How to distinguish between soft enamel and hard enamel? The four different places between them.

Introduction

Both soft enamel and hard enamel are common techniques used on manufacturing badges, metal wares, and souvenirs. In fact, if you put the soft enamel badge and the hard enamel badge with the same design together, you can discover the difference easily.

However, if you just get one of them, how do you judge if it is soft enamel or hard enamel?

What is soft enamel?

Soft enamel, most manufacturers made it by copper. The color of soft enamel is colorful and the line is clear. When you touch the surface of soft enamel, you can feel bumpy on it. And the price is cheap.

What is hard enamel?

 

The surface of hard enamel is bright and smooth, and the color is shiny and high quality. If you touch the surface, you will only feel the metal line lightly. The cost of hard enamel is more expensive, but more durable.

Material

The material of hard enamel is colored enamel paint, and the soft enamel is viscous paint. After baking, depending on the coloring, the paint used for hard enamel will be hard like plastic, and it will be polished to remove the redundant paint. And after the paint of soft enamel was baked, it will produce a colored coating, if there is unnecessary paint, it could be removed by organic solvent.

Process

The main difference in process between soft enamel and hard enamel is the order of plating and coloring. The process of hard enamel is baking first, next is polishing, and plating is the last step. And the process of soft enamel is plating, baking, and then polishing. Since the difference of the two processes, it makes a big distinction between both features.

Surface

Depending on the differences of material and process, the surface of hard enamel is smooth, and the soft enamel is uneven. The colored part of hard enamel and the raised metal ridges are on the same level basically, which makes it hard to distinguish them.

The uneven degree is the huge difference between soft enamel and hard enamel. You can feel the colored part of soft enamel dented, and the metal part bulged.

Durability

Hard enamel pins are more durable than soft enamel pins. In the manufacturing process of hard enamel, it will produce a protective coating. This helps prevent scratching or chipping of the paint or any raised metal ridges.

Soft enamel would be plating before coloring, therefore, it will have obvious 3D quality, but the metal part is easy to be scratched. Some manufacturers will put an epoxy protective coating over soft enamel pins. This can make soft enamel pins more durable.

Conclusion : When to pick hard enamel or soft enamel?

Actually, there is nothing either good or bad but thinking which one is more suitable to perform the feature of the product. If you don’t have enough budget, and you want to make a colorful badge with 3D sense, you can choose soft enamel. If you want a high quality and durable product, hard enamel will be your good choice.

Please feel free to contact Topone Accessories Limited. if you are still concerned about how to manufacture your products, we are willing to discuss with you.

With experience in custom manufacturing for many years, the professional design group, one stop manufacturing service from our factory, and various soft enamel and hard enamel products, we totally can meet your needs.

Please feel free to reach out to us at top1supplied@gmail.com to know more information, and make your unique soft enamel and hard enamel products with us.