Where is the best website to buy ~2 inch button pins from?
we get 2 1/4" pins from www.badgeaminit.com
Our team gets our buttoning supplies from Tecre. We buy the 2" Round Button Complete Sets in batches of 5,000. I will note that at times, there are a couple pesky doubled up metal backings that are impossible to pry off each other so that’s something to watch for when making buttons, as to not jam the machine.
Wait, so you bought a machine which allows you to construct your own pins?
Do you construct those pins by hand/machine yourself?
Wouldn’t it be easier to order finished pins from a site such as this? https://www.purebuttons.com/product/225-custom-buttons?qty=50
Those look to be around 4x as expensive as the site Jessica linked. We make our own buttons with an inexpensive button maker. It takes a few hours but it’s pretty fun (for me, at least) and it’s great to have if you need buttons by the next day.
We also make our buttons. https://www.americanbuttonmachines.com/collections/popular-button-maker-sizes/products/2-25-button-maker-kit?variant=117373796376
There may be cheaper places to go. We probably made 1000 last year, maybe more. Some of our students enjoy it because it’s an easy, very defined task.
If we had a small team (like 10 students) I may forego button making.
Stickers are better than buttons. Make stickers instead.
Making buttons can be a fun activity, cutting them out by hand is torture.
Tip 1: buy a button cutter (no more torture.)
Tip 2: laminate the buttons instead of using the clear disks.
Tip 3: the image on the button needs to be smaller that you think, even if using a template. Test your button before you print a thousand of them.
Do you have a CNC mill? Have you tried automating the process with the CNC?
Maybe even go so far as using vacuum/magnetic pick up to “pick and place”? …maybe make a robotic arm for this function? …you guys can handle a robotic arm no problem, I’d imagine!
I would definitely not try to make it into a pick and place. The punch and paper would make that very difficult.
Agreed with stickers though. I’m terrified to give out buttons to small children. But you know who loves stickers? Small children.
Yikes, those are expensive, we broke ours last year and were not planning to buy a new one because of the price, but I didn’t know that they were this expensive.
Last year we made crayon robots from molds. We had people bring in crayons and melted those down. It worked pretty well, it was a unique idea, but I would recommend melting down one specific brand because different brands didn’t mix well together. This was much cheaper than buttons.
Stickers are super cheap too- you can get thousands for less than a hundred dollars.
But stickers are lame…
Would we really need a thousand pins for only going to two competitions? How many people are really going to take a pin?
More than you might think, and also you use leftover pins at demos.
500 buttons per competition, figure that there’s at least 1000 people at each competition, of whom at least 1/4 will want a button. If the buttons have a cool design, or you have 2-3 designs, double or triple that. Multiply by 2 events, plus a little bit for word to spread on cool factor.
The great advantage to doing it yourself is that if you run out for some reason, you can make more very rapidly if you have some blanks and circles. We’re talking 1-2 buttons a minute if you’ve got practice. So maybe you don’t do 1000 right away. Maybe you only do 300. Put 250 out, keep 50 as a reserve. When you crack the reserve, grab a student (or parent or sibling), hand them the supplies, and have them crank out another 100 or so.
Our team bought 2000 buttons last year based on recommendations from veteran teams, but ended up only going through 400 between our two regionals. Now we have hundreds of buttons left over and no idea what to do with them. Unless you’re guaranteed to go to Worlds, you’ll most likely only need 600 buttons.
I would not underestimate the power of stickers. Not only are they less expensive and childproof, but they’re also more environmentally friendly than buttons.
Our team buys from www.stickermule.com. In addition to buttons and stickers, they also sell magnets, bumper stickers, and custom tape.
We made our buttons out of 80/20 single bar. Cut by the Kalamazoo. Sand of burs on belt sander. Glued 1665 on it, and pin on back. It was pretty cool as it didnt require lots of time. Saved us a lot of money. Ill try to get a picture.
Thanks for the link! Sticker mule happens to be having a black Friday special today where you can get 50 die cut stickers for $19 (regular $68) and free shipping. Certainly not enough for a competition, but you can order some just to check out before buying 1000.
You can also get a $10 credit with this referral link.
Not sure if you can use the credit with the black Friday deal, but if so you can get 50 for $9.
Yes, we make you own buttons because due to the sheet amount we go through at outreach and competitions. For context on how many buttons we run through per year, we try to limit ourselves to making 1000 buttons per year but seeing as we ran out of ~500 buttons within the first day of Qualifications at Worlds, you can kind of see why having supplies on hand to produce buttons is better for our circumstances than outsourcing.
We plan on making both 
We’re looking into making/ ordering buttons (purchased supplies last year so we’re all set to go), wristbands (ordered 1000-2000), stickers, lanyards, pajama pants, socks, competition team shirts, and satin narwhal horns since our logo is a narwhal.
That sounds like an amazing 
might consider making some narwhal ones in the near future. I will say this I guess for everyone debating outsourcing vs. buying the button maker and supplies: everything is really a case by case basis kind of deal. However, in my personal opinion, looking long term for any team, an investment in a button maker will cost you less long-term in terms of cost per button, timeline, and other various factors.
Kids also love wristbands 
I understand they’re a choking hazard so depending on when we get our stickers, I’ll experiment with which one’s kids prefer- thus far buttons have been more attractive than wristbands at most of our outreach events.
Not sure what y’alls logo looks like but in the words of one of our mentors, “Our stuff is currency,” and to that end, we run out of stock pretty quick. Even taking “precautions” like not handing out swag on practice day, we run pretty low by day one of our regionals and like I said above, we ran out of buttons and wristbands Day 1 of Quals at Worlds ::rtm:: You’d be surprised by how many people collect pins or really like certain logos or aesthetics teams have :D.
We do too!