1 Metal Pin Badge-In-Depth Report At North Peak Department-One, our business is totally focused on providing a wide and integrated range of services in the design, production and distribution of lapel pins, enamel badges, tie clips, cuff-links, blinking pins, button badges (tin, plastic), trolley coins, name plates, memo holders, key-chains, medals, magnets, bottle openers, and much more. We are specialized in manufacturing custom metal pins for more than 20 years. Such a long experience gives us the expertise to meet your requirement with technological achievement and a total commitment to quality. Your own designs are most welcome. We can develop your ideas or particular products for you, either exclusive or non-exclusive basis. Type of metal pins: Etched brass soft enamel with or without epoxy Stamped copper/ or iron soft enamel with or without epoxy Stamped copper hard enamel Stamped iron hard enamel Stamped copper hot-fired cloisonné Stamped 2D in relief with or without sandblasting Stamped 3D in relief, with or without color resin Silk-screen/ offset printing on steel/ or aluminum with epoxy Silk-screen/ offset printing on brass with epoxy, with or without electro-plating Combination of the different techniques in the same pin, like stamped emblem with printed inlay Zinc alloy injection soft enamel Zinc alloy injection hard enamel Pewter spin casting Sterling silver 925/ Gold 999 2 Color Material: The colors we use for our enameled and printed pins are of the following Soft (Hard) enamel: chemical material, different colors to be mixed, matching your references of Pantone (PMS), HKS color charts Cloisonne: powders of rock, not to be mixed. Color reference of AOKI only. Epoxy: It's a kind of crystal polyvinyl acetyl resin, which we put on top of the surface of the metal pieces. There are 2 reasons to use epoxy, one is to protect the colors and the other one is to be shiny. However a lot of customers do not want epoxy, they want without epoxy items show the relief effect. Magnets: As you know that we are supplying magnets, which is also a very popular item for promotions only next to, pins. We wish to give you some information for the items we can do. Rubber magnets with 2 layers. One layer of rubber magnet at bottom and one layer of white PVC on top. The printing is on the white PVC. Thickness of the magnet can be 0.5mm, 1mm, 1.5mm or 2mm. When the printing is process offset, we are now using white aluminum for the printing and not PVC. When the printing is process offset, we are now using white aluminum for the printing and not PVC. Metal emblems in any quality like our pins with the attachment of magnet on the backside. There are 2 kinds of magnets we are supplying. Metal magnet in round shape in different sizes in thickness of 3 or 4mm. Rubber magnet cutting out to be round or rectangular in different thickness of 1mm, 1.5mm, and 2mm. Adhesive backing: On the backside of the metal emblems, we are in many cases making them with double-sided tape (adhesive backing) to serve your needs to attach to name plates or other occasions. The tape could be the standard double-sides tape, or 3M adhesive tape (with some extra costs). Form tapes are also available. 3 Option of electro-plating: Gold Nickle Brass Copper Silver Black nickel Black dyed Chrome Antique gold Antique nickel Antique copper Antique brass Antique silver Antique pewter Matt gold Matt nickel Matt silver Nickel free Bi-color: gold + silver Bi-color: matt gold + matt silver 4 Artworks: It's a kind of crystal polyvinyl acetyl resin, which we put on top of the surface of the metal pieces. There are 2 reasons to use epoxy, one is to protect the colors and the other one is to be shiny. However a lot of customers do not want epoxy, they want without epoxy items show the relief effect. LINE ARTWORKS FOR ENAMEL ITEMS The basic concept is that the enamel item is a combination of metal and colors. We need a kind of line artworks for our enamel pins and keychains. The key point in the line artworks is to have artworks showing ALL BLACK IN METAL (or all white in metal). Special lines needed in Etched brass soft enamel --- A border metal line of 0.8mm is needed for the etched brass soft enamel items for standard thickness of 0.8mm brass. In principle, the thicker the brass material is, the wider the borderline is needed. The border metal line for stamped items (stamped copper, or stamped iron) can be and usually is thin. Artworks for silk-screen printing items. The most convenient and ready artworks that we can use are the 1:1 separations, 1 firm for each color. Your line arts made in CorelDraw and Illustrate and sent to use by e-mail are most welcome. Artwork for offset printing (or called photo printing of process printing) The most convenient and ready artworks that we can use are the 4 color separations. It is our suggestion that you would also make the artworks in computer and e-mail to us. Please note the density that we would like to have is +/- 355 dpi in the computer file. You will find a separate file mentioning the kinds of software we are using. Artworks for approval by e-mail. If you supply for your orders of enamel items artworks other than line artworks, i.e. samples to copy, artworks need changes, etc. We have to make LINE ARTWORKS before we make the tools (films, molds etc.) It is better to have your approval first. It is to protect us from making mistakes. Please remind us to e-mail you the line artworks for approval before we make the tools and we thank you in advance for reminding us. The differences of silk-screen and offset printing: Offset printing is also referred to as photo printing and process printing. The colors are obtained from the mixture of the 4 colors of CMYK. It is just like the printing from your photo printer in what you could find the colored ink is divided by the 4 colors. (Some printer has 3-color system of RGB, which we do not use in our printing). Colors of the silk-screen printing are not mixed. They are printed 1 color after another. The colors are also not of gradual effect and are solid. All the colors could be separated. The swatch references of the colors we use are according to the Pantone (PMS), HKS and RAL (as used in Europe) and DIC (as usual in Japan). The production of the offset printing items is to copy your original. The best (and Maximum) quality of the product is your original. The original limits copying. Therefore it is very sure that the product will never be better than the original. In order to make good quality offset printing items; we must have GOOD ORIGINAL. We are very good at the copying and we expect good originals from you. For example, the films are better 5 than the photos. If you e-mail the artworks or mail film separations or send artworks in disk, please note the density is 355 dpi. In the silk-screen printing metal items, we have a problem that is never been solved. It is caused by the epoxy we use. Why the white is not white: When there is a printing of RED on WHITE or WHITE on RED, customers complain that the white color is PINKISH or REDDISH. This is actually a VISUAL effect caused by the reflection of the re color under the epoxy. After taking off the epoxy, you can see that the white is white. We are very sorry that we still have no solution for this problem. Your explanation to the customers will be helpful to us. We have 2 OPTIONS for this problem. Do not add the epoxy on the top of the pins. Instead, we print a layer of lacquer on top of the printed colors as a protection. Change the quality to other types. We can make it in the quality of hard enamel + print. For example, the background is in red color hard enamel and we print the white on top of the red hard enamel. Special note: The above problem is only in the RED, All the other colors are OK. Why we suggest silk-screen printing: Some of the designs are not very good in the quality of soft enamel (either etched brass, stamped copper or stamped iron) and we must make them in brass silk-screen printing with epoxy. However a lot of customers prefer (and sometimes insist) to have their pins done in the quality of soft enamel. This is really a dilemma for us. The kind of designs we mean in the above is, for examples, the texts need to be done in a color on the background of another color. We are depending on yours sales persuasiveness to solve this kind of problems for us. We have 2 OPTIONS to help you. We can make the pins in brass silk-screen printing with epoxy, while at the same time, leaving metal separation lines in the design. So you can still see that metal lines separate the different colors. One exception is in the very small details and we might have to skip the metal lines. To make the pins in hard enamel + print. For example, the text can be printed in color on the hard enamel of the background.