This paper reports on the design, fabrication, and performance evaluation of a new force plate. The force plate is unique in that it can be manufactured “in house” using conventional machine tools for substantially lower cost than commercially available units. To achieve these attributes, the force plate embodies four octagonal strain ring sensing elements that are instrumented with conventional strain gauges. Strain gauge signals are amplified by simple signal conditioning circuits with a low component count. Despite the simplicity of the design, a calibration and accuracy check revealed root mean squared errors of 14 N for the vertical force component and less than 11 N for the horizontal force components.