How Custom Medals Are Made: The Step-by-Step Manufacturing Process

Ever held a well-made metal medal and wondered what separates it from a cheap generic one? The weight feels different. The detail is sharper. The finish holds up. That comes entirely from how it was manufactured. Whether you're ordering custom medals in Canada, the USA, or anywhere else, for a sports event, a corporate award program, or a recognition ceremony, knowing what happens during production helps you make smarter calls about timelines, material choices, and what actually drives cost.

This walks through every stage of how custom medals are made, from the first custom medal design brief right through to medal engraving, ribbon attachment, and final shipping.

Step 1: Design Brief and Artwork Setup

Every custom medal starts with a conversation, not a machine. Before production touches a single piece of metal, your supplier needs a clear picture of what the finished custom medal design should look like.

You'll share your logo or artwork, the event name and any text, the preferred size and shape, the quantity, and the deadline. Vector files like .AI, .EPS, or PDF work best because they scale without losing quality. No finished artwork? A rough sketch or even just a description gets the job done. An experienced design team can take that and build something production-ready, whether you're after personalized medals or a large run of custom medals for an event.

One thing that catches people off guard: designs that look great on screen don't always survive the jump to medal scale. Very small text and overly thin lines have a habit of getting lost during stamping or casting, and by the time that becomes visible, it's already expensive to fix. A good supplier catches those issues at the artwork stage before anything moves forward. For personalized medals where individual names, dates, or custom text are part of the custom medal design from the start, sorting this out early saves a lot of unnecessary back and forth down the line.

Step 2: Digital Proof and Approval

Once artwork is finalized, you receive a digital proof, a visual mockup of your custom medals, before anything physical is made.

This step is more important than it sounds. The proof shows you exactly how raised and recessed areas will be distributed, where color fills will sit, and how the full design reads at actual size. It also lets you confirm any medal engraving details, text placement, font, and wording before they get locked into production. Spelling errors caught here cost nothing to fix. Caught after production, they cost everything.

Take your time with the proof. Check the text, proportions, and overall layout carefully. Most suppliers include a set number of revisions at no charge. Once you approve it, production is locked.

Step 3: Die or Mold Creation

This is where manufacturing actually begins and where the two main production paths split. Which one applies to your order depends largely on the complexity of the design and whether you're producing flat recognition pieces or dimensional custom medallions.

Die Struck

A hardened steel die is precision-engraved with your design in reverse. When pressed into a flat metal blank under high pressure, the metal takes the shape of the design, producing sharp raised lines and cleanly defined recessed areas.

Die struck works especially well for metal medals with clean linework, fine text, and flat detailed artwork. Brass medals in particular respond well to this process. Brass holds fine detail better than softer alloys at the stamping stage, making brass medals the preferred base for formal and premium applications. Iron is also common for everyday sports and event pieces, where lighter weight suits the design.

The die is a one-time cost built into your first order. It's reusable, which makes repeat orders, like annual sports medals or recurring award programs, significantly more cost-effective after the first run.

Die Cast

Die cast pours or injects molten metal into a custom mold rather than stamping a flat blank. This opens up design possibilities that die striking can't match: three-dimensional shapes, deep relief, cutouts, and layered geometry.

Custom medallions with sculptural detail, bold finisher medals, and sports medals featuring complex team emblems are typically produced this way. Die-cast custom medallions work especially well when the design needs to carry real visual weight, something a flat struck piece simply can't deliver. The mold costs slightly more upfront than a die, but for designs that need real dimensional depth, it's the right call.

Step 4: Stamping or Casting in Production

With the die or mold ready, bulk production runs begin.

For die struck metal medals, flat blanks of iron, copper, or brass are fed through the press. The die stamps each blank with consistent force, reproducing the design across every piece with minimal variation. Brass medals hold sharper detail through the stamping cycle than softer alloys, which is why they're the preferred base for premium runs.

For die cast medals, molten metal is poured into the mold, cooled, then trimmed to remove the excess edge, a process called "deflashing." Each piece gets a surface quality check before moving forward.

At this point the medal exists in raw form. The design is there, but the finish comes in the next stages.

Step 5: Electroplating and Surface Finishing

This is where metal medals get their final appearance.

First, raw medals go through surface preparation. Cleaning, smoothing, and buffing to remove imperfections before any plating gets applied. How thorough this step is directly affects how well the finish holds up over time.

