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Message:: [QUOTE="Tom Maringer, post: 177981, member: 7033"]Automated machinery??? There is no point to automation for the scale of fantasy coins that I think you're talking about. I'm often asked about where to get "one of those machines that does everything". People seem to think that there's a machine that you just feed metal into and coins come out. Not that simple! The process must be divided into at least two parts... blank-making and striking. You simply cannot do it all at once. Each of those two processes can be automated... but that's really only worthwhile if you are needing quantities of thousands per day. Automation involves highly complex and expensive sub-systems that take days or weeks to build and set up for each run. A modern Schuler press with feed-table and blank-hopper can run at about 350 strikes per minute and costs about a half-million dollars. It's fun to dream about, but if you're a hobbyist wanting show tokens or something like that you probably only want 1000 strikes or so from each die-set... and there's no point in spending the week setting that Schuler up so you can run it for just three minutes! It makes much more sense to use slower manual presses which can strike something like 5 or 10 coins per minute and cost one or two thousand dollars. You can set that up in a couple hours, and in a few hours more you've got your thousand coins. Plus, it's much more fun to use the antique type presses and do things the old-timey way.[/QUOTE]