tamashii’s Story
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So, long story short...
tamashii made the mistake of
putting the pin in the second die chamber with the collet.
My Advice to You is
to not involve the pin with the button press at all.
Here's the whole story
After getting a 1-inch button press for my birthday, I immediately set to making buttons. I had already created and cut out designs for several button packs. I happened to be using a slightly heavier, coated stock for the paper.
All the parts ready, I diligently read the instructions for my… oh wait - there were no instructions included with my button maker. The instructions I had found online (from the distributor) had made it appear that the shell, paper, and mylar would go in the first (left) die chamber while the collet and pin would go into the second (right) die chamber.
The result of pressing the buttons was that the collet would pierce and tear the mylar and paper so that a blister would form on the side with the tear. I had around an 80% failure rate of buttons. I had gone through making about 40 buttons with over 30 of them being ruined; the parts now useless.
I searched many a site and posted questions in several places on what might be causing this. As I didn't know the pin wasn't supposed to be included, I didn't bother to consider that my steps in prepping the press were inaccurate, thusly, not mentioning what I was doing in the prep phase. (Side note :: in order to get the pin to sit in the die, I had to take a pair of pliers to bend the end piece – should have been my first clue.)
I switched to a thinner paper and that seemed to solve the problem, but I still had to bend the pins and my failure rate had only improved by about 30% as the pressure to push the press down was still greater than normal with the pin in the die. For a time, I stopped using the press until I found the definitive answer to my problem. About a month later, I finally came across a site that showed a better diagram for prepping the press which included the step, "Remove the button from the die and insert the pin by hand."
Needless to say, after I snapped out of my 10-minute state of “Duh”, I have been making flawless buttons ever since.
Comments (2)
Where can I get one of these things? I've always wanted to play around with one.
@Dennis :: I procured mine through ButtonBiz.com and while their documentation isn’t stellar, their prices on parts is astounding. And when they have sales, good God, you can make a lot of buttons.