In June 1943, Hungarian journalist Biro Laszlo and his brother Georg invented the first ball pen - a pen with a rolling miniature steel ball as the tip - and applied for a new patent at the European Patent Office, marking the first commercialized ballpoint pen - the -Biro ballpoint pen was officially born. Today, this writing instrument is quite widely used, but very few people know the process of its invention.

The Invention Of The Ball Pen

The earliest appearance of the name ball pen was in 1888 when an American journalist named John Lauder designed a pen that used a roller ball pen, but he was unable to make it an easy-to-use item.

In 1895, the British market also sold In 1895, a commercialized non-writing ball pen was also sold in the British market, but it failed to catch on because of its narrow use. In 1916, a new type of ball pen was designed and produced in Germany. Germany also designed and produced a new type of ball pen, the structure of which is closer to that of today's ballpoint pen but its performance was poor and did not attract widespread It was not widely appreciated.

In 1943, the Hungarian journalist Bíró Laszlo was well aware of the problems with ordinary fountain pens. He was visiting a newspaper when he got the idea to replace the traditional ink pen with a pen that used fast-drying ink. The ink used for newspapers dries almost instantly and does not leave smudges.

Biro vowed to apply a similar ink to a new writing instrument. To avoid clogging his pens with sticky ink, he proposes to install a small metal ball capable of rotating at the top of the tube containing this fast-drying ink. The metal ball would have two functions: to act as a pen cap to prevent the ink from drying out. To allow the ink to flow out of the pen at a controlled rate.

In June 1943, Biro and his brother Georg (a Hungarian chemist) applied for a new patent from the European Patent Office and produced the first commercially available ball pen, the Biro ball pen. Later, the British government purchased the rights to use this patented ball pen, making these ball pens available for use by RAF aircrews. In addition to being stronger than traditional fountain pens, the ball pens were able to be used at high altitudes at low pressure (where the ink from traditional tap pens would spill). This was used to great effect by the RAF, making the Biro ball pen so popular that it was widely used by the military in World War II for its robustness and ability to adapt to battlefield conditions.

The First Ball Pen In China

In 1948, China's first domestic ball pen was born in Shanghai Fenghua Ballpoint Pen Factory. Reform After the opening up, driven by the huge export demand, pen factories sprang up.

In order to put tens of billions of ballpoint pens with "Chinese tips", the country started this key project as early as 2011.

Experts believe that steel to manufacture tips, must use many special trace elements to adjust the steel to the best performance, the slightest change in the ratio of trace elements will affect the quality of steel, this ratio can not be found, China's pen industry will always need to import tip steel.

Because there is no reference for developing this product information, the ratio of an ingredient is from a few 10 kilograms, and the number of times various ingredients are added a number of times it is impossible to count.

The production process of pen products is the core secret of foreign enterprises, and the country must independently develop an unprecedented set of steel-making processes. Without any reference, we can only continuously accumulate data, adjust parameters, and design process methods.

The inspiration for the breakthrough came from the household "and noodles", noodles are soft and hard, and we need to add new "ingredients", and the corresponding steel to add industrial "additives". Ordinary additives are lumpy, if you can make the lump thin, the steel and additives will be more evenly integrated, which will enhance the cutting properties.

After five years of countless failed tests, TISCO finally saw tip steel with a uniform distribution of "additives" under the electron microscope, and the test was successful in September 2016. After more than 10 times of large-scale steelmaking, the first batch of steel with good machinability finally came out of the furnace. This batch of stainless steel wire, 2.3 mm in diameter, can proudly write the "Made in China" logo.

The Difficulty Of Manufacturing Ball Pens

The ball pen tip looks simple, but in fact, it has a complex internal structure. The thickness of the tip opening is less than 0.1 mm, but it has to withstand the pressure and friction brought about by various writing postures, and at the same time, it has to fit perfectly with the roller ball, so that it can write smoothly and not leak ink. Therefore, the hardness, size of the opening, and the position of the ink slot must be matched "seamlessly". Therefore, each parameter of the tip needs to be precisely calculated by computer to about a tenth of a hair's breadth.

According to experts, the ball pen tip is divided into the ball on the tip and the ball seat body. The ball of the oil-based ball pen tip is made of brass, steel, or tungsten carbide; the ball of the water-based ball pen tip is made of stainless steel, carbide, or aluminum oxide. Ball pens made of these materials have to meet the requirement of writing 800 meters continuously at the same angle without breaking the line to be qualified.

Among other things, the tungsten carbide used for ball beads is several times harder than steel and only slightly less hard than diamond. In the actual production process, tungsten carbide is first made slightly larger than the standard size of small particles, scattered on a plate with grooves, and makes these small particles into the circular groove, only to expose its top. Then put a heavy and flat top plate, pressed on top of these small particles, in between the two plates filled with grinding oil, so that these small particles soaked in a lubricating mixture containing powdered diamond.

The diamond powder continuously grinds off the edges of these small particles, making them gradually round and shiny until they produce small round balls of moderate smoothness and conformity to standards.

The real design difficulty of this product is how to make such a small round ball of the same size with a great production quantity. The high precision and interchangeability here are obtained based on the rigor of the entire manufacturing system.

At the very tip of the pen, which is where the small ball is placed, the thickness is only 0.3 mm to 0.4 mm. Because of the high precision machining, both easy to cut, and process and not cracked, the raw material of stainless steel The extremely high-performance requirements of stainless steel raw materials.

In short, ball pen tips have extremely high processing accuracy The requirements are extremely high, as the tip not only has a small ball, but there are also 5 guide ink grooves, a small deviation in the production process deviation will affect the smoothness of writing and pen The thickness of the tip opening is not The thickness of the tip opening is less than 0.1 mm, and the writing angle and pressure are also taken into account. and pressure, the ball, and tip, and ink groove The ball and tip, and ink groove must be matched "seamlessly" and The error should not exceed 0.003 mm, otherwise Otherwise, the smoothness of the writing will be affected.

If you would like to learn more about ball pens, you could contact Suzhou Ginghongxin Plastic Company anytime, we are looking forward to your arrival.

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