The Challenge Of Challenge Coins

This is a project I’ve been thinking about doing for quite some time, and this is just the first phase of it. For the uninitiated a challenge coin is a coin or medallion representing an organization or individual. They’re used as identifiers of those belonging to the organization or as a show of respect or acknowledgement when given to others. They are very popular with the military, where they originated. The “challenge” part is classically at a gathering or in a bar when everyone pulls out their coins and if you don’t have yours, or are outranked, you’re buying a round of drinks. There are many more customs involved, and they extend past the military. I’ve designed mine as a gesture of good will and acknowledgement of the skills, knowledge or personality of an individual, or “nerd cred”. It states as much on the front and has the core values of Nerds&Makers on the back.

This is phase 1, prototyping and design. I’ve been printing iterations on my Elegoo Mars printer and doing a faux finish on them. In phase 2 I will print molds and cast them in pewter (if all goes according to plan). This is the third iteration of the design. The changes are subtle, mostly depth of features related, although I did completely forget to model the date into the first two. On the first one “Nerd Cred” was too proud (sticking up too much) as was the skull and glasses as well as “Nerds&makers” on the back. I also thought the laurel wasn’t prominent enough as well as numerous depth issues all over. On the second one things are about right, but the icons on the back were too proud, as was “Nerds&Makers”, it was also about then I noticed I failed to add the date that was clearly in the original design.

The coin was modeled in Fusion360. I imported the artwork done in photoshop as canvases and used them for reference. Originally I planned to export all the text and maybe some of the graphics as .svg files and use them in Fusion360 to extrude the lettering. While this sort of worked I discovered there’s an existing bug in Fusion360 that prevents adding a filet or chamfer to the text after it’s been extruded. So I had to use the imported images as reference and trace all the lettering in sketches. This made the process far slower, taking two days of work to model the coin.

Designing these was a lot of fun, I hope you enjoy the video, and I look forward to slapping one of these in your hand should we meet some day.