We thought you’d like to know how we make our badges here at the Spike Badges HQ. We recently made a custom badge order for pop-up eatery Canteen Limerick and snapped a few pics.

Firstly, when we’re working with someone on a custom badge order, if there’s a possibility that the design could be improved, we’ll give you feedback. In some cases, we’ll take images of prototype badges and send them onto you to sign-off on. Last thing we want to do is give you badges that you’re not happy with.

Normally for custom badge orders, we print 5-10% extra designs between faulty prints and misaligned badges. After sorting out the designs, we got all these lovely badge templates printed up. With a craft knife, the rows are sliced into strips to allow faster cutting with the hand-puncher.

<image - canteen gallies>

Next, the plastic mylar is placed over the punched badge template. The designs are inspected to make sure there’s no imperfections on the paper or trapped fibres or dust motes between the plastic mylar and paper. Badges with white backgrounds take far longer to arrange as every speck shows up.

<image - canteen cutouts and mylar>

Chugging along onto the actual machine work now. The metal button is placed in the machine with paper and mylar is place over it. After positioning them correctly, the table is swished and once the handle is pulled, the parts are compressed together.

<image - canteen cutout in machine>

Next up is placing the pin into the machine. We ensure the pin is placed into the machine at a straight angle which ensures the pin at the back will be straight. A possible fault is if the design and mylar aren’t placed correctly, when turned and it’ll become off-centre when the table is swished. This means the design and pin aren’t lined up and it’ll all be at different angles which is a major fault in our standards.

<image - canteen finished badge>

After we’ve pressed a whole pile of badges, the head minion hand-examines each badge for quality assurance. Passed badges go into holding bags and faulty ones get trashed. After a number of badges have been produced, the badges are taken out of the bags, go through final quality assurance checks again before being counted and dispatched.

And there you have it. That’s our manufacturing process with slight OCD tendencies on quality assurance.