How do they make coins?

Answer 1

Hammer Forge Method:

First they cut out round blanks. Then they design a template of the reverse of the image and mount it on a drop hammer forge that pounds the image into the blank. The hammer forge method is suitable mostly when making small numbers of coins.

Machine Method:

Modern coins are made in such large quantities that production has to be mechanized.

The front (obverse) and back (reverse) designs are first created by an artist. A sculptor then cuts these designs into circular pieces of sculptable material, usually plaster. The plaster models are much larger than the actual coins so that the sculptor can work on them more easily and with greater detail.

Next the designs are traced by a special machine called a reducing lathe. The lathe mechanically "reads" the designs off the model and makes smaller copies in metal, the same size as the coin itself. The metal copies are hardened and used to force a reverse image into dies - still other pieces of metal that will be used to strike the coins themselves. Many dies can be made from one master copy, allowing for mass production. The dies are then mounted in mechanical coin presses

The metal that will be used for the coins comes in huge rolls that have already been flattened to the correct thickness. They're unrolled and fed into a machine that punches out blanks (planchets) that are approximately the same diameter as the finished coins.

After being punched, planchets are fed into an "upsetting" machine that squeezes them very slightly in order to add a raised edge. From there the planchets are fed into presses that have the obverse and reverse dies mounted opposite each other. Each planchet falls into a holder called a collar. The dies are then forced together which strikes the images on each side. This process happens at very high speed and on an enormous scale to fill the demand for millions or even billions of coins each year.