I was under the impression that the labor intensive manner in which Paul-Son chips are made, you could pay extra to have those alignments done on purpose. The chips you are showing have multiple alignments, driving the costs up even further. However, it is possible that Paul-Son has figured out a way to automate some of the process, and this chip-set is the result. Perhaps Gene can weigh in on this.

The multiple alignments that I see are: 1. The inlay to the inserts (as you mentioned) and 2. the same thing on the reverse side. In the labor intensive process an operator would have placed 12 or so inlays, face down, in the bottom mold cups, followed by placing the chip blanks in a common orientation on top of the inlay (without disturbing the inlays, and then placing the other inlay (face up) on top of the chip blank, again with a common orientation AND without disturbing the orientation of the chip blank or the inlay below it. Lastly, the upper cups then get fitted to the lower ones, again without disturbing the assembled inlays and chip blanks!

What would be interesting would be to see if there are any of this issue that are not aligned like these.

Jim