GB2259061A - Multi-component fountain pen nib - Google Patents

Abstract

A multi-component nib for a fountain pen comprises a pair of identical, mirror-image components (3, 3') which may be produced upon a single stage blanking die set. The components may be received within the recess (11) of the nib body (1) and retained by the beak (8) and lugs (6, 6') which co-operate with the holes (12, 12') in the nib. <IMAGE>

Description

SPECIFICATION FOR A MULTI-COMPONENT FOUNTAIN PEN NIB.

The present invention concerns an improved fountain pen, or dip pen nib for which the manufacturing procedures are simpler and cheaper.

The design of writing nibs for dip pens and fountain pens has hardly changed at all in the last 75 years, in spite of the fact that the current process has a number of serious defects. The principle of these defects is that the process is a multi-stage one demanding therefore, both high investment costs in tooling, and high labour costs for production. It is true that improvements in the methods of production have been made by the development of higher speed production procedures particularly in the field of automatic progression press tooling and the like, but nevertheless the many stages required means that production and inspection vigilance over the maintenance of each stage itself, inevitably involves both higher cost and the considerable risk of high rejection rates.

To emphasize this point further, a description of the "classical" production procedure for stainless steel nibs is given, and in particular that process for the production of the " butterfly " nib, which is the commonest type of stainless steel nib on the market.

In such nibs two "ears" formed at the blanking stage, are folded up to form a writing tip of greater thickness than that of the metal strip alone, thereby increasing the writing life of the nib.

Such nibs are invariably made from cold rolled ed stainless steel strip having the following typical chemical composition: Chromium 17.5%-18.0%.

Nickel .7.5%-8.0% Carbon 0.08 - 0.12% In addition small amounts of manganese and silicon are also usually present.

The hardness of such strip which is usually 0.25MM thick is generally in the range of 315 - 360 V.P.N, a value which is really rather low for this application, for it is clearly upon both the thickness and the hardness of the metal that the durability and life of the nib in service depends.

In the production of such a nib, the metal strip is fed into the guide slot of a progression metal pressing and stamping tool mounted on an automatic press. At the first stage of the production sequence, a logo or similar device is stamped upon the strip and at the same time location notches are punched into the strip which will serve to locate the strip precisely as it passes from stage to stage in the sequence of operations of the tool. At the second stage in the sequence, the nib form is blanked leaving the blank however still attached to the main strip at a point at either extremity of the nib blank, in order to permit the precise movement and location of the nib as it proceeds through the sequence of stages of the tooling.

As the strip proceeds through the sequence tool the nib blank formed at the second stage of the sequence has the butterfly ears formed at the writing extremity in the blanking operation, raised into the form of a "U" girder.

The fourth stage of the sequence pierces out a narrow slot which will become the capillary pathway for the ink in the finished nib and will conduct the ink from the feed to the paper when the pen is used for writing.

Next, the nib is rounded to give it that well known arcuate shape, a process known as "raising", before progressing on to the final stage of the press tool sequence. This final stage is the setting'of the nib, a process of bending the two legs of the nib in the direction of the centre of curvature of the raised nib surface, to bring the writing tips of the nib to touch exactly so that the nib will write.

For this it is essential that the two "legs" of the nib must be brought into light contact with each other at the tip, and that the nib slit should taper continuously and uniformly from its widest point at the slit end remote from the writing extremity, to its narrowest at the writing extremity where the tips are t be in precise contact.

It is essential also that the tips be exactly in line as otherwise the feel of the nib whilst writing is not smooth and it may even prove to be impossible to write at all.

The nib having been formed in the six successive stages of the automatic progression tool now has to be polished but this requirement introduces a problem which has never been successfully solved, that of the presence of a small but sharp burr on the writing extremities of the points on the inner slit faces.

In the days prior to the advent of mass productive methods all polishing was carried out by hand and was performed in two quite separate stages, the first stage used a coarse abrasive and was known as " "rough buffing" and was intended to provide just the right degree of "baby's bottom" and this was followed (after degreasing to remove all the coarse grits) by the second stage known as "rouging" which was a polishing operation designed to impart a high degree of polish over all but particularly to the part of the nib which will be in contact with the paper, using fine ferric oxide as a cutting medium.

