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| Ever wonder how the beautiful pins are made? In this section we will let you know more about pins. |
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(Traditional) Cloisonne Pins
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Cloisonne has a very long history in China, over the centuries, people still using this old method to produce pins
because of its high quality and durability. Cloisonne pins can be kept in its best quality for over a hunderd years.
To produce a cloisonne pin, raw metal(usually copper) is first struck from a die and cut off from the desired shape.
It is then filled with first distinct color by hands and heated in very high temperature (over 1000 degrees)
to melt the cloisonne dye, and this procedure will be repeated until all necessary colors are finished. After this, the metal
will be grounded and heated again to give it a glossy look. Next will be pin soldering, a sharp pin(or more as necessary)
will be soldered firmly onto the metal back. Electroplating will be the last step, that the metal part will be plated with the
desired color, usually gold, silver or nickel(this process will not affect the cloisonne dye since plating only reacts on metal).
Finally, it will be polished again and a wonderful cloisonne pin is produced.
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Imitate (or Synthetic) Cloisonne Pins
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The production process is exactly the same as cloisonne pin except that the color range of new cloisonne is far wider than traditional cloisonne.
Traditional cloisonne offers only about a hundred colors. To overcome this weakness, wise mordern people have invented the new coloring materials
which makes the color range viturally unlimited (We call it "viturally unlimited" because any color from the Pantone chart will do!). A point to note,
for ease of communication, we refer imitate or traditional cloisonne pins as Cloisonne Pins throughout the site.
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Photo-Etched Pins
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For photo-etched pins, your artwork is photographically negatived on a film and laid over the metal (usually copper, too), then the metal with the film
will be poured into the special chemical solution. Chemical reaction will occur and the metal will be etched to form the "image". After this, the
etched metal will be filled with desired colors, unlike cloisonne pins, all colors will be filled at this time. When all colors are filled, it will be
put aside to wait for the colors to dry. When the colors are dried, the metal will be transferred into a baking machine
(very similar to bread oven, with many stories) and bake for a couple of minutes. The baked metal is then cut off from the desired shape and soldered
with the back pin. Unlike cloisonne pins, electroplating in photo-etch processing is the second last step. The final step of a photo-etched pin is enamel
coating. Each pin is filled with a clear protective enamel.
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Soft Enamel Pins
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If you have read the description above, the process is just like a hybrid of cloisonne and photo-etched pins. Firstly, metal is struck from a die and
cut off from the desired shape, then filled with colors(the same as the one used in photo-etched pins), air dried, baked, soldered with pins and finally
filled with protective enamel.
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Silk Screen Printed Pins
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As the name suggests, just like silk screen printed T-shirts, each color of the desired image is printed onto the pin accordingly. This method is usually
jointly used with the above pin processing procedure.
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Die-Struck Pins
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Compared to the above pins, die-struck pins are different style of pins. Medal processing procedure is used to produce die-struck pins. The whole process is
dye-free. A metal is struck from the die and cut off from the desired shape, then soldered with the back pin. After this, it'll be electroplated in special
chemical solution to give it a "different" look. The "different" look could be antique gold / silver / copper or glossy gold / silver / copper.
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