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Phone
(03) 9729 3744

Email
sales@ebadges.com.au

Address
Factory 6, 8 Kearney St, Bayswater, Victoria - 3153 Australia.

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Dies, Molds and Tooling

Generally speaking, Product that is custom made to order, it is always more labour intensive than the generic mass produced product.

A Majority of our product is custom made to order to our clients’ unique design. 

The unit price varies according to quantity, the higher the quantity the lower the unit price.

For low quantity order it may not be economically viable, due to the economy of Scale.

The number of hours taken to prepare and set up the machines to stamp and cut 10 badges or 100 badges is the same.  Hence when the cost per hour is amortised over 10 badges compare to 100 badges the unit cost is significantly different.

Therefore for an order to be feasible and justify the cost in the production time, we require a minimum amount of $350.00 plus 10% GST for the first initial order.

The minimum amount charged is for the production cost plus the preparation of die and its accompanying shape cutting tool.  

However, there are some products we produce, the minimum cost starts from $35.00 plus 10% GST.  These products are PVC Name Badges, Stock School Badges and some custom engraved to order metal products.

The following Paragraphs are describing the common steps in the Make to Order production processes.

Once you read through to the end.  We believe you will have some understanding of badges manufacturing processes and would most likely appreciate the value for the amount of work that is required to produce custom design badges, medals and medallions

 

 

Die Cutting & Die Making

After our quote is approved, we will proceed to draw a mock up artwork proof for your approval, once it is approved.

The design is required to be transferred to a block of steel using a Pantograph Milling machine.


The machine works like an engraving machine; it drills and cuts away the steel material off the surface from the block of steel.

The engraving and drilling process could take from a few hours to several days depending on the intricacy of your design.

Your unique designs will slowly emerge onto the surface of the steel block as a debossed (sunken) negative image as the material is being cut away.
Once the carving is done, this is known as a Die.


The die will undergo heat treatment.  It is heated in a Kiln oven to an orange color for a period of time depending on the size of the die and the grade of material.  This could take up to 24 hours depending on the size of the die

The Super-heated die is then quenched in oil.  These processes are repeated a few times if required to ensure total harness of the dies.
So that it can withstand the 10’s to 100’s of tons of pressure during manufacturing.

The die is now ready for production.  For stamping method of manufacturing, we need to make another tool to cut or punch out the shape of your design.

After the badge is stamped there will be excess material extruding around the badge.
This requires to be cut out using the cutting tool.

 

 

Die Mounting

Before Production can start, we need to prepare the High Pressure Stamping Machine by bolting the Die into a die set and then mount it into the machine.

The same work is required to mount the shape cutting tool to another High Pressure machine adjacent.

So that as soon as the stamping are done we can move right away to the next station to clip off the excess extrusion around the edges.

 

Stamping

Different size metal product will require different size machine that has the necessary tonnage capacity of pressure.
The capacity ranges from a few tons to hundreds of tons depending on the size of badge.
We need the right capacity to stamp a certain size badge, otherwise the image of the badge will be blurry and some raised metal areas are not sharped.

 

External Shape Cutting & Fastener Attachment

The Badges are then required to be polished to shiny finished.
Depending on the quality of the badges, for soft enamel badges the polishing is done before plating and coloring. 


For Imitation Hard Enamel, Imitation Cloisonné, Pro-enamel and in recently times some called it Hard Enamel just different terminologies but it is the same quality.


However traditionally, Hard Enamel is Vitreous Enamel they are like color glass, and are the best quality amongst the entire enamel badges product.


Imitation Hard Enamel and Hard Enamel, the polishing is done after color filling.

 

Die Casting

Another method of manufacturing process alternative to Stamping is Die Casting.
This production process is used for large size Badges or Medals/Medallions.
Especially if the shape is complex and the design of the badges or medals have multiple hole in the design.  .
If the design has a three dimensional image, for example a Portrait of a person’s face where the design incorporates gradient surface or undulating surface.

This method of manufacturing is more cost effective, because the formation of the design or image can be formed in one step on the material used.