When such laborious hand processes became commercially impossible, methods of polishing by means of tumbling the nibs to be polished in a suitable barrel with a mildly abrasive pebble such as "oolite" in a suitable liquid medium replaced the two stages of the traditional hand polishing.

However, tumbling the nibs in this way encourages the formation of the burr referred to above, a defect known as "dubbing". This is due to the fact that under the influence of the prolonged polishing times necessary, the metal on the surface of the nib is forced to flow (this is of course the essence of metal polishing) and so minute amounts of metal move into unoccupied space: normally this is no problem as such material is immediately removed again by the polishing medium but one of the unoccupied spaces is inside the nib slit where the burr so developed cannot be reached by the polishing medium which is too large to enter the slit. This burr on the slit faces at the writing extremity which is always present to some extent can be sufficiently large and sharp to make the nib very scratchy in use.

The present invention seeks to provide a system which is simpler in concept, requires less complicated, and therefore less costly tooling which is easier to maintain, and is such that the process will allow materials to be used which would not be possible in the conventional method, materials which can be much harder than the conventional 18/8 cold rolled stainless steel and indeed can be as hard as the blanking tool will allow since there is no reqwuirement to deform the metal by either pressing or stamping.

In particular, cutlery quality stainless steel, which may be a hardenable grade of stainless steel (unlike the 1 low carbon, 18/8 stainless steel, normally used for fountain pen nib production which is not hardenabie except by cold working) after having been properly hardened and tempered can be processed and may have a hardness of greater than V.P.N. 500.

Typically, such steels have a chemical composition: Chromium 13.5% Selenium 0.42% Silicon 0.38% Manganese 0.34% Carbon 0.25% Further, if good blanking tools capable of burr-free operation are used, postblanking polishing would be virtually unnecessary and even if blanking does leave some burrs, the tumbling method referred to above would rapidly remove them to provide burr-free components.

Because by this invention both thicker and harder metal strip can be used, the writing life of the product can be substantially extended, and if the additional expense of heat treatment can be borne, then nibs having a hardness in the range of 800-1000 V.P.N can be envisaged.

Nibs having hardnesses of this. order could then feasibly replace the rather difficult to make and certainly expensive "iridium tipped" stainless steel nib used in many of the more sophisticated fountain pens.

Other advantages of the proposed invention will become apparent during the course of this patent description.

The present invention provides for a two or more piece writing nib made from a suitable material having qualities of both hardness and corrosion resistance, formed by blanking the two or more components from preferably polished strip of the desired hardness and thickness so as to produce a nib, which when the two or more parts are mounted together they will form an integral nib having both the desired writing characteristics and durability in service.

It is advantageous if the number of components required to form the nib are two in number and are so designed as to be mirror images of each other, because a single blanking tool is then capable of producing both parts of the nib by turning one of the identical pair of components over, the mirror image of the other is produced.

Of course these two components forming the nib require to be held in a precise geometrica relationship the one to the other so as to form an integral assembly and this may best be effected by providing co-operative fixing means upon the feed of the fountain pen so that, upon assembly, the two parts of the nib are held rigidly in their correct positions, both with respect to one another and to the feed element of the fountain pen.

In order to better understand the present invention one preferred embodiment will be described, and reference is made to the drawings.

Figure 1 shows one view of a typical nib-feed assembly according to this invention.

Figure 2 shows the same assembly viewed from the side of Figure 1.

Figure 3 shows a median sectional view of Figure 1.

Figure 4 A and B show two elevations of the nib component.

Figure 5 shows the fountain pen feed adapted to receive and retain the two nib components so as to form an assembly viewed from the front.

Figure 6 shows a sectional view of the fountain pen feed along the line K,K' of Figure 2.

Referring to these Figures, (1) is the main body of the fountain pen feed which would be so made as to be a snug fit in the section of the fountain pen (not shown). This feed is provided with a reduced diameter tail extension (2), adapted to co-operate with the pierce tube for a cartridge reservoir which would be housed within the main fountain pen body. The nib comprises two identical but mirror image elements (3,3') which are maintained in firm contact along the edge (7) of each component and is held positively in place by means of its location within the recessed form (11), and the housing of the nib tail (16), and its corresponding tail (16'), within the slot (15), and retained by the beak (8) and the cylindrical lugs (6,6') which co-operate with the corresponding holes (12,12'), punched in the nib blanks.

