h a l f b a k e r yTastes richer, less filling.
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Your pen has stopped dispensing ink and has left some fine impressions of what you attempted write in its wake. Naturally, as it is your only pen, you begin to shake it and scribble madly in the margin of your paper. This does little but wear away and tear the paper, and increase your blood pressure
slightly.
If you had been using a pencil the solution would have been simple. The broken tip would have been placed into a sharpener and only a few turns later, you would have been back to writing again. On the contrary, there is no guaranteed solution to a ballpoint pen that has malfunctioned.
As shaking pens and broken pencils and turning sharpeners dance through your head, you have an epiphany: The Pen Centrifuge!
By simply inserting a pen into the pen centrifuge and rotating the crank, much like a pencil sharpener, the pen is spun and the ink is forced by centrifugal force into the nib where it will dispense via the ballpoint. Such devices could be wall or desk mounted or be compact little spinners that attach to the end of pens.
In a haste brought on by your sudden realization, you put pen to paper to record your thought, but alas your pen is still dry, and have now forgotten what it is you were on about.
My pen is
http://www.flickr.c...ntindale/516694849/
a Waterman Hemisphere. [Ian Tindale, Aug 31 2007]
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How do you keep the ink from being forced out the nib and making a mess? You'd need a pretty tight-fitting cap. |
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go-go-gaget pen centrifuge |
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Well, I put on the cap like you said but its tightness is cutting off circulation to my brain, so its not really helping with a solution - some suggestion [21 Quest] humph! |
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I'd think that the ball point would keep the ink in. (+) |
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I admit I'm quite ignorant of the mechanics of a ball-point pen (hence my lack of a vote thus far). Would the ball point indeed keep it in? |
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rcarty, this is the Halfbakery. You only need 50% flow to the brain to function just fine here. |
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Someone once told me that the cure for this is to briefly use a lighter on the tip. If that doesn't work, then use the lighter for a longer time and set fire to the bloody thing. |
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If you put a pen in the centrifuge and went on holiday, by the time you came back, the ink might have separated out into its constituent parts - not great for further usage of the pen, but all the stripes might look quite interesting. |
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...but what if there isn't any ink left in the pen? This is the primary cause of pens failing to write, though it is a cute idea. |
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You know, I completely overlooked that perfectly obvious drawback. Then again, many pens have translucent ink tubes so you can see how much is in them. |
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I'll be sneaking into your office and running all your pens through the pen centrifuge upside down. Bwahahahahaha<cough> |
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When my pen runs out of ink I reach for one of my bottles of ink (currently favouring Waterman Purple in the Waterman Hemisphere pen) and simply refill it. |
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