At last after years of hard work and research China has been able to manufacture its very own ballpoint pen tips, ending a long-term reliance on imported ones.
One may find it hard to swallow, that China who builds aircraft, satellites and amazing skyscrapers was unable to build its own ballpoint tips. But in reality the world's biggest manufacturer of ballpoint pens, didnt know how to make the tips.
Not until Taiyuan Iron & Steel (Group), or TISCO, announced that it has mastered the production of steel components for pen tips after trying for five years.
Chinese news agency Xinhua informed that these Made in China tips were ready for mass production and were expected to replace imported ones in the years to come.
One may ask what is the rocket science behind the ballpoint tips, but producing a tiny tip with fluent writing effects requires over 20 processes, requiring precision down to the nearest micrometer, and high quality steel, as it should be easy to cut but not liable to crack.
"The stainless steel used to make pen tips was all imported from Japan," said Xu Jundao, manager of Beifa Group, one of China's largest pen makers.
Wang Huimian, a senior engineer at TISCO, said that the toughest part was finding the right formula, as special microelements must be added to liquid steel to make a quality tip that is able to write continually for at least 800 meters.
However, the formula had long been kept a trade secret by foreign manufacturers, but "We finally made a breakthrough at the end of 2014. Instead of using lumpy additives, their usual shape, we tried to cut them into smaller, linear pieces to get a better chemical interaction to make the steel stronger," Wang said.
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