The Steps
The Royal Canadian Mint produced the Rick Hansen Medal from its Ottawa facility. The process involved the following nine steps:
Step 1: Casting Bars
The base metal for the Rick Hansen Medal is sterling silver which is a mixture of 92.5% silver and 7.5% copper. The pure silver (99.99% pure) supplied in the form of ingots, is cut into chunks and added to the copper to create a "charge" that will be fed into a continuous casting furnace. The material - once added to the furnace - will be turned into a molten metal mix at approximately 1000 °C. The metal is then pulled through a water cooled die at the bottom of the furnace such that a casted bar is formed.
Step 2: Rolling the Bars
The next process in the making of the medals is to roll the bars to the correct gauge, and then cut into square blanks. Cold rolling is a metalworking process in which metal is deformed by passing it through rollers under pressure. While cold rolling increases the hardness and strength of a metal, it also results in a large decrease in ductility. Thus metals strengthened by cold rolling are more sensitive to the presence of cracks and are prone to brittle fracture. Before this metal can be struck to produce the medals it must first be annealed to remove the brittleness from the metal.
Step 3: Annealing
Annealing is a heat treatment wherein a material is altered, causing changes in its properties that induce ductility, soften material, relieve internal stresses, refine the structure by making it homogeneous, and improves cold working properties. For sterling silver these are temperatures in the range of 600 °C.
Step 4: Burnishing
After the annealing, the blanks are then burnished. Burnishing is employed to make the surface of the blank brighter, remove any surface scaling, discolouration or contaminants. The medals are installed in a holder and then placed in a special machine that tumbles the medal blanks with a mixture of stainless steel balls and special chemicals, which etch and polish and brighten the surface. After this process, the blanks are ready for striking.
Step 5: Lasering of the Dies
While the blanks are being made, the dies for striking them are being produced in a separate area of the plant. One of the last steps in producing the dies is done with a laser. The reverse die used a laser process that simulates 3D surfaces from a 2D picture. In this case, the picture selected was a symbolic glove that was worn during the original Man in Motion tour. The obverse was produced using a combination of laser engraving and several different laser frostings.
Step 6: Striking
A struck medal is produced by a metal blank being placed between two dies (obverse and reverse) under tremendous pressure. The pressure used to create the Rick Hansen Medal was 1700 tons which is equivalent to approximately 700 midsized cars piled on top of each other.
Step 7: Machining Operations
The final shape of the medals is achieved in the machining operations. The splash created after the blank was struck is removed by a CNC (computer numerical controlled) milling machine, so that the medal becomes round. The slot for the ribbon is then milled at the top of the medal. Both the trimming and milling processes requires that the medal is secured by a jig on each side. After this operation, the medal surfaces are cleaned to remove any loose machining and/or machine fluid.
Step 8: Clear Clad
A protective coating is applied to the medals to protect them from tarnishing from the thousands of hands that will come in contact with the medal along the Relay Route. This process involves another electroplating process that deposits a clear durable coating over the medals, through a series of tanks that rinse, and coat the medals, with a final process of curing in an infra red oven.
Step 9: Sewing Ribbons
The final process in the manufacturing of the medal involves the sewing of the ribbons.
For more information on the Rick Hansen 25th Anniversary Relay, including how to enter for your chance to participate in the Relay, please visit www.RickHansenRelay.com.
