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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;cwtokenman, post: 83558, member: 2100&quot;]I would think that with the modern technology one could cleanly cut slabs open and reseal them if access was available to the proper tools. Tpgs use sonic welders to seal slabs, so it would make sense to utilize the same technology to reseal a slab. The hardest part about being able to undetectably reseal an opened slab is being able to cleanly open the slab with minimal material removal. </p><p><br /></p><p>Sonic welders work best with smooth surfaces, and maintaining a consistent gap of only a few thousandths of an inch is important. Its been about 15 years since I worked with sonic welders, so it is possible modern ones have been developed to be a bit more forgiving. But they are not hard to use after a little practice. They are often for sale on ebay, as when I just looked there was one sitting in the $200 range.</p><p><br /></p><p>With that said, the hard part would be how would one cleanly open a slab with minimal removal of material? I have not done any recent research on modern machine tools and methodology, but I read the occasional trade magazine and I find many modern machining procedures to be utterly incredible. I know when I worked for a high precision grinder manufacturer, our grinders could maintain production part tolerances of 4 millionths of an inch. That would be like if you took one of your hairs, and made 1,000 vertical cuts through the diameter, then the thickness of one of the slices would be the range of size variance for the parts being produced. There are high speed/high pressure milling machines that can rapidly remove large amounts of metal (aluminum in the article I read) and leave large areas that are only 4 or 5 thousandths thick, essentially the capability of milling (removing) large volumes of aluminum down to (leaving) foil thickness. Those are just two examples of machining capabilities that even machinists may not be aware of.</p><p><br /></p><p>EDM (electrical discharge machining) machines may be able to be used. This machine employs a technique in which the material is removed by the erosive action of electrical discharges (sparks) provided by a generator. I do not know if this machine will work on plastics, but I do know that it will cut at least some non-metals such as polycrystalline diamond and ceramics. These machines have a high degree of accuracy in cutting. This same phenomenon is applied at the micron level for micromachining. The process is called micro-EDM. EDMs on ebay - most are in the $1,000 to $5,000 range.</p><p><br /></p><p>CO2 lasers are definitely able to cut plastics. They can make cuts as narrow as .010&quot;, the thickness of a few hairs. They are also capable of doing three dimensional cutting. I have not personally seen one in operation to comment on the quality of the cut. Ebay - small ones starting at $79.95, manly ones starting at $85,000, and much of the range in between is available as well.</p><p><br /></p><p>I have been out of the machine tool industry for about 5 years, but most of the drive for development was in the areas of small/fine/precision/finish machining, so there are very likely more refined processes than I am currently aware of, but I do indeed believe it very possible to open and reseal slabs while not being easily detected. However, I can not say if anyone has or is doing that. I suppose another possibility, possibly even easier to carry out, would be just to duplicate (counterfeit) the slab itself and not worry about opening an existing slab.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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