Custom Metal Fridge Magnets Manufacturing Processes

There are three main ones. Baked paint on its own. UV printing on its own. Or a baked white base coat with UV printed over the top.

On top of any of those, you can add etching with colour fill, laser engraving, die-cast 3D relief, or cut-outs. Between them they cover just about any custom job.

Baked paint gives you thick, solid blocks of colour with strong coverage. It has a matte, premium feel and it sticks well — good for solid colours, big colour areas, simple gift-shop designs, and scenic-spot souvenirs.

UV printing reproduces colour very accurately, and it handles gradients, shadows, complex illustration, and photo-quality images.

Go with baked paint if your design uses solid colours, only a few colours, clean lines, big flat colour areas, simple traditional-style artwork, city landmarks, or a simple logo. It feels solid, it’s good value, and very little gets rejected in production. Just remember that with plain baked paint, every extra colour pushes the price up.

Go with a baked white base plus UV printing if you’ve got multi-colour gradients, colours blending into each other, shadows and highlights, photos, fine illustration, or a busy full-colour design. Plain baked paint simply can’t do a gradient — a white base with UV over it can fully reproduce those full-colour effects.

Plain baked paint cures hard and sticks tight, so it takes rubbing well and doesn’t scratch easily. Sitting on a fridge it holds its colour, so it’ll last you longer.

UV ink gives you finer colour, but that top ink layer is fairly thin. Leave it bare and it can scuff a little over time.

You can add an epoxy dome coating over either one. That makes a big difference to water, dust, and scratch resistance. Once it’s on, the two are about even.

UV printing. Photo-quality gradients, true colour, all the detail you want. If your artwork is complex, start here.

Silk screen. Only works for simple, solid blocks of colour. No gradients, and detail comes out poorly.

Pad printing. Fine for small curved surfaces with simple artwork. Not much use beyond that.

Laser engraving. No ink at all, so it never fades. But you only get the bare metal colour and texture — no colour work.

So: UV covers most complex artwork, baked paint covers solid-colour premium pieces, and laser engraving is for plain anti-counterfeit lettering.

On die-cast zinc alloy, normal relief depth runs 0.5 to 2mm. The sweet spot is 1 to 1.5mm. At that depth you get clean 3D layering and a flat surface, and the colour goes on evenly without pooling.

Push it up to 3mm and you start getting paint pooling, paint running, and patchy UV colour. More pieces get rejected and the cost climbs.

Relief needs a 3D mould, and that costs 30% to 50% more than a flat one. Processing each piece runs 10% to 20% above flat baked paint or flat UV. On a big order that spreads out, so the gap gets a lot smaller.

Yes. Baked paint on the front and UV on the back works. So does relief baked paint on one side with laser engraving on the other.

Each side gets processed, cured, and checked on its own, so you’re doubling the steps. Expect 30% to 40% more than a single-sided piece.

Keep cut-out lines at 0.8mm or wider. Go thinner and they snap, warp, or come out with heavy burrs.

Very fine cut-outs cause trouble with colour too. Baked paint pools in them, UV bleeds over the edges, and you end up with patchy coverage. Best to design those thin lines out from the start.

The usual ones: bright nickel, matte nickel, bright gold, imitation gold, gunmetal black, rose gold, antique bronze, green antique bronze, red antique bronze, and black nickel.

Any of those can take baked-paint colour fill or UV printing on top. They cover most gift, tourism, and corporate styles.

With baked paint, yes. It gets mixed to the Pantone solid colour and comes out very close, with barely any difference. UV can simulate a screen colour, an image colour, or a Pantone colour, and it’s especially good at gradients.

Plated metal colours are the exception. You can’t match those to a solid Pantone number, only get near it.

The standard across the industry is ΔE ≤ 3. At that level you can’t see a difference by eye, and it’s good enough for premium orders.

Three usual causes: the plating is too thin, the degreasing before plating wasn’t done properly, or there’s no anti-oxidation sealing.

Good plating gives you a flat, stable base that holds the baked-paint layer and the UV ink layer in place. Bad plating can take the whole surface colour off with it.

