|
|
|
Contact Us
|
|
Pen knowledge
|
How
Ballpoint Pens Work
In
this electronic age of voice mail, e-mail
and cell phones, there is still no
substitute for pen and paper. Even as you
browse the Web, you probably have a pen
within easy reach to jot down notes,
scribble phone numbers, or even to doodle!
Modern ballpoint pens are so inexpensive
that we don't even think about them anymore
-- you might have a cup on your desk that
contains a dozen or so different pens that
have wandered in from who knows where!
Have you ever held a ballpoint pen and
wondered how it works? Why doesn't all the
ink come flowing out? In this page of pen,
we will introduce the history and technology
behind these popular writing instruments so
that you can understand them completely!
|
Pen Technology
A
pen is a tool used for writing or drawing
with a colored fluid, such as ink. A
ballpoint pen is a pen that uses a small
rotating ball made of brass, steel or
tungsten carbide to disperse ink as you
write. It is very different than its pen
predecessors -- the reed pen, quill pen,
metal nib pen, and fountain pen.
All of the pens that preceded the ballpoint
used a watery, dark India ink that fed
through the pen using capillary action. The
problems with this technology are
well-known. For example:
The ink can flow unevenly.
The ink is slow to dry. The ink is
exposed to the air while it is flowing
through the pen, so it cannot dry quickly or
it would clog the pen.
When it does accidentally dry in the
pen, the ink gums the whole thing up and
requires meticulous cleaning.
When you add to this list the fact that
fountain pens tend to flood when you fly on
an airplane with them, you can see that all
pens up until World War II presented some
significant problems for their users -- the
world awaited a better solution.
|
History
of the Ballpoint
Hungarian journalist Laszlo Biro was well
aware of the problems with normal pens. Biro
believed that the idea of a pen using a
quick-drying ink instead of India ink came
to him while visiting a newspaper. The
newspaper's ink left the paper dry and
smudge-free almost immediately. Biro vowed
to use a similar ink in a new type of
writing instrument. To avoid clogging his
pen up with thick ink, he proposed a tiny
metal ball that rotated at the end of a tube
of this quick drying ink. The ball would
have two functions:
It would act as a cap to keep the ink
from drying.
It would let ink flow out of the pen at
a controlled rate.
In June 1943, Biro and his brother George, a
chemist, took out a new patent with the
European Patent Office and made the first
commercial models, Biro pens. Later, the
British government bought the rights to the
patented pens so that the pens could be used
by Royal Air Force crews. In addition to
being sturdier than conventional fountain
pens, ballpoint pens wrote at high altitudes
with reduced pressure (conventional fountain
pens flooded at high altitudes). Their
successful performance for the Royal Air
Force brought the Biro pen into the
limelight, and during World War II the
ballpoint pen was widely used by the
military because of its toughness and
ability to survive the battle environment.
In the United States, the first successful,
commercially produced ballpoint pen to
replace the then-common fountain pen was
introduced by Milton Reynolds in 1945. It
used a tiny ball that rolled heavy,
gelatin-consistency ink onto the paper. The
Reynolds Pen was a primitive writing
instrument marketed as "The first pen to
write underwater." Reynolds sold 10,000 of
his pens when they were first introduced.
These first publicly sold pens were very
expensive ($10 each), primarily because of
the new technology.
In 1945, the first inexpensive ballpoint
pens were manufactured when Frenchman Marcel
Bich developed the industrial process for
making the pens that lowered the unit cost
dramatically. In 1949, Bich introduced his
pens in Europe. He called the pens "BIC," a
shortened, easy-to-remember version of his
name. Ten years later, BIC first sold its
pens on the American market.
Consumers were reluctant to buy the BIC pens
at first, as so many pens had been
introduced in the U.S. market by other
manufacturers. To counter this hesitancy,
the BIC company created an exciting national
television campaign to tell consumers that
this ballpoint pen "Writes First Time, Every
Time!," and sold it for only 29 cents. BIC
also launched television ads that depicted
its pens being fired from a rifle, strapped
to an ice skate, and even mounted on a
jackhammer. Within a year, competition
forced prices down to less than 10 cents
each. Today, the BIC company manufactures
millions of ballpoint pens a day!
|
|
top |
Ballpoint Design
The key to a
ballpoint pen is, of course, the ball. This
ball acts as a buffer between the material
you're writing on and the quick-drying ink
inside the pen. The ball rotates freely and
rolls out the ink as it is continuously fed
from the ink reservoir (usually a narrow
plastic tube filled with ink).
The ball is kept in place -- between the ink
reservoir and the paper -- by a socket; and
while it is in tight, it still has enough
room to roll around as you write. As the pen
moves across the paper, the ball turns and
gravity forces the ink down the reservoir
and onto the ball, where it is transferred
onto the paper. It's this rolling mechanism
that allows the ink to flow onto the top of
the ball and roll onto the paper you're
writing on, while at the same time sealing
the ink from the air so it does not dry in
the reservoir.
Because the tip of a normal ballpoint pen is
so tiny, it is hard to visualize how the
ball and socket actually work. One way to
understand it clearly is to look at a bottle
of roll-on antiperspirant, which uses the
same technology at a much larger scale. The
typical container of roll-on has the same
goals a ballpoint pen does -- it wants to
keep air out of the liquid antiperspirant
while at the same time making it easy to
apply. At this scale, it is easy to see how
the mechanism works.
The ball fits into the socket with just
enough space to move freely. The size of a
ballpoint pen's line is determined by the
width of the ballpoint. A "point five
millimeter" (0.5 mm) pen has a ball that
will produce a line that is 0.5-mm wide, and
a "point seven millimeter" pen (0.7 mm) has
a ball that will produce a 0.7-mm line.
