If you want to know how to customize cheap medals, then we need to first understand the production process of medals.
The general production process for custom medals will be the following steps:
1. Customers give design drawings
2. Confirmation of production crafts, materials
3. Factory drawing CNC drawing
4. Customer confirms final production drawings
5. The factory started to carve production molds
6. Mold treatment (mold repair, small cuts to facilitate zinc alloy water entry, mold polishing, Putting sand in the mold)
7. Medals Production
8. Polishing
9. plating
10. Color filling
11. Packaging
These are the steps in the production of metal medals.
The key factors affecting the price are material, mold, plating, and color filling.
Generally, medals are made of zinc alloy, thanks to its high mobility, stable properties, and cheap price.
Choose a good material next we talk about molds, each medal manufacturer will have some common molds, and the use of these common molds will save you a lot of money (ps. If you need a large number of medals, the general manufacturer will be exempted from the mold fee, such as PeaKeen exempted from the mold fee for the number of 5000 medals)
Next is the plating part, universal plating colors will be cheaper, if you need colorful or personalized plating colors, then this plating cost will be more expensive.
Here’s the kicker.
The coloring section is an important measure of how beautiful and attractive enough a medal is
Most medals use manual coloring for the coloring portion of the medals, so the labor cost contributes to the overall expensive price of the medals.
Nowadays, some medals use machine coloring, but these medals that use machine coloring need to meet a very important condition is that the design needs to be simple, and there can’t be very detailed lines or parts of the design to be colored.
But what crafts should I choose if this part needs to be colored, but I want it to be cheaper?
Here’s the answer!
Choose Printing!
In the old days, when the technological advances were not obvious, the machinery would print very distinct dots on the medals, but now, he has been overcome and the dots now need to be very, very detailed to be seen.
And here’s the advantage of printing technology over coloring: printing technology allows for gradient colors to be printed on the medals, which will allow the medals to be able to look more premium.
Let’s talk more about the material.
If you want medals that are lighter and have eco-friendly attributes, then I definitely recommend wood.
With wooden medals, you won’t need to make molds, polish, or plating, which can save you around 33%-52% or so, and there’s absolutely no need to worry about the environment.