The Fiber Tip Porous Pen
Magic Marker TM The felt tip was too broad and coarse to be readily used as an everyday writing instrument, so that the latter market was dominated by the traditional metal-nibbed fountain and ball point pens. In 1964 a new pen with a bonded, porous, fiber tip was imported from Japan and launched on the U.S. market. Despite little advertising and promotion, the vivid bold line produced by this tip attracted attention, and it was clear that fiber-tipped pens would capture a significant portion of the writing instrument market.
The Paper Mate Division of the Gillette Company manufactured and
marketed only ball-point pens at that time, and recognized the new
product as a major threat to its markets that must be met with an
effective response.
The key elements of the fiber-tip pen follow:
1. An ink reservoir absorbed into a loosely packed cylinder of fibers.
2. A writing point that consists of relatively densely packed and firmly bonded fibers in contact with the reservoir.
3. A liquid junction that forms and leaves a permanent trace of the path movement when the tip contacts and moves across the paper.
4. A cylindrical housing that can be gripped by the writer, can support the lip, and can provide a sealed enclosure for the reservoir to prevent the ink from soiling the writer's hand and keep its solvent (mainly water) from evaporating.
The first fiber-tipped pens launched on the market suffered from three clear disadvantages.
1. As the fibers wore down in use, the tips became glazed over, no longer freely depositing ink, and the tips lost the appealing writing line that they produced when fresh.
2. If the tip were inadvertently left uncovered for an hour, the ink dried and clogged the tip, making it unusable.
3. Finally, the polystyrene co-polymer housing was relatively highly permeable to water vapor, so that the solvent evaporated during storage and the pens were unusable within six to twelve months of manufacture.
Paper Mate management reasoned that if the company could quickly produce a fiber-tipped pen without these defects, they could convert a competitive threat into a business opportunity. The process and product technologies for developing fiber-tipped pens are quite different from those for ball-points, and the company possessed expertise only in the latter, so it faced a considerable technological challenge. It could, however, draw upon the technological resources of its parent Gillette Company.
The Gillette R & D function had expertise in the areas of textile fibers and capillary phenomena, and it was quickly decided that nylon was better than the acrylic material used in the Japanese fiber tips. Having chosen the fiber material, the researchers' next problem was to devise a manufacturing process to bond it into a porous rod with a tip ground at its end. This was the most difficult technological problem to solve, and two approaches were adopted simultaneously: bonding the fiber using an adhesive, and sintering.
The Paper Mate Division of the Gillette Company manufactured and
marketed only ball-point pens at that time, and recognized the new
product as a major threat to its markets that must be met with an
effective response.
The key elements of the fiber-tip pen follow:
1. An ink reservoir absorbed into a loosely packed cylinder of fibers.
2. A writing point that consists of relatively densely packed and firmly bonded fibers in contact with the reservoir.
3. A liquid junction that forms and leaves a permanent trace of the path movement when the tip contacts and moves across the paper.
4. A cylindrical housing that can be gripped by the writer, can support the lip, and can provide a sealed enclosure for the reservoir to prevent the ink from soiling the writer's hand and keep its solvent (mainly water) from evaporating.
The first fiber-tipped pens launched on the market suffered from three clear disadvantages.
1. As the fibers wore down in use, the tips became glazed over, no longer freely depositing ink, and the tips lost the appealing writing line that they produced when fresh.
2. If the tip were inadvertently left uncovered for an hour, the ink dried and clogged the tip, making it unusable.
3. Finally, the polystyrene co-polymer housing was relatively highly permeable to water vapor, so that the solvent evaporated during storage and the pens were unusable within six to twelve months of manufacture.
Paper Mate management reasoned that if the company could quickly produce a fiber-tipped pen without these defects, they could convert a competitive threat into a business opportunity. The process and product technologies for developing fiber-tipped pens are quite different from those for ball-points, and the company possessed expertise only in the latter, so it faced a considerable technological challenge. It could, however, draw upon the technological resources of its parent Gillette Company.
The Gillette R & D function had expertise in the areas of textile fibers and capillary phenomena, and it was quickly decided that nylon was better than the acrylic material used in the Japanese fiber tips. Having chosen the fiber material, the researchers' next problem was to devise a manufacturing process to bond it into a porous rod with a tip ground at its end. This was the most difficult technological problem to solve, and two approaches were adopted simultaneously: bonding the fiber using an adhesive, and sintering.