TRK chip/dye formula revealed (1 Viewer)

CrazyEddie said:
I don't think there's any water in the formula for clay chips [edit: see note below]. They aren't actually made out of clay. They contain minerals, but those minerals aren't combined with water to make clay which is then shaped and dried to become a hardened ceramic (ceramic chips aren't ceramic either). Instead, plastic is melted and combined with additives, including some minerals. The melted plastic is cooled somewhat and formed into sheets. The chip blanks are cut out of sheets, then placed in the compression molds along with the inlays. The compression molds heat the plastic until it cures, i.e. until it solidifies rather than melting (aka thermosetting).

I can't speak authoritatively, but here's a great reference that appears to have gotten detailed information about the process from some authoritative source (alas, that source is not named): https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/read/3648279/game-counters-and-casino-chips-roulette-research

And here's an informative picture from that reference:

View attachment 552131


Edited to add: I have no idea whether the base formula includes any water. My point was that the basic material and process is plastic-like, rather than clay-like. Some plastic formulas might include water in their early stages - I don't know. They might use water, or various solvents, or maybe nothing more than plain raw dry melted vinyl. No idea; haven't seen any better references yet that might shed light there. But definitely TR King et al weren't making clay (i.e. mixing fine clay minerals plus water), they were melting plastic.
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And then inlay insertion / foil stamping, and then precision lathing at the end to uniform diameters, right?
 
CrazyEddie said:
I don't think there's any water in the formula for clay chips [edit: see note below]. They aren't actually made out of clay. They contain minerals, but those minerals aren't combined with water to make clay which is then shaped and dried to become a hardened ceramic (ceramic chips aren't ceramic either). Instead, plastic is melted and combined with additives, including some minerals. The melted plastic is cooled somewhat and formed into sheets. The chip blanks are cut out of sheets, then placed in the compression molds along with the inlays. The compression molds heat the plastic until it cures, i.e. until it solidifies rather than melting (aka thermosetting).

I can't speak authoritatively, but here's a great reference that appears to have gotten detailed information about the process from some authoritative source (alas, that source is not named): https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/read/3648279/game-counters-and-casino-chips-roulette-research

And here's an informative picture from that reference:

View attachment 552131


Edited to add: I have no idea whether the base formula includes any water. My point was that the basic material and process is plastic-like, rather than clay-like. Some plastic formulas might include water in their early stages - I don't know. They might use water, or various solvents, or maybe nothing more than plain raw dry melted vinyl. No idea; haven't seen any better references yet that might shed light there. But definitely TR King et al weren't making clay (i.e. mixing fine clay minerals plus water), they were melting plastic.
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Thanks for that link, really cool write-up!
 
allforcharity said:
And then inlay insertion / foil stamping, and then precision lathing at the end to uniform diameters, right?
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The inlays get added during the compression molding step. That's one of the distinctive features of compression molding - the inlay is pressed into the chip surface at the same time that the chip is molded and cured into its final shape; the inlay actually becomes a part of the chip surface. It takes on whatever texture the mold has, and there's no seam between the edge of the inlay and the chip.

Injection-molded chips like China Clays don't have inlays, they have decals. The chip is molded into its final shape as a blank, and then the decal (aka label aka sticker) is applied afterwards using adhesive. If you take a close look at a lower-cost chip you'll see that the decal is placed both within the molded recess but also on top of the surface of the recessed area. Whereas with a Paulson you'll see that the inlay is flush with the surface of the recess.

Once the chips come out of the molds, they're eventually lathed (or some similar process - some people have better knowledge of the details) just as you say. That lathing is an important step, I think... I've seen pictures of chips that have just come out of the molds, and the edges looked surprisingly ragged, with "flashing" where some of the plastic was squeezed out of the molds.

Hotstamping probably comes after that; some manufacturers kept inventories of hotstampable blanks and would either hotstamp them on demand from customer orders or provide them to resellers who would do the hotstamping themselves. So those blanks were probably completely finished and ready to go, other than getting the foil hotstamp applied.
 
Surely there's gotta be someone here in the chemistry field that works in a lab or know someone that can test the composition if a chip similar to sending an engine oil sample for testing
 
CrazyEddie said:
The inlays get added during the compression molding step. That's one of the distinctive features of compression molding - the inlay is pressed into the chip surface at the same time that the chip is molded and cured into its final shape; the inlay actually becomes a part of the chip surface. It takes on whatever texture the mold has, and there's no seam between the edge of the inlay and the chip.

Injection-molded chips like China Clays don't have inlays, they have decals. The chip is molded into its final shape as a blank, and then the decal (aka label aka sticker) is applied afterwards using adhesive. If you take a close look at a lower-cost chip you'll see that the decal is placed both within the molded recess but also on top of the surface of the recessed area. Whereas with a Paulson you'll see that the inlay is flush with the surface of the recess.

