How Pins Are Made

A lot of hands touch your pins before they reach your door, and we want to show you the whole journey. Greg, our founder, spent a week at the factory overseas watching every step in person and documenting the process. This page is what he saw.

The mold

Once your digital proof is approved, the factory cuts a mold of your design. The mold is a heavy metal cylinder, about 15 pounds, carved by a CNC machine. It has to be that dense to hold up to stamping metal over and over again.

From there, iron based pins and zinc alloy die-cut pins take completely different paths.

Iron based pins

The factory cuts thin sheets of iron slightly wider than your design, loads the mold into a press, and stamps rows of pins into the sheets. If you have a back stamp, the sheets get flipped and punched on the back side too.

Next, a die cut to the exact shape of your design punches each pin out of the sheet. Lining this up takes serious skill, and it leaves the raw metal shapes ready for inking or plating. The shapes get smoothed out by machine, then the backing posts go on.

Zinc alloy and die-cut pins

For complex shapes and cut-outs, the factory melts down blocks of zinc alloy and casts the molten metal into the molds. It's hard to describe and wild to watch. Because these shapes are intricate, workers go in with hand tools and file out as much as they can. The areas they can't reach stay as recessed metal.

Inking

Soft enamel pins are plated before inking, and hard enamel pins are inked before plating. For larger runs, artists mark out the color zones and a coloring machine fills the inks. Complex coloring with tiny details is still inked by hand. The people in this department are some of the best paid at the factory, and they earn it.

Plating

Almost every pin is electro-plated. Pins are strung up on wire and dipped into tanks of the specific metal finish. Gold might take 30 seconds, other metals spend a few minutes. Pantone dyed and black dye pins are the exception, those finishes are sprayed on more like paint.

Hard enamel takes one more step after plating: each pin is ground flat on a buffing wheel, by hand, one at a time. That's where the smooth, jewelry-quality finish comes from.

Packaging

The last stop. Pins are individually bagged by default. If your order has backing cards, the team cards and bags every pin before everything is packed and shipped out the door.

Specialty inks, up close

Curious how the fun stuff happens? Here is glow in the dark ink and glitter being added by hand.

FAQs about the factory working conditions

• Employees work 8am to 4pm with an hour lunch break. When Greg was there during breaks, everyone was having tea, on their phones, and relaxing on couches.
• The lowest paid workers still earn above industry standard, roughly equal to a living wage in the States, well above minimum wage.
• Outside of management, the highest paid workers are the women in the inking department, and the single highest paid person is the woman who mixes the inks for every job. Go ladies.
• The factory team is about 50 people, and our team in the States is Greg, Tessa, Randi, and Vicki.
• Each department works in its own room, everything is well ventilated, and people wear masks or gloves where needed. A pin factory at its core is essentially a machine shop.
• This is not a sweatshop, and we have done everything on our end to make sure everyone is paid above industry standard and works in positive conditions.

Questions about ordering? Our Pin FAQs cover pricing, timelines, art prep, and everything else. Ready to make something? Browse enamel pins or get a custom quote.