I know what you mean, but this is a good friend and he's good at his BS.
If you know what I mean. He could sell a bucket of" you know what" if he found the right person. I look at it this way, let him do the leg work and I'll just sit there and print and cut. I'll take a %. I might have to buy the equipment but you never know. If it takes off and he wants to go out on his own I'll sell my portion and move on.

Gary,

I think big dollar equipment investment. 100,000's +

Take a look at this site.

http://www.stouse.com/Products/Magnets/MagneticSigns.html

Ed

We sometimes used to cut custom magnet shapes in the laser. It was a pain, though, because it turns the edges to charcoal, leading to a lot of cleaning. Sometimes, though, it was the only way to get a special shape (unfortunately someone brilliantly decided it's only worth $10 for a custom shape per pair of magnetics).

A friend of mine managed to get his vinyl plotter to work with magnetic material. He set it up so that it would cut about 80% through. This kept the sheet together, but allowed him to snap the pieces out very easily. Made a few hundred pieces about 2/4 for a stainless steel leader board this way.

Unfortunately I'm out of contact with him, otherwise I'd try to get the specifics of what he did to make it work.

Sei

Here's what I would do. First of all, I really doubt that I could produce a high-quality, high volume product that can compete with the big shops that produce nothing but magnets. So I would sub it out.

Set your friend up as a customer of yours. Let him order the product and pay you. Then he can deal with the headaches of getting paid.

If this doesn't work, get him in touch with the distributor and walk away. It sounds like you are skeptical anyway.

High volume would require a large rotary die-cut machine and dies. It would be preprinted then run through the die-cut machine. Volumes for this equipment would need to be in the 100,000 per each item.

Smaller job runs will be more expensive per piece but can be done with the advice in the posts above.

Philadelphia, PA (Really Bensalem)

When you finally understand it completely... it changes.