BUTTON WE ARE
Our Products
Mainly, our company produces two types of buttons, namely:
A.
Tube buttons are a type of button that is made by pouring a compound of polymer resin into tubes, which are then cut into pieces that are to be put in a grinding process.
B.
Press (Pump) buttons are a type of button that is made by pouring a compound of polymer resin into a churn in order to turn the mixture into solid slabs that can be cut into buttons of various shapes.
Production Process
The production process is divided into five steps.
STEP ONE
Preparation
Firstly, a compound of polyester resin is created by mixing polymer with an admixture to make the polymer agglomerate and then adding color for beauty. After the mixing, the polymer causes a chemical reaction with air, heating up and then hardening within 20 minutes.
Firstly, the polyester resin compound is loaded into a pouring machine. If the target buttons have multiple colors, the compound will instead be loaded into different cylinders and have the colors added separately. The result will be polyester resin rods with differing patterns. After leaving the polyester compound to rest for around 10 minutes, the compound will start to settle and coagulate.
At this stage, the compound will be poured out of the cylinder. The cylinders will then be brought to the cutting machine in order to get the desired button model with the desired thickness. These models will then be soaked in water to cool the compound before going to the grinding stage.
Press (Pump)
Firstly, the polyester resin compound is poured into a churn to get a polymer slab. However, the amount of compound poured into the machine will depend on the thickness of the desired buttons. The churn will then mix the compound at a sustained rotation speed.
The mixing process takes around 30 minutes per batch, accounting for the time it takes for the compound to settle across the entirety of the slabs. This process results in slabs with widths according to the amount of polymer resin.
The slabs will then be put on a pressing plate. Depending on the shape of the plate, the press will produce buttons of differing shapes from the slabs. During this process, the amount of polymer will be lost by 12 percent due to the seams between each plate.
STEP TWO
Grinding,Engraving,
Polishing and Pattern Printing
After preparing the components in the first stage, these components will then be contained in a grinding machine. The machine will then start the grinding process: engraving letters, polishing, and printing patterns according to the input from the software. Before the production of each batch of buttons, each grinding machine must be appropriately calibrated to fit the descriptions the customers give.
Usually, the calibration process takes around four hours at a time and will keep producing buttons until the batch is finished. The capacity of each machine is 2,160 buttons per hour. As of date, the company has a total of 25 grinding machines but only uses 20 due to spatial issues.
STEP THREE
Scrubbing
Grinded buttons will then be scrubbed in order to remove the excess polymer dust from the buttons by first dumping the buttons into the scrubbing machine. The process includes stone scrubbing, chemical washing with baking soda, washing powder, and water for around 812 hours per batch.
STEP FOUR
Quality Check
Scrubbed buttons will be checked for quality by dumping them onto a line conveyor, where they will move along the belts and be inspected by workers. Both sides of the buttons are inspected, starting from the grinding process to the quality checking process. On average, this stage loses around 3 percent of the total number of buttons put into the grinding process.
STEP FIVE
Packaging
All the buttons that pass the quality check are then packaged into small packets of 144 buttons each. In the first package, the buttons will be counted and then weighed. The latter packages are then weighed only.
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