Challenge Coins: The journey so far!

[techquest89]

So after some trial and error with the stock coin my F2U came with, I realized a few things:

#1 the default directions are wrong

#2 cleaning passes are overrated (more on this later)

#3 Cleaning text with cheap wire blocks is a great way to get a wire stuck in your foot

#4…..invest in a pair of pliers or a heat gun to avoid burning part of your fingerprints off….

I started by having several issues

The default direction of embossing the coins is to remove the slat bed and put it directly onto the base of the laser

What ended up happening though is that once it got through the first 3-6 passes it would defocus and stop removing layers. After several refocuses and recalibrations, I noticed that unless it was slightly higher then what I’ll call 0 level, it wouldn’t get any meaningful measurements with the auto focus, and even setting it manually was causing some oddity. After checking around I found I wasn’t the only one with this issue, and it seems to be an upcoming fix with their next software update.

After the second recal and focus alignment, I figured I can do dogtags easily with the slats bed so…why not give it a shot.

Success! I was able to get meaningful progress, the coin was pretty great once it was all done and that’s when I learned the hard way, something I forgot from my blacksmithing days….metal gets hot!

Coin was picked up and immediately thrown into the sawdust pile because I’m a dumbass

After a quick cleaning with the Dremel it was ready for initial polishing with a wire brush

From there it was pretty textbook: polish with wire wheel, use a broze blackener and then polish again. The coin itself came out much better in person then in the picture as the flash makes the shadowing not show up very nicely. But the coin in person is quite stunning.

Cleaning passes suck:

I did another coin yesterday for my best friend in the Air Force, and added a cleaning pass, which added an additional 45 minutes to the process. I’m sure I could probably tweak the rest of the settings but right now I’m in “it works so I’m in not gonna touch it” mode. But more importantly then the amount of time, it actually killed some of the super fine details of this design.

This is where my wire wheels also started to shead their wires which honestly sucked when I stepped on one before bed. Now admittedly I also have cheaper ones so I’ll probably invest in those at some point.

I’ve got a dragon coin with some high details qued up for myself today, and I’m also working on engineering something of my own air filter as I don’t feel like spending 600$ on the one they offer.

Till the next

Hock

[rappee25407]

Great job so far. These are looking great and I am sure you will be successful in modifying the flow so that they can be made in quantity with your usual great quality. Thanks for sharing your journey so far.

[davidgal2]

I collected challenge coins when I was working with the military. We gave our unit coins to some of the military members that we worked with and had to purchase our coins from our unit at $20 each which kind of expensive when we bought 5 or 6.

[wenning08]

Looks great

[techquest89]

Yeahhhh I was pricing out what some of these custom jobs, I’m seeing pricing upwards of 90-130$ per coin!

[rvogt]

those look amazing! The detail is awesome. Great job.

[cynd11]

It looks great! You’ll have a blast (forgive the pun) making these.

Some tips that I learned that may help:

1. You shouldn’t need 45 minutes to do a cleaning pass; just a few seconds. Maybe modify your cleaning pass conditions to go lower power and less time.
2. I too had the focus issue. I think the reality is that the optimum focus is different each time and needs to be adjusted every time. At least that’s how it’s worked out for me. I got great advice from one of the YouTube channels (forget which one). You focus as best you can then start the run. Watch while it makes one pass, then stop the run by holding down the remote bar. Use the manual up and down button to raise or lower the focus by a tiny amount, then double click the start bar to start the run again. If the laser contact is brighter, you are on the right track, and can keep doing this process until maximum brightness is achieved during engraving. Until I started doing this, I was not able to get any significant depth to my engravings and things were taking a huge amount of time. With the F2, you should be able to get through that metal like butter!
3. Get some blank aluminum plates to use for jigs, to protect your base plate. They are pretty cheap and a lot cheaper than replacing the base plate if you got your engraving out of line: Amazon.com

[jeanneleigh]

Wow, I am so impressed! These look really great!

[kd4bears]

Your coins look great. I have to ask where do you get the coins and what setting on the glow forge you use

[techquest89]

I get them from Amazon and I’m not using the glowforge for this, you have to use a fiber laser to cut into metal. I have the xTool F2 Ultra Mopa laser

[CarterTG]

Fantastic results, but I would’ve presumed that prolonged YouTube binging watching others make challenge coins the point to NEVER IMMEDIATELY TOUCH a freshly engraved coin should be seared in the brain first.

Instead of dealing with wire brushes, give bristle discs a try. Mine are some of the most often-reached rotary bits on my workbench. The ones pictured are from 3M, but I suppose there are knock-offs throughout Amazon and AliExpress. They come in various abrasive levels. Stack several discs to cover large areas. I’ve stayed with the yellow one for cleaning off discoloration when welding gold, silver, or titanium.