Whereas with Stamping the image may not be fully formed, a complete image may not be seen with one thump of the Pressing Machine.  Hence repetitive thumping or squeezing of the pressing machine is required hence prolonging the production time.

Hence Casting is more economical than Stamping in certain design.

 

 

Polishing

The Badges are then required to be polished to shiny finished.
Depending on the quality of the badges, for soft enamel badges the polishing is done before plating and coloring. 


For Imitation Hard Enamel, Imitation Cloisonné, Pro-enamel and in recently times some called it Hard Enamel just different terminologies but it is the same quality.


However traditionally, Hard Enamel is Vitreous Enamel they are like color glass, and are the best quality amongst the entire enamel badges product.


Imitation Hard Enamel and Hard Enamel, the polishing is done after color filling.

Washing & Plating & Lacquering

After the badges are polished to a brilliant shine, they need to be cleaned.  We do this by racking the badges on specially made rack with prongs to hold the badges; medals oar medallions in place during the plating process.


The Racks of badges are dipped into a warm bath of solvent to rid of any grease, grim Polishing compound left on the badges after polishing.

They are then dipped in a few different warm bath which ranges from light to medium acidic bath for the badges to be completely cleaned.
If there is one tiny speck of dirt on the badge, the plating cannot be electroplated onto the metal which is covered by the speck.

Once thoroughly washed they are ready to go under electroplating.
The very first stage of plating is nickel plating.  It is the base plating for all various plating, whether it is Gold, Silver, Copper or any other antique type of plating.

Antique plating is Aged looking type of plating.   To make the badges aged looking, further manufacturing processes are required.

First step we need to make the whole badge black.
We then buff the black off to make it antique looking and to protect the antique badges from oxidation we spray the whole badge with lacquer.  These are done in a chamber with huge extraction

fan for OH&S purposes.

 

 

Enamel Colour Filling

If the badge requires color, we need to mix the enamel paint which is the same enamel paint as used on a car.  The color is mixed to the desired colour specified on the artwork. 
The international standard for the different color and different shade is denoted by a PMS number.  (Pantone Matching System with a Number) eg.  Dark Navy color is PMS 281c.
The letter “c” after the number stands for Coated, which is shinny like the shine of the enamel paint on a car.

After the correct color is achieved, we pour the enamel paint into a syringe with a needle attached.
The badge is now ready to be color filled.

For low quantity order the color filling process is done by  hands, for high quantity order the color filling can be done by a colouring machine

Epoxy Filling & Baking

Once the color filling are completed.
The badges are transferred to an Oven to be heated so the enamel paint can be cured and hardened.

After the enamel paint are hardened, a resin epoxy coating is applied to the surface of the badge to cover the enamel paint.

The epoxy resin will need to be heated in the Oven again to form a hardened dome protective coating over the surface of the badge.

The badge is now finished and goes for the final quality inspection before they are packed in sealed plastic bag.

If you have read thus far, we would like to thank you for time reading it.

We believe you can appreciate the amount of labour hours and patience involved in creating a custom badge made to order and hope you can understand and see the value for the minimum charge we need to apply for an order to be feasible.

 

Preferred  Design Formats

The Ideal artwork file we prefer is called a Vector file universally known terminology for the graphic and printing industry. 


The artwork is drawn by a graphic artist using computer software.
If an artwork has color in the design, we prefer the color to be in PMS (Pantone Matching System) another universally known terminology used in the printing industry as well as the arts & craft industry.


Each particular color has different shade intensity in the color.
The number will denote how light or how dark a particular color is. Eg. PMS 280 is royal blue and PMS 282 is a dark blue navy color.

The industry jargons names for the Vector files are as followed.
Ai (Adobe Illustrator)
EPS (Encapsulated PostScript)
PDF (Portable Document Format)

If you can provide us with these files format, it will help us greatly in the drawing up a mock up proof and it will also help us expedite the time taken to get the final design proof to you for approval.

However if you are not able to obtain these files format,
you can provide us with the following PNG, JPG or PDS files format.  We will get our Graphic artist to redraw the design you can supply us and turn it into the Vector files.