Square edge poker chips (1 Viewer)

mkejohnson

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Please forgive me if this has been beaten to death. I'm new to the game and appreciate all of the help I've received so far.

Why is it that China clays and other chips besides Paulson have beveled edges? Is there a chip that is not super high end that has square edges? Is there a reason this is so? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
 
Please forgive me if this has been beaten to death. I'm new to the game and appreciate all of the help I've received so far.

Why is it that China clays and other chips besides Paulson have beveled edges? Is there a chip that is not super high end that has square edges? Is there a reason this is so? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Because China clays are really just injection-molded plastics with additives to make them feel more similar to "clay", it is much more difficult to give them sharp edges. I believe there were once China Clays made with sharp edges, but the edges chipped very easily and they ended up falling apart. Paulsons, on the other hand, are compression molded such that they have sharp edges, and then lathed to get perfectly sharp edges, and that's also why you can see faint lines going around the edges of the chip where the lathe pen was. It's possible to do the same with injection molds, but it is generally much more expensive and requires machining on the edges. I believe @BGinGA is currently working on a ceramic chip that will have sharp edges and a recess for labels, and he can expand more on that if he'd like to.
 
There are some molds of Matsuis that have square edges. Examples you'll see here are the world poker series tournament chips and Emerald Bay cash chips. Those are injection molded plastic with metal slugs but also manufactured very precisely and thus carry a price similar to clay.
 
There are some molds of Matsuis that have square edges. Examples you'll see here are the world poker series tournament chips and Emerald Bay cash chips. Those are injection molded plastic with metal slugs but also manufactured very precisely and thus carry a price similar to clay.
Yup, and as with all Matsui chips, they are machined after molding. However, even those do not have edges as sharp as clays and, as you mentioned, they already cost in excess of $1/chip to be made, plus setup fees.
 
Why is it that China clays and other chips besides Paulson have beveled edges? Is there a chip that is not super high end that has square edges? Is there a reason this is so? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Generally speaking, molded chips -- regardless of manufacturing process -- do not have sharp 90 degree edges. This is primarily due to the difficulty of getting material into the 'corners' of a mold, and why most molds have a small radius designed to facilitate the complete filling of the mold cavity.

Some chips undergo one or more finishing steps after being molded, which may include polishing, grinding, and/or machining of the rolling edge, creating either a uniform chamfer or a straight cut edge on the final product.

Inexpensive chips typically have little to no cleanup performed afterwards, because the extra finishing steps add additional costs to the end product. For that reason, sharp edges are typically only seen on high-end chip products marketed to casinos, such as those offered by GPI, CPC, Abiatti, and Matsui.
 
Chips with square edges are inevitably prone to "flea bites". You rarely see a flea bite on anything other than clay chips, particularly Paulson, BCC, and ASM/GOCC.
 
Generally speaking, molded chips -- regardless of manufacturing process -- do not have sharp 90 degree edges. This is primarily due to the difficulty of getting material into the 'corners' of a mold, and why most molds have a small radius designed to facilitate the complete filling of the mold cavity.

And this small radius also allows for easier ejection from the mold, too, for a more efficient process. Post molding finishing is likely more practical than trying to introduce a lubricant step, which can involve a powder or other chemical that may interfere with the stability of the chip.
 
Not to mention dice chips, which have square edges! They're also quite durable, unlike these "Paulsons" everyone keeps talking about, which get dinged and gouged just by picking them up in your hands, or so it seems.

Seriously, though - their edges aren't quite as sharp as mint clays, which as @BGinGA points out is due to the difficulty of getting a perfectly square corner in a mold and the lack of post-molding machining to cut the edges into sharp square shape. But they and many other bottom-end chips do have square corners - more square than the beveled edges of some china clays and some Matsuis - and are made out of very hard plastic which doesn't wear as easily as the softer plastic used in clays.
 

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