Made properly, these hold colour indoors for one to three years without fading.

Not on zinc alloy, which is what fridge magnets and keychains normally use.

Two-tone plating only works on copper, solid gold, or solid silver. Even then, not every colour will take plating — it’s usually gold and silver together. For anything else, send the design over and we’ll tell you whether we can mix the matching plating solution.

Not exactly, no. Screen images shift with lighting, filters, and resolution, so there’s no way to copy one 100%.

Baked paint gets mixed against a physical Pantone card. UV gets as close as it can to the original colours, gradients, and light and shade. Once you sign off the sample, that’s the standard the whole run follows.

With baked paint, the dark base tends to show through, coverage goes thin, and the colour sits unevenly. Several thick coats plus high-temperature curing sorts that out.

With UV, light colours over dark go a bit grey, edges look fuzzy, and the colour isn’t clean. More ink, a few extra print passes, and a film or epoxy layer on top fixes it.

AI, CDR, EPS, or a high-resolution vector PDF. Any of those can go straight into mould-making and work for baked-paint colour separation and UV printing.

PNG and JPG are reference only. They’re blurry with jagged edges, so they won’t work for fine UV printing or accurate colour separation. We’ll redraw them for you at no charge.

Yes, and mostly no. We’ll convert the image to vector, separate the colours, clean up the lines, and sharpen the base image for free.

Simple designs cost you nothing. For a complex illustration there’s a small artwork fee, and we’ll waive that in full if you place a bulk order.

Size tolerance runs ±0.1 to 0.2mm, which is normal for these processes.

Baked-paint solid colours come out very consistent, so you’ll see almost no variation across a run. UV shifts a touch between ink batches, but not enough to notice by eye. Either way the run gets made to the sample you approved.

Depends what you change. New baked-paint colours, different UV artwork, a changed gradient, or a different 3D structure all need a fresh sample.

Nudging something slightly or tweaking a colour a little doesn’t. We’ll adjust that for free and skip the re-sample.

For baked paint, keep them at 0.8mm or above. Any finer and the colour bleeds and runs together.

UV is more precise. It’ll hold a clean line down to 0.4mm, and it does small text and fine detail far better than baked paint.

We calculate it from the size of the product, how deep the relief goes, and how complicated the cut-outs are. Baked paint and UV use the same structural mould, so only the surface process changes.

A metal mould lasts tens of thousands of cycles. Reorder later and you won’t pay for a second one.

Only if you’re changing the shape, the relief depth, or the cut-out structure.

Swapping the surface artwork, changing a baked-paint colour, or dropping in a new UV image doesn’t need a mould at all. Those adjustments are free.

Yes, and it’s a good option for smaller orders. You take the stock mould base and we put your artwork, your baked-paint colours, and your UV images on it. Cuts the mould cost right down and shortens production.

With baked paint: pooled paint, running paint, bubbles, colour bleeding over edges, and colour variation. With UV: ink spots, fuzzy edges, patchy colour, and scratches.

We control those by polishing beforehand, applying colour in layers, curing in a dust-free environment, keeping the print registration tight, and checking every finished piece. Anything that isn’t right gets pulled.

Plain baked paint. It’s harder, takes scratches and rubbing better, and keeps its colour steady over time, so it’s the one for pieces that sit out for years.

UV gives you a sharper image but wears faster when it’s bare. Add an epoxy coating or a film over it and it becomes water-resistant, scratch-resistant, and sun-resistant, which makes it fine for long-term use too.

If it’s down to something we did wrong in production, we remake it or ship replacements, free, no conditions. That covers chipped baked paint, UV ink coming away, serious colour variation, and damage. We cover the full cost.

Yes, free of charge. Logos, QR codes, a website address, serial numbers, a message, or a coded sequence. Handy if you want a unique code on every piece for traceability, anti-counterfeiting, or personalisation.

Yes. Every piece can carry a different UV illustration, different wording, and its own serial number. Works well for blind boxes, scenic-spot limited editions, and personalised commemorative sets.