Ballpoints come as tiny as "point one
millimeter" wide ("ultra fine").
|
|
top |
The Ink
(View More Pictures)
Ink is a
fluid or paste that comes in a variety of
colors -- usually black or dark blue -- used
for writing and printing. It is composed of
a pigment or dye dissolved or dispersed in a
liquid called the vehicle.
According to Encyclopedia Britannica,
writing inks date from about 2500 BC and
were used in hieroglyphics found in ancient
Egypt and China. They consisted of lampblack
ground with a solution of glue or gums. The
resulting mixture was molded into sticks and
allowed to dry. Before use, the sticks were
mixed with water.
Various colored juices, extracts, and
suspensions of substances from plants,
animals, and minerals also have been used as
inks, including alizarin, indigo,
pokeberries, cochineal, and sepia. For many
centuries, a mixture of a soluble iron salt
with an extract of tannin was used as a
writing ink and is the basis of modern
blue-black inks.
Modern quick-drying inks usually contain
three things:
The vehicle
Coloring ingredients
Pigments
Agents
Lacquers
Additives
The ink vehicle can be either plant-based
(linseed, rosin, or wood oils), which dries
by penetration and oxidation, or
solvent-based (such as kerosene), which
dries through evaporation. The vehicle is a
faint bluish-black solution that is
difficult to read.
To make the writing darker and more legible,
coloring ingredients (dyes) are added.
Coloring ingredients can be pigments, which
are fine, solid particles manufactured from
chemicals, generally insoluble in water and
only slightly soluble in solvents; agents,
made from chemicals but soluble both in
water and in solvents; or lacquers, created
by fixing a coloring agent on powdered
aluminum.
Black, the standard ink color, is derived
from an organic pigment, carbon. Colored
pigments are inorganic compounds of chromium
(yellow, green, and orange), molybdenum
(orange), cadmium (red and yellow), and iron
(blue).
The additives stabilize the mixture and give
the ink additional desirable
characteristics. Depending on the medium
that the ink is being made for (pens,
printing presses, printers) and the material
to be printed, the proportions change.
In the case of ballpoint pen ink, the ink is
very thick and quick-drying. It is thick so
that it doesn't spill out of the reservoir,
but thin enough that it responds to gravity.
That is why a normal ballpoint pen cannot
write upside-down -- it needs gravity to
pull the ink onto the ball.
|
Unusual
Ballpoints
Two of the more interesting developments in
the world of ballpoint pens include space
pens and erasable pens.
Space Pens
Space Pens, or pressurized pens, are a
technological novelty. Take, for example,
the Fisher Space Pen. A space pen's ink
reservoir is pressurized (~40 lb/sq. in.),
and the ink is a special viscoelastic ink
(like thick rubber cement). The ballpoint
must rotate in order for the thick ink to
liquefy, allowing it to write smoothly and
dependably on most surfaces, even under
water. Ordinary ballpoint pens rely on
gravity to feed the ink and have an opening
in the top of the ink cartridge to allow air
to replace the ink as it is used. There is
no hole in space pens, eliminating
evaporated or wasted ink as well as leakage
from the rear of the ink reservoir. In
addition, a space pen can last up to 100
years, compared with the average two-year
shelf life of a standard ballpoint pen.
Since the 1960s, when the "Space Race"
began, space pens have been used by the U.S.
astronauts on all manned space flights,
including lunar trips, and were also used by
many of the Russian cosmonauts on the Soyuz
space flights and the MIR space station.
Erasable Pens
Erasable pens were tremendously popular when
they were introduced in the early 1980s.
They combine the readability of brightly
colored or black ink with the eraser
functionality of a pencil. While the pens
are still manufactured under names like
Gillette Eraser Mate, they aren't as
commonly used as they were before.
What makes erasable ballpoint pens so
different from traditional ballpoint pens is
the "ink" -- instead of being made from oils
and dyes, it is made of a liquid rubber
cement. As you write, the ballpoint rolls on
the paper and dispenses the rubber cement
ink (the resulting mark is known as a
trace). Modern erasable pens work by
allowing a ballpoint pen to leave a definite
and intense black or colored trace which
looks like an ink trace, but is capable of
being easily erased shortly after writing
(usually up to 10 hours). After that time,
the trace will harden and become
non-erasable.
Erasable ink generally consists of 15
percent to 45 percent (by weight) natural
rubber that is dissolved in a series of
volatile organic solvents with varying
boiling points.
For more information, check out the next
introduction. |
|
top |
|
How Pencils
Are Made
|
The picture at left illustrates the steps
involved in the manufacture of a wood
pencil.
It starts with a block of cedar (1) which is
then cut into slats (2)
The slats are then stained (3) and grooves
are cut into one surface (4).
Prepared leads are placed into the grooves
(5) and a second slat is placed on top and
bonded with the first (6).
This 'pencil sandwich' is then passed
through a milling process (7) to separate
the individual pencils (8).
The pencil is painted and finished (9 & 10),
a ferrule crimped onto the end (11), and
finally, an eraser is crimped into the
ferrule (12). |
|
 |
|
|
|
[
TOP ]
[
CLOSE
] |
|
|
|
|
EMAIL:
sales@lu2000.com
Once inquire, we will reply you within 24 hours
ADD:2,Shangxindongshixiang,Shangdong Village,Kuicong,Longgang,Shenzhen City. China
Postcode: 518020
Copyright © Lu2000 Investment Limited, All Right Reserved
|
|
