Buttons are the common items used in apparel products for fasteners and decoration purpose. Buttons are made from various materials like plastic, wood, sea shell, one or multiple metals etc. In this post, I will explain the alloy button manufacturing process.
Let me explain, what the alloy button means – metals buttons those are composed of two or more metals or of a metal or metals with a nonmetal, intimately mixed, as by fusion or electro-deposition are known as alloy buttons.
Raw Material used for Alloy Button Making
Mainly Zinc bar is used for Alloy Button making.Machine Used for Alloy Button Making
Die Casting Machine is used for making the alloy button. The following machines are used for mold making for the alloy button.- Lathe machine - Both Traditional and CNC lath machines are used
- Milling Machine - Both Traditional and CNC Milling Machines are used
- EDM - Electro Discharge Machine-Making Copper Electrode for Carver machine
- Carver Machine - Used For Making Logo /Design on Die-Punch
- Shaper Machine
- Wire Cutting Machine - Making smooth hole in mold and other precious jobs
- Drill Machine
Various electroplating machines are used for electroplating of various colors
- Copper Bath
- Zn Bath
- Aluminum Bath
- Antic Brass bath
- Gold Bath etc
- Button Coating spray gun
- Dryer
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| Alloy button |
Alloy Button Making Procedure
Step-1: Set the dice (male part and female part) on Die Casting Machine dice holder by nut bolt and mold setting instrument.Step-2: Keep the Zinc bar to the heating place of the machine. Then heat the machine at 900 degree centigrade electrically. The Zn Bar will melt at that temperature.
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| Alloy button making machine |
Step-3: When we start the machine the 2 parts of dice getting closed and a nozzle push melted Zn to inside the dice with high pressure. The melted metal is poured into dice runner and gates. The cycle time for pouring metal into dice depends on how many core are made in dice, and thickness of button. Usually, the cycle time is 10 to 15 seconds. Each dice have minimum 6 to max 16 core depending on Alloy Button sizes, that means we can produce 6 to 16 button in 1 press of die casting machine. You might have seen designs, and/or logo on alloy button. Don’t worry, it does not take extra procedure for production, it is same procedure to make button without design, only difference is on dice, here the design dice/mold is used for design button make.
Step-4: The alloy buttons are connected together with runner material. Now need to separate the buttons from runner. For this purpose- we need to use a roller machine, where the buttons are separated from attached runner.
Step-5: Now need to check the button quality after taking the button from separator/roller machine. Automatic button sorting machine can be used for quality check or we can check the quality manually
Step-6: Button coloring: After quality checking we need to send the button for electroplating bath as per buyer require color.
Step-7: After electroplating, again the quality of the alloy buttons is inspected following the standard sample.
Step-8: The inspected buttons are weighted and packed into poly bags. These packed alloy buttons are ready for shipment or supply.
Also see: How plastic buttons are made?
Alloy button definition source: www.dictionary.com
About the author
K.M. Emran Hossain is a Mechanical Engineer and he is based in Bangladesh. He has working experience in garment manufacturing and garment accessory manufacturing field. He has worked in Epic group as industrial engineer, at Dekko group as asst. production manager, and at Pran-RFL group as operation manager of plastic products. Currently he is working as factory head at NZ group. He can be reached at emran.htlfl[at]gmail.com