I'm looking for feedback on button badge presses, any info on the good the bad and the ugly if you've had experience of them. Saw company at P&P doing them and didn't take any interest - wish I had bothered now!
Thanks Mark
I'm looking for feedback on button badge presses, any info on the good the bad and the ugly if you've had experience of them. Saw company at P&P doing them and didn't take any interest - wish I had bothered now!
Thanks Mark
Hi Mark. We did a lot of research on presses and now sell a lot at 75mm size although we use it for round fridge magnets. We bought the machine, cutter (need two parts) and all spares from Digiprint Supplies in Belgium. So much cheaper than UK for same parts and fast delivery. In fact we bought more magnets at 6.25pm last night and they were dispatched within half hour! For prices and badge machines see
http://www.digiprint-supplies.com/en...=Badge+machine
Feel free to PM me if you have questions.
I had a maker about 15 years ago, when I was a retailer, not a printer. Easy to make, even more so now that most of us have a vinyl cutter to make cutting out the artwork easier. Inkjet printers are better now too.
I didn't carry on with it because I didn't have time, and because I was retailing too many ready made badges, and they were coming in so cheap that I didn't need to make my own.
I am considering getting another press, to make bespoke stuff for my printwear customers. For a couple of hundred quid, it is an extra string to the bow. 1000 1" badge blanks cost £50 (5p each!) so there is some profit to be made.
Enterprise products were the company who made the best machines at the time -I think they are still good. Here is a link - the video is worth a look.
https://www.ebadges.co.uk/product/open-back-badge/
We use the 38mm Maker from http://www.blankbadge.co.uk/
We have had it six months and it has done well for us. I purchased a cheap 50mm hole punch. £15 made by Fiskars which does the job well to cut circles around the art work.
I have made over 5k badges. We have had to change the cutter once though and it may need replacing again soon so I would recommend getting one a bit more up to the job.
Alex.
Also, we use ours for fridge magnets as well as pin badges and plastic safety badges. We have even run some kids workshops at events where they can make their own badges and fridge magnets. We just gave them pre printed crcles to colour in or they could use the back to make their own design or drawing. Great fun and easy to manage.
The downside, that has been putting me off for 6 months, is that on 1000+ piece orders you are likely to be down to 8 - 10 pence per badge profit ( if you want to compete). The margin is much better on lower quantities, so viability would depend on what you identify as your target market.
Another thing to remember is that it takes roughly the same time to make a 1" badge as it does to make a 3" badge. Assuming that you are going to earn more on the larger badge, you are going to be better off by avoiding the smaller stuff.
I have the Tecre system from the USA to do mirrors. It's a very sturdy system, but I don't sell many...might actually sell it.
I've used digiprint for printer supplies, blankbadge i think was the one at P&p I didn't get to investigate. Good point about the size of badge and time to make it.
Bought my first press from Badgematic as they sell an interchangeable die system so only one lever unit required. Added two larger units from Blankbadge later as they had a bigger variety of products. Be aware that although the two systems appear identical there are size differences between the dies even though they have the same diameter. This mainly affects the printed blanks if using pre cut paper or mechanical cutters.
Yeah I get the point about making not much profit on the larger orders to remain competitive. We make 7p each on these but in all honesty I do them of an evening when watching the telly a bit. I can comfortably make 1000 through the course of the week and enjoy catching up on some tv shows after the kids have gone to bed. Thats £70 that week that we wouldn't have normally had. I dont think I would want to to large scale though as you can make better money of things you actually need to concentrate on. My wife sells badges, magnets and flairs using this machine on Etsy though. She makes much better margins through this.
Alex.
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