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An edge-lettering machine.

The laptop battery died right after the camera battery died ... so while I'm waiting to be able to post more pictures, let's recap the whole, huge coinage operation ....

In a huge room, about three stories high, and more than 100 feet long, are all sorts of blue machines, of assorted sizes, all of them with some sorts of chutes or pipes or conveyers.
The sounds of plinks and clangs and clinks punctuate the loud background drone that necessitates the ear plugs.

Big rolls of metal sheets are slowly unspooled into a big blue box called a blanking machine. It basically punches out the slugs. Into little trays in a conveyer belt they go, then come tumbling down a chute into a bins.

Those blanks then go to the upsetting machines that add smooth and enlarge the edges.

Then onto more machines ... the annealing machine, which heats and softens the metal for striking ... a washer ... a dryer ... a burnisher ... and then the coining press which adds the front and back designs.

Forklifts carry bins of coins which are raised so the coins can funnel into conveyer trays that rise to drop the coins into the press. Each coin drops into a vertical space where it becomes a slam sandwich between two dies. One die is stationary while the other rams with about 80 tons of pressure to strike a single coin, says Grant.

Then comes the edge-lettering machine, which rolls the coins on edge across a die that has raised letters and numbers, imprinting that "In God We Trust" and "E Pluribus Unum" and the year and mint initial. (They're also minted in Denver.)

Finally, it's time for the count and bag machine.