This arrangement holds the two half nib components in a fixed positive geometrical relationship the one with the other so as to define a continuously tapering, ink conducting slit (4) adapted to draw ink from the capillary ink slot (13) in the feed and to conduct it to the writing extremities (5,5') of the nib.

The fitting of the nib halves to the feed is now a comparatively simple matter and may be effected by means of a small jig which holds the two nib halves in approximately their correct orientation, and upon operation of the jig, forces the nib heel (16,16') over the cylindrical bosses (6,6') under the beak (8), which is forced slightly outwards to accommodate the non-axial approach of the nib heels of the two component parts of the nib which are directed by the tapered recess (11) into the heel extension housing (16).

Once the advance of the nib has been completed the nib, under the force of the strained beak (8), snaps over the retaining lugs (6,6') which enter the holes (12,12') provided in the nib halves for this purpose.

It should be understood that the particular arrangement for retaining the two nib halves upon the fountain pen feed described above, is but one of several possible methods: no one particular arrangement is a feature of this invention.

Having described one particular embodiment, it will be clear that the two component nib halves, after assembly to the feed, as here described, function in a similar manner to the conventional fountain pen nib. However, the rigidity of this nib so configured may be such that it will not "flex" to any effective degree.

This factor is not, in general, any disadvantage since the flexing of a conventional nib serves but to open the nib slit. aimed at increasing the line width of the writing and permitting a greater volume of ink flow to the paper, but the same objectives can easily be achieved by configuration of the writing tips of the two nib components and the geometry of the slit at that extremity. Both of these are achieved by the configuration of the blanking tool.

It needs to be stated that generally, in production of the conventional type of nib, it is essential that the two legs of the nib define a small but positive dihedral angle with respect to each other, so that by bending the legs perpendicularly downward with respect to the convex face of the nib, the tips are constrained to move towards each other.

This ensures that the pierced slit which, because the punch removes a measurable amount of metal and leaves the points wide apart and makes a slit that is far too wide to exert the necessary capillary force upon the ink is closed.

Closure of the slit at the writing tip, therefore is essential and so demands that the two legs are dihedrally disposed to one another.

It is unfortunate therefore, that this dihedralism often adversely affects the writing characteristics of the nib, particularly in "Italic" style nibs in which the writing extremity of the nib is somewhat wide compared to its thickness.

The present invention overcomes this difficulty, as normally the two nib halves lie in a single plane. However-, should it be felt desirable to "configure" the nib, it is relatively easy to design the faces of the feed to provide a dihedral angle between the legs after the fitting of the nib components to the feed, having any predetermined and required magnitude.

Probably the greatest advantage of this invention is that it provides a system in which the writing characteristics of the nib will be totally predetermined, since the configuration of the tip, the nib slit, the gap between the writing tips and the "baby's bottom", are all fixed by the form built into the blanking punch and die set, and this represents a degree of control over the writing characteristics hitherto entirely unattainable in the older system.

Claims (8)

CLAIMS.
1. Claim 1.

   A composite nib for a fountain pen, dip pen, or the like; composed of distinct parts which, when fitted to other components of the writing instrument, are held together and retained, to form a single and effective writing element.
2. Claim 2.

   A nib according to claim 1, comprising two distinct parts which, when fitted to the writing instrument, are held together and retained, to form a single and effective writing element.
3. Claim 3.

   A nib according to claim 1 or 2, in which at least two of the component parts are geometrically similar, but which are mirror images of each other.
4. Claim 4.

   A nib which according to claims 1, 2, or 3, in which the two geometrically similar components may be produced upon a single blanking die set.
5. Claim 5 A nib according to any of the preceding claims, in which contours are provided for each of the two geometrically similar nib parts which co-operate with other components of the writing instrument to form the writing element by means of which the precise and predetermined location and retention of the said components of the nib may be effected.
6. Claim 6.

   A nib according to any of the foregoing claims, in which the ink-conducting channel is formed by the space defined by the juxtaposition of the two geometrically similar but separate components, which channel has dimensions and a configuration predetermined by the shape of the blanking die or dies.
7. Claim 7.

   A nib according to any of the foregoing claims in which holes are formed in each of the two geometrically similar components which serve to positively locate the two by cooperation with bosses provided on other components of the writing instrument.
8. Claim 8.

   A nib for a writing instrument substantially as herein before described.