The Royal Mint
The Royal Mint is the main UK coin producer, which was moved to the south Wales in 1960 after being in London for three decades. It manufactures 3 billion coins annually, however less than half of them are made for the UK market. All the other coins are minted for countries abroad. The company is the largest exporter of coins in the world and it sells its products to approximately 60 different states. Traditionally, the Royal Mint used three kinds of metal to mint coins: copper, nickel and brass, however nowadays only steel is used for this purpose. The company is also engaged in creating coins for collections and big events.
The coins were originally manufactured by melting metal in the oven to form large sheets of metal, which were further cut into disks and forged with a hammer. The screw press that was used in coin production functioned by turning a horizontal bar, which drove the screw, which was moulding coins. The basic stages of minting coins are “blank”, make, tool, design and strike. A blanking machine was used to create plain metal sheets and to punch little blank metal discs. The most commonly used tool for shaping coins was a die. The reduction punch was used to squeeze soft metal in order to produce the die. Since the upper part of the die was replaced more often, its design was rather simple compared to its bottom part, which was more complex and mostly remained unchanged.
The penny of William was very thin and was produced using little metal, while the geni of Charles II was thicker and was coined from gold. The ten penny coin today contains more copper than nickel, and the cost of melting it exceeds its value. The quality of coins greatly improved during the reign of George III, when they were firstly made from copper slabs. Nowadays cutting machines use for cutting plain sheets of steel and imprinting designs on them.
