. Didn't happen with any of the other colours I cleaned (off-white, red, black). Didn't happen with some other green DISQ chips in the same batch. Weird.

I continue to urge caution if anybody is using any green-coloured ASM/CPC chip with metasilicate.
 
More weirdness! Cleaned another 1700+ chips tonight, all THC, 95% solids. Very last batch of 100 yellow chips, and colour leaks out onto the towel I use for drying. Turns out there are two different colours in the yellow group, some are more regular Yellow, some are more Mustard-y. Its the mustard ones that lost colour, not the yellows. Maybe the darker ones that lost colour are not Paulson, maybe THC mold licensed out to C&J? They sure felt a little tacky after cleaning, very much like the ASM/CPC green chips I mentioned above. No real damage overall.
 
C&J chips were produced by Burt Co. on the THC mold prior to Paul-Son being formed. Paulson later bought the mold, and some chips were produced for them by Burt Co. prior to starting up their own clay chip production in Las Vegas using new molds, materials, and process.
 
Wow, so they could be even older. Makes sense, as the foil image on these THCs do match some other of my older chips (or at least others I've seen here) that could have been Burt. Thanks for the info.
 

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