Once the chips come out of the molds, they're eventually lathed (or some similar process - some people have better knowledge of the details) just as you say. That lathing is an important step, I think... I've seen pictures of chips that have just come out of the molds, and the edges looked surprisingly ragged, with "flashing" where some of the plastic was squeezed out of the molds.

Hotstamping probably comes after that; some manufacturers kept inventories of hotstampable blanks and would either hotstamp them on demand from customer orders or provide them to resellers who would do the hotstamping themselves. So those blanks were probably completely finished and ready to go, other than getting the foil hotstamp applied.
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Noteworthy to mention that with some compression mold chip processes, the slug and inserts (edge spots) are pressed together once initially, and then pressed a second time to add the inlay and the final mold markings. Sometimes different cups of different designs are used for the first and second pressings, with the intent that the second pressing will obscure or 'overwrite' the mold markings of the first pressing.... although ocassionally 'ghosting' will occur, where faint markings from the first pressing can still be seen in the finished product.

Post-pressing finish machining for cleanup and to size is typically done by either grinding or lathing, pending the specific manufacturer's process.


K ALL IN 9 said:
Surely there's gotta be someone here in the chemistry field that works in a lab or know someone that can test the composition if a chip similar to sending an engine oil sample for testing
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It was done years ago, by a couple of different people. @meddler submitted a PGI china clay chip and a Paulson chip for analysis..... far from being identical in composition or ingedient percentages, but there were some similar compounds found in both chips.
 
BGinGA said:
Sometimes different cups of different designs are used for the first and second pressings, with the intent that the second pressing will obscure or 'overwrite' the mold markings of the first pressing.... although ocassionally 'ghosting' will occur, where faint markings from the first pressing can still be seen in the finished product.
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Oh, cool! Didn't know that. Definitely going to be on the lookout for some "ghosted" chips to add to my collection.

far from being identical in composition or ingedient percentages, but there were some similar compounds found in both chips.
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The surprising finding was that leaded shaped-inlay Paulsons contain ~35% ground unicorn hooves.
 
CrazyEddie said:
It's a guess as to exactly what's in these things, but maybe when anyone says "lead" they actually mean "lead monosilicate" which, from a super-cursory google search, is about half as dense as lead.
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anything that lists a metal is going to be a salt of that metal, not the metal itself. Nobody is grinding up lead and putting it into a recipe.
There’s more here than just color and weight, plastic shit that’s heated changes size when it’s heated and when it’s cooled. Think about cake batter when you make a cake, it expands to full the pan but as it cools it shrinks away from the walls. Chips are no different if you just throw “clay” in there. And if you think you can just add more material to account for shrinkage then your busting molds and popping seals.
There's a lot more to dealing with materials that exhibit plastic behavior and heat and pressure than just mixing some shit in your blender.
 
allforcharity said:
Several runs through a mass spectrometer should get the answers that you need. Unfortunately, you'll have to do it for each unique colour.
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About 10 years ago, as BGinGA mentioned above, a couple of chippers on Chiptalk.com did a mass spectrometer type analysis of a Paulson chip, an ASM chip, and a China clay chip. There was a lot of discussion about the results, which is now likely lost because the website is gone, and the WayBackMachine did not archive very deep into the website. Maybe someone here has a better memory than myself about what the main takeaway findings were.

Before ChipTalk.com disappeared, however, I did at some point save the image files of the chip composition/element analysis. I thought it would be useful to post those images here, so that they are accessible to everyone. Maybe someone with more of a chemistry background can interpret what they all mean. Too bad they didn't analyze a TRK chip, so that we could compare the ingredients to the spectral type analysis.

1602815175469.png

1602815700855.png
1602815837418.png
 
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Jeff in Iowa said:
About 10 years ago, as BGinGA mentioned above, a couple of chippers on Chiptalk.com did a mass spectrometer type analysis of a Paulson chip, an ASM chip, and a China clay chip. There was a lot of discussion about the results, which is now likely lost because the website is gone, and the WayBackMachine did not archive very deep into the website. Maybe someone here has a better memory than myself about what the main takeaway findings were.

Before ChipTalk.com disappeared, however, I did at some point save the image files of the chip composition/element analysis. I thought it would be useful to post those images here, so that they are accessible to everyone. Maybe someone with more of a chemistry background can interpret what they all mean. Too bad they didn't analyze a TRK chip, so that we could compare the ingredients to the spectral type analysis.

View attachment 553493
View attachment 553495View attachment 553497
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Interestingly enough, my grandfather spent almost 40 years in the geology department for a very well known glass company. He specialized in glass development and owns well over 100 patents if I recall correctly. I'm wondering if he ever used this type of mass spectrometer analysis in his work -- I reached out to him and I can get back to everyone when he replies.
 
