We are often asked how much our presses cost, or where we get our supplies. We most frequently get this question from people making buttons at one of our button booths who have used terrible, terrible button machines and had no idea button-making could be so much better. We did a lot of research before buying our first press. After we’d sold enough buttons to pay for it, we bought another, and another, and the rest is history.
Let me put it this way: if you can’t operate the press with a baby strapped to your chest, it’s just not gonna work for our family.
There are a lot of crappy button-making setups out there. I’ve tried a number of them. The bad ones are often plastic, which don’t hold up well if you’re making thousands of buttons. I’ve used ones made from rings you have to stack and unstack and hand cranked presses. The main downside to these seems to be the time it takes to press a button and the power you have to put into the press. There are also a few brands that require you to use their supplies to make buttons, rather than standard size parts, which really limits your ability to find good deals on supplies.
We use American Buttons Machines (http://www.americanbuttonmachines.com) presses and supplies. Everything is metal. Everything is made in the USA. The presses are virtually indestructible but can be operated by any supervised kiddo 3+, in our experience at button booths. We’ve also had great customer service from them over the years.
Highly recommended.
Meadowlark Graphics 