Sunday morning question.... why do we call them "ceramics" (1 Viewer)

[Colquhoun]

Those exist.

Just a wild guess….they’re not made of porcelain?

 

[Highli99]

Just a wild guess….they’re not made of porcelain?

I want to say those silly Tiffany & Co sets have porcelain chips.

 

[upNdown]

Gotcha! Like calling a chip with 3 stripes a "Bear Claw" that obviously has 5 claws

This, I will continue to resist. And by the way, that spot pattern has been around for a long time, but they’ve only been called bear claws since around 2019 . . . which is also around the time you showed up. Is this your doing?

 

[CrazyEddie]

I want to say those silly Tiffany & Co sets have porcelain chips.

Got it in one!

https://www.pokerchipforum.com/threads/tiffany-and-co-chip-set.52354/#post-1572969

 

[CrazyEddie]

This, I will continue to resist. And by the way, that spot pattern has been around for a long time, but they’ve only been called bear claws since around 2019 . . . which is also around the time you showed up. Is this your doing?

y'all are making me hungry

 

[CrazyEddie]

Some of the older clay chips have much more "clay" in them then modern chips. Agreed not made in the same fashion as bricks, but definitely much more clay in those compositions than today. The old HHL molds, the old Nevada lodge Diamond Squares before our beloved TRK scrowns were made. Many of these chips almost feel like they are made in the same fashion as bricks though.

Yep, no doubt - the older chips feel different from the newer ones, and they definitely used different formulas! David Spragg has said that the formula CPC uses today is still, essentially, the same formula that Burt Co used in the 1940s. But TRK, Paulson, and BCC all had different formulas from each other (and from CPC/ASM/Burt), and US Playing Card Co had multiple different formulas.

They're all still basically plastic or plastic-like stuff mixed in with a type of clay, but the exact details vary quite a bit and make a big difference in the way they feel!

I love 'em all.

Interesting to the refrence of Ivory multiple times there, never really thought about the fact that they were trying to replicate that, or even the Bone chips. Either of those are going to stans up to thousands of hours of use very well.

The entire modern field of plastics - which are used in, well, darn near everything, and which is one of the most valuable industries that mankind has ever created - came into existence because of...

... billiards.

You see, for the longest time, billiard balls were made from ivory. At one point during the 19th century, billiards became phenomenally popular as a recreation for the growing middle class, and the resulting demand for ivory started to put pressure on elephant populations. This became a problem - not because anyone cared about the elephants, but because the shrinking elephant population started pushing up the price for ivory. So people started looking for an alternative, but all the alternatives were terrible - they just didn't behave like proper billiard balls. They didn't have the right weight, or bounce, or durability, and so forth.

Here's a letter published in The Scientific American, 1864, announcing a $10,000 prize for anyone who can devise an acceptable replacement for ivory in the construction of billiard balls, and describing at some length the deficiencies and disappointments that afflicted all other substitutes known at the time.

The offer of a prize for finding a suitable alternative to the ever-more-expensive ivory spurred John Wesley Hyatt to purchase a patent held by Alexander Parkes. Parkes had developed the first ever synthetic plastic, which he called Parkesine, but he had never been able to find a sustainable commercial application for it. Hyatt further developed the material into something that would be suitable for making billiard balls, and he called it Celluloid. It found uses in many, many items besides billiard balls, such as combs and buttons and decorative objects and, eventually, film stock, giving rise to the film industry in Hollywood. Other synthetic plastics were invented later, but Celluloid was the one that created the market for them.

And one of those uses for Celluloid was in - poker chips.

 

[softchewy]

This, I will continue to resist.

hmmm... what could they be called...

 

[FordPickup92]

So basically we have discovered that they are called "Ceramics" because... Merica and we said so and didn't know what else to call them. Gotcha! Like calling a chip with 3 stripes a "Bear Claw" that obviously has 5 claws... glad we have solved yet another "mystery within our amazing hobby"

It was really a rhetorical quarter anyways. Polyester Polyethylene UHMW just doesn't roll off the tounge quite as easily I guess. Lol

 

[BukNaked36]

No real answer on names but some definite differences in the chips.

Manufacturing process -
- Paulson are compression molded.
- china clays are injection molded - this is a much easier and more economical process.
- I think ceramics are also an injection molded blank

Plastics
- thermoplastics can be melted remolded again - china clays - materials like polyethylene, ABS, nylon, delrin, lexan
- thermosets are typically harder and will burn when you heat them up again, but most can be injection molded. I think ceramics may be thermosets - materials like epoxy, polyester, polyurethane, phenolics. Thermosets stand up to heat better and I think there may be some heat in the "ceramic" printing process.

 

[cpiaaq]

ChipCo probably had something to do with it.

https://web.archive.org/web/20080624052510/http://www.chipco.com/casino_products_protech.html

 

[CrazyEddie]

- I think ceramics are also an injection molded blank

Yep! Very definitely.

Thermosets stand up to heat better and I think there may be some heat in the "ceramic" printing process.

Yep! Also very definitely. The printing process used for ceramics ("ceramics") is called dye sublimation. The image is printed on a sheet of transfer paper using special inks, then the paper is pressed up against the chip's surface using a heated press. Both the ink and the chip's surface slightly vaporize and then cool again, leaving the ink firmly bonded to the plastic.

Here's an old post with some videos showing what the printing process looks like: https://www.pokerchipforum.com/threads/custom-sublimation-chips.77284/#post-1573763

... and another: https://www.pokerchipforum.com/threads/video-of-ceramic-poker-chips-being-made.9088/