Soft enamel pins are likely the first style that comes to mind when you think about creating custom pins. That’s because the process used for making these pins is a common and traditional one, and the resulting style of pins are some of the most recognizable around. With so many years of experience with this process, We can create beautiful quality custom soft enamel pins quickly and affordably, and to your specific requirements.
Why Custom Enamel Lapel Pins?
Enamel pins are by far the most versatile pins you can work with. The instantly recognizable combination of metal outlining your design and smooth, shiny enamel on the inside is popular with both the corporate crowd and the counter culture.
Whether you want to share your company brand with employees and customers, spread the word about a hot new band, or trade pins at a baseball little league tournament, custom enamel pins are the solution. They can be corporate, quirky, subtle or outrageous, and with three different enamel processes available, you’re sure to get exactly what you need.
Uses for Custom Enamel Lapel Pins
- Corporate recognition
- Team trading pins
- Music and arts festivals
- Fundraising
- Awareness
- Fashion
- Awards
1 Step: Design Drawing
Perfect design or ideas is the soul of the product, Our in-house designer will design drawings according to customer requirements.
2 Step: Finish 3D Model
The customer confirmed design drawings which are forwarded to the factory mold department programmer. After the 3D model is finished, the production of the badge can be said to really start. A piece of black steel, a mold material, fixed in the engraving machine, the computer program will be compiled according to the 3D model in the black steel, and remove the excess metal parts. Patterns are gradually formed, which is a slow process, different sizes, different complexity of the design, engraving time spent is not the same, short only a few hours, long or even take a few days to complete mold making.
Mold is completed, our factory merchandiser need to carefully compare the just good mold pattern with the design drawings to ensure that the mold pattern is correct. Just good mold and cannot be used immediately, we need to put the mold into the high temperature oven to bake, this is a simple heat treatment process, high temperature makes the carbon content of steel blocks to reduce the hardness of the mold, a mold Will be hundreds of thousands of tons of power thousands of times the impact, so the hardness of the mold is very important. Finally, we put it immediately into the oil to cool, to further increase the hardness and toughness of the mold.
3 Step: die struck
Cooling the mold outside we will also set a steel ring, which is to protect the mold, to prevent the mold to damage in the stamping process. Hydraulic machine fixed on the mold, the following we can start the embryo. This process is what we call DIE STRUCK. The material selected for the embryo is iron, copper, zinc alloy, aluminum and so on. The first blank came out. We need to carefully check the blank design and design is not the same, there is a little flaw, need to modify the mold or even re-engraved new mold. Check done, if there is no problem, and then we will product massively. After mass production, we need to remove the extra part with knife installed on machine.
4 Step: Grinding and vibration
In order to the blanks becoming smoothly, we put all blanks in to grinding machine. Shock will cause the individual blanks to start collision and friction each other in the process of rough edges of some small burrs are shocked, polished.
5 Step: Add Attachments
There are so many specific names for badge, lapel pins, cuff links, a hat clip, etc., Different accessories led to different purposes of the badge, so the names is different. We equipped our production with a very wide range of accessories, “thorn needle, butterfly clutch.” Thorn horses currently have two kinds of assembly methods to fix, one is to glue the thorn needle stuck in the back of the product, but this way because of a long-time glue aging, resulting in thorn needle easy to fall off. And we are using another better way: silver welding. Welding thorn horseshoe needle is very strong, and it will not fall off and fix for so long time.
6 Step: Polishing
Polishing is a very important part of the production process, I believe no one is willing to buy such productions which have rough badge and scratches on surface. We are responsible for every customer, so we are very strict for polishing.
Polishing grinding wheel is divided into many kinds, there are hard sand wheel, soft cloth wheel and so on. If smooth requirements are not high, we can use the grinding sand wheel directly polished production, if customers want to get a smooth surface or mirror gloss, we need to use the cloth wheel to polish productions. Each badge will be a separate polished, polished master carefully control the contact with the cloth wheel, to ensure that the polished surface can be just polished. After positive polishing, side polishing is still one by one were individually polished.
7 Step: Electroplating
Polished badge to be sent to electroplating, according to the needs of the badge will be electroplated into a variety of plating, bright gold, bright silver, bright red copper, there are antique gold, antique silver, antique copper and so on. All kinds of plating have their own characteristics, according to the needs of customers will be plated a variety of plating.
With the copper wire to the badge one by one string together, invading the syrup, the first step is to ultrasonic oil, this step is to remove the badge in the previous production process stained with a variety of oil, through the sound waves generated overclocking vibration, so that oil separate from the badge surface. To the end of the oil, invaded the sink, washed with water to the top of the badge above the syrup.
And then, we start to plate, full of magic. Infiltration of alkali copper liquid, badges are coated with a layer of red copper at the end. In order to higher quality, repeating the progress, electroplating red copper is finished. Repeating the progress three times, plating silver is finished and four times for electroplating gold. Itis the real end of the plating When badges were sent into the oven baking.
8 Step: Coloring
Color is divided into soft enamel and hard enamel. Soft enamel is one of our most popular styles. Metal areas are raised, colors are recessed. Hard enamel ‘s color is smooth and delicate, hard ware, giving a very upscale feeling. Contract color card and design draft, color master need to mix color. The pigment was sent to the color department. Because many places need to color is very small, the color workers inhaled the color with needle. After the color is completed, the quality inspection master carefully checked the badge color. If everything was no problem, the badge was pushed into the oven, high temperature baking made the paint color solid and fixed on the badge. The above is about soft enamel’s color, but hard enamel’s color order is not the same. Soft enamel need to electroplate at first, and then to color. Hard enamel is plating at first, coloring second, plating third. In other words, Hard enamel need to polish twice. In addition, after coloring, we need to deal with the problem of uneven color because the liquid properties before baking will cause the solidified color surface to be rugged. Products was sent to polish under the grinding stone down. There is water washing badges to prevent to be damaged for hot temperature.
9 Step: Packaging
The last quality inspection was made before packaging, only qualified productions were sent anywhere in the world by land transport or air transport. We can provide different packaging according to different requirements for customers. Ziploc bag is most common. Besides, we provide paper card, velvet pouch, velvet box, plastic box.
Give us your idea and we’ll create your custom pin!
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We offer a fantastic custom pin service, we can provide the competitive price.We’re happy to work with you to design and create the best quality custom pins.