Then comes electroplating, where a thin layer of metal gets deposited onto the surface using an electrical current. This is what gives metal medals their gold, silver, bronze, antique gold,  antique copper or colour appearance. A gold medal means gold plating over the base, not solid gold. The underlying material, whether iron, copper, or brass, stays the same regardless of which finish gets chosen.

For a shiny or polished finish, medals get buffed after plating to a bright reflective surface. For an antique finish, a darkening agent gets worked into the recessed areas to build depth and contrast. That aged look gets used widely on formal custom award medals, military honors, and heritage event pieces. After antiquing, the raised surfaces usually get a light polish to push the contrast a bit further.

Plating thickness matters more than most buyers ever think to ask about. Thicker plating on brass medals resists tarnishing and surface wear far better than thin coatings on lower grade alloys. It's one of those quality differences that isn't visible when you're placing the order but becomes obvious a year or two later.

Step 6: Enamel Color Filling

If your design includes color, which applies to most branded sports medals, custom award medals, and event pieces featuring logos, this is where that color gets added.

Each recessed area of the medal is hand-filled with soft enamel paint, one color section at a time. It's precise work. The enamel has to sit cleanly within the recessed zones without bleeding over the raised metal borders that separate each color.

Once filled, the medals go into a kiln. The heat permanently bonds the enamel to the metal and hardens it. After firing, the enamel sits just slightly below the raised metal edges, which creates that distinct tactile texture you can feel when running your finger across a soft enamel medal.

For orders where color accuracy matters, corporate custom award medals with specific brand colors, or sports medals carrying a team's official palette, the enamel fill gets checked against the original specification before the full production run continues.

Step 7: Medal Engraving

Medal engraving is what takes a well-made award and makes it feel like it actually belongs to someone. For custom medals, it's the step that moves the piece from a production item into something personal.

Two approaches to medal engraving, and knowing the difference matters when you're planning the order.

Design-level engraving is where the event name, year, category, or a tagline gets worked into the die or mold at the start of production. It becomes part of the raised or recessed artwork itself, consistent across every piece in the run.

Individual recipient engraving is where names, placements, and specific dates get added after the medals are finished, using rotary or laser equipment on the back surface. This form of medal engraving is standard practice for corporate award medals and employee recognition programs. For sports medals being handed out at tournaments, back medal engraving with a participant's name is a popular upgrade. It makes the award feel like it was made for that specific person rather than pulled from a box of identical pieces.

If individual names are part of the plan, flag it at the start. It changes how production gets sequenced and adds time that needs to be factored into the schedule before you commit to a deadline.

Step 8: Ribbon Attachment and Final Assembly

The ribbon gets underestimated more than almost any other part of the process. It's usually the first thing a recipient notices when a medal gets held up, and it sets the visual tone before they even look at the artwork.

Ribbons loop through a small bail or split ring at the top of the medal, cast or struck as part of the original design. Single color ribbons are the baseline. Full-color dye-sublimated custom ribbons printed with event branding, a logo, or specific colors add a level of finish that lifts the whole package noticeably. Small upgrade, visible difference, especially on branded sports medals or formal custom award medals being presented at a live ceremony.

At this stage ribbons get cut to a consistent length and attached, and any secondary components like presentation boxes or backing cards get assembled. Last checkpoint before quality control.

Step 9: Quality Control and Shipping

Before anything leaves the facility, every batch goes through inspection. Surface finish, enamel fill quality, medal engraving accuracy, ribbon length, and dimensional accuracy all get checked against the approved proof. Whether it's a run of sports medals, custom medallions, or corporate award pieces, medals that don't pass get pulled.

Approved medals are packaged individually, counted, and prepared for dispatch. Standard production from proof approval runs 12–15 business days, with shipping on top.

For buyers in Canada and the USA, confirming cross-border delivery terms and tracking upfront saves friction later, especially against a hard event date. Give your supplier the in-hand date at the very start, not the week before.

Most people ordering custom medals focus entirely on the design. That makes sense because the design is what recipients see. But manufacturing determines whether the design comes through cleanly, whether the finish lasts, and whether the medal feels worth keeping. Same goes whether you're producing metal medals for a track meet or custom medallions for a formal corporate ceremony.

Knowing what goes into producing custom medals helps you ask better questions. What base metals are being used, iron, copper, or brass? How thick is the plating? Is medal engraving done before or after shipping? What does the proof process actually involve?

Those aren't overly technical questions. They're the difference between ordering with confidence and getting something you didn't expect.