How ballpoint pens work

Hope you would have all used ballpoint pens for writing. Have you ever wondered about its working.

Earlier pens like quill, fountain etc faced the problems of

• Excessive ink flow.
• Required time for the ink to dry, once on paper.
• If you are not using the pen the ink gets hardened and you have to do lots of cleaning before using it.
• When you carry a fountain pen while travelling, mostly it spills ink all around.

Therefore we needed a pen which

• Protects the ink from air.
• When it comes out on paper it should dry fast.

This resulted in ballpoint pen.The solution found was a ball. Ball placed in a socket between the ink reservoir and the paper made the magic. It protects the ink inside the reservoir from getting dry and spilling.As you start writing ball rolls and gravity forces ink down onto the ball and into the paper. To get a clearer understanding, just see the working of a bottle of roll-on anti-perspirant. A ballpoint pen uses same principle but its so small than a roll-on.

There are two basic types of ball point pens: disposable and refillable.Disposable pens are chiefly made of plastic throughout and discarded when the ink is consumed; refillable pens are metal and some plastic and tend to be much higher in price. The refill replaces the entire internal ink reservoir and ball point unit rather than actually refilling it with ink, as it takes special high-speed centrifugation to properly fill a ball point reservoir with the viscous ink.

Hope you enjoyed reading!!!! Comments please....