Lapoda88 said:
Interestingly enough, my grandfather spent almost 40 years in the geology department for a very well known glass company. He specialized in glass development and owns well over 100 patents if I recall correctly. I'm wondering if he ever used this type of mass spectrometer analysis in his work -- I reached out to him and I can get back to everyone when he replies.
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That being said, after some quick googling, (and this may be self-apparent to most people), each spike in the graph represents a certain element. In the case of the Paulson graph: Carbon, Oxygen, Silicon, Sulfur, Chlorine, and Barium. How those elements relate to the certain materials/minerals used in the composition of the chip would be a question for someone much more knowledgeable than me. It is interesting to see the differences between the three chips though. It seems that the china clay is more complex than the Paulson & ASM (due to injection molding vs compression molding?) Who knows...
 
Lapoda88 said:
Interestingly enough, my grandfather spent almost 40 years in the geology department for a very well known glass company. He specialized in glass development and owns well over 100 patents if I recall correctly. I'm wondering if he ever used this type of mass spectrometer analysis in his work -- I reached out to him and I can get back to everyone when he replies.
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After talking with him a bit he said that whenever he analyzed graphs like these he was doing it mainly to find defects in the glass, not to find the composition of a material. Nevertheless, his main takeaways were that the high amounts of carbon and oxygen were a majority of the material in the chip, which makes it very hard to determine the separate materials. The sulfur in all three of the chips can be attributed to the dyes found within them; he also said sulfur is nasty stuff to work with so I probably won't be making my own chips with sulfur anytime soon. The rest of the material for weight & extra strength. Not sure how much more you could gather from the graphs beyond that.
 
No matter how good an organic/inorganic chemist you are, I don't think anybody could take a mass spec readout and be able to pinpoint chemical structures. There are just too many possibilities as the constituent list gets longer and longer. Even a powerful computer is likely only able to give you % likelihoods of chemical compositions. As soon as you start adding in organic fibres like cotton and such, I think accuracy goes out the window.
 
CrazyEddie said:
The inlays get added during the compression molding step. That's one of the distinctive features of compression molding - the inlay is pressed into the chip surface at the same time that the chip is molded and cured into its final shape; the inlay actually becomes a part of the chip surface. It takes on whatever texture the mold has, and there's no seam between the edge of the inlay and the chip.

Injection-molded chips like China Clays don't have inlays, they have decals. The chip is molded into its final shape as a blank, and then the decal (aka label aka sticker) is applied afterwards using adhesive. If you take a close look at a lower-cost chip you'll see that the decal is placed both within the molded recess but also on top of the surface of the recessed area. Whereas with a Paulson you'll see that the inlay is flush with the surface of the recess.

Once the chips come out of the molds, they're eventually lathed (or some similar process - some people have better knowledge of the details) just as you say. That lathing is an important step, I think... I've seen pictures of chips that have just come out of the molds, and the edges looked surprisingly ragged, with "flashing" where some of the plastic was squeezed out of the molds.

Hotstamping probably comes after that; some manufacturers kept inventories of hotstampable blanks and would either hotstamp them on demand from customer orders or provide them to resellers who would do the hotstamping themselves. So those blanks were probably completely finished and ready to go, other than getting the foil hotstamp applied.
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Not sure if this picture has been posted before, but this shows some key west chips directly after they have been pressed. Very interesting to see how much material is actually pushed out during the process.

3622870.jpg
 
I love that picture! Look at all that ooey gooey chocolate getting squished out of the cookies! :)

1610208909781.png
 
btw, if you (or anyone!) has more pictures showing the manufacturing process I sure would love to see 'em!
 
CrazyEddie said:
I don't think there's any water in the formula for clay chips [edit: see note below]. They aren't actually made out of clay. They contain minerals, but those minerals aren't combined with water to make clay which is then shaped and dried to become a hardened ceramic (ceramic chips aren't ceramic either). Instead, plastic is melted and combined with additives, including some minerals. The melted plastic is cooled somewhat and formed into sheets. The chip blanks are cut out of sheets, then placed in the compression molds along with the inlays. The compression molds heat the plastic until it cures, i.e. until it solidifies rather than melting (aka thermosetting).

I can't speak authoritatively, but here's a great reference that appears to have gotten detailed information about the process from some authoritative source (alas, that source is not named): https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/read/3648279/game-counters-and-casino-chips-roulette-research

And here's an informative picture from that reference:

View attachment 552131


Edited to add: I have no idea whether the base formula includes any water. My point was that the basic material and process is plastic-like, rather than clay-like. Some plastic formulas might include water in their early stages - I don't know. They might use water, or various solvents, or maybe nothing more than plain raw dry melted vinyl. No idea; haven't seen any better references yet that might shed light there. But definitely TR King et al weren't making clay (i.e. mixing fine clay minerals plus water), they were melting plastic.
Click to expand...
I’m thinking as you are
 

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