What Took China So Long to Master Ballpoint Pens?
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- čas přidán 30. 01. 2017
- Despite making almost 40 billion ballpoint pens a year, until recently China was struggling to manufacture one component domestically. WSJ explains what made it so difficult. Illustration: Menglin Huang
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i thought everybody makes ballpoint pens.
Apparently that wasn't the case until recently.
me too . why is this even on my youtube feed ? wsj has a bad history
i for one am yet to make my first ballpoint pen but i look forward to the day it happens
everybody makes them (the final product) but not everybody is able to make the ballpoint tip/head which they import from japan or a few other places. That was the entire premise of this video.
Oh they do, I made a couple yesterday, Today I was too lazy to go out to my little pen factory, but it's Saturday so I gave myself a day off from my pen making hobby.
Should we expect ballpoint pen prices to decrease?
Blu-TSX their fountain pens are insanely cheap and some even performs better than my Parker sonnet for less than 1/10 the price. They are crazy
Hitler is actually a cat Hello, can I have a link on where to buy?
For the short term till all others are bankrupted and then they will rise higher than they ever were before , but in the meantime buy about 3 at a time as they will not work half the time as they are Chinese junk .
they are already cheap af
Chinese junk. LOL Honestly, how many things were actually built without the word 'Made in China'? Yes, many of them are junks but if you know how to get good ones, their quality maybe second to none in the world.
Hasn't bic been using tungsten carbide since the 60s in their pens?
yes and it should be noted BIC is a French company. The video implies the technology came out of Japan and cooped by Europe. Also FYI the original inventor was Hungarian starting the first production of ball point pens somewhere in South America (just can't remember where).
Robert Arnold Argentina
It was refined in Japan as the 1mm ball in EU wasn't suitable for their complex writing characters, Japan being able to get the ball to 0.3mm. The video said Japan had mastered the pen not created it.
Robert Arnold Biro Janos perhaps?
Yes.
But lets be real, we might see china expanding into precision grinding hard materials by 2100.
"Steel" isn't the type of metal used for high quality pens. Tungsten-Carbide is used. It's an incredibly strong metal alloy, often used for tool bit manufacturing for metal forming and milling.
shush.........
@@zhinkunakur4751 No you
🤫🤫🤫🤫
This makes me want to grab the nearest pen and start writing for no reason.
My aunt bought me a pen from Japan and i absolutely loved it. I preferred it rather than the expensive g-tech pens I have been using for a long time now
average price of a ballpoint pen in China is about RMB1.5(USD0.2), for that reason, i dont see too much requirement for having some pen balls totally made in China.
woah its about 10 dollars for an average one in hong kong(about USD 1.5)
AdrianAtGaming Those are Japanese pens through which comes at a premium.
Desmond one of my Japanese classmate lost all his stationary in the UK and bought some Japanese brand pens from the local market, guess what? A Japanese guy bought a bunch of Japanese pens from Chinese manufacturer. Though I think the ball was still made in Japan.😂
Gaius Jiau LOL, he should have checked the label.
Mine explicitly says Made in Japan 😂 I've bought some like 2 dollar for a set of 10 Chinese pens which I have to admit was the worst pens ever.
But hopefully a Japanese branded pen would require those Chinese manufacturers to make them to a certain standard.
it's not just about the money but the technology for precision engineering, watch the video
It was more because of lack of economic incentive. It was cheaper to import the socket, and it probably still is. A lot of stuff actually need a lot of experiments which is costly, so if the old system model worked fine u are unlikely to develop something new, unless there is an incentive to do so. China can make most of things themselves nowadays, but the industries can't sustain itself since most of these fields are already well-developed when China is still trying to squeeze in. So the government stepped in to prop up such industries, but the government's support is actually like a poison which made it hard for these industries to wane.
I thought the ballpoint was made of Tungsten Carbide.
Often but not universally
WHY IS THIS IN MY RECOMENDATIONS!!!!!!!!!
cus am stupid
yea
K N O W L E D G E
Because you comment on videos that you don’t know why you even watched to begin with.
frank grimes people like you need to get a life, instead of judging others. 110 people understood him why cant you.
I work in an old hospital built in the late 30s, as time went on new owners came and gone each adding some new expansion to the building. As a maintenance worker *ALL* original piping stayed through the years free from cracks and leaks....
I wonder why
There is only 1 underlying reason why China took so long...
There simply isn't any corners to cut to making a ballpoint pen.
A slightly worse kettle may not last as long or heats up slower, something you may overlook if u can get it for cheap.
But a slightly worse pen is just simply unusable.
Despite the fact that China has been producing millions of ballpoint pens for decades, it's just deplorable that not all Chinese manufacturers are willing to spend millions of dollars for research and development. Many ballpoints use stainless steel, brass or tungsten carbide for their writing tips. Ironically, China is rich in metals that are made into those tipping materials but the Chinese pen manufacturers didn't have precision engineering technology which could have helped them create ballpoint tips that are 0.00003 inches in diameter, so they remained dependent on imported stainless steel tips from Japan, Switzerland or Germany until 2017.
Why is it deplorable? Such a strong word.
Let others do what they do best and you do what you do best. Then buy it from them.
@@GraniteInTheFace Chinese are deplorable
nah... lets use the apple pencils that they make for cheap and we buy for USD 99.99
apple pencil , is just awesome.
APPLE PEN
Apple makes pencils? What sort of pretentious moron would buy them?
One with an iPad. 😛
I have three iPads, not once have I ever felt a need for a rechargeable stylus. I can imagine some prick in Starbucks whipping one out and telling people he has one since it doesn't make noise like a typewriter. Or some attention starved "artist" who just NEEDS people to notice him instead of his "art". Not only that, but I have never had the need to sign my name digitally in such a precise manner, usually my dick tip works.
That is pretty amazing that such simple thing takes so much effort to make.
Good, a small ballpoint pen reminds us to be humble. As a Chinese, we should never forget there are still many things to learn from the west and Japan. We should not be arrogant, like the time before the opium war. Eventually we shall rise, but without arrogance
Yes, arrogance is bad. It is blinding.
uiuy1uyui How is it stealing when they buy the imports from companies?
Don't worry, you won't rise. Your dictatorship won't allow the ascention of your country at some point, because wealth needs freedom and freedom is a thing that dictators aren't prone to give.
your first mistake was believing in shame. There are only winners and losers in this world, no shame.
MasterBay That's North Korea, I believe China lifted their tight internet policy in 2011
i grew up in a small steel town in western pa. everyone said that chinese steel undercut US steel in price but never could compete in quality. in the past decade we've had serious infrastructure problems and it turns out it's because corners were cut on the steel. some say it's because the unions were too expensive and the steel quality had to be cut. some say it's because they needed to compete with chinese steel. some say execs were greedy. all of those might be wrong or might be true, but the end result was the same: the steel mills closed, no one had work, the town is dying.
you know how when a football team loses because of a referees decision everyone loses their mind at the refs for a while. but then everyone eventually says, "yeah, but if it came down to the ref's decision you already lost the game." that's how i feel about US Steel. if it came down to __(your political opinion here)__, you already lost the game.
sorry if I offended. i've been drinking.
Evi1M4chine Nice job generalizing 300,000,000 people.
Put it this way if the unions were the case for the decline of US manufacturing, why has Germany become an industrial powerhouse it is today despite unions being on boards on German companies? Its because American companies provide short-term profit maximisation undermining people in America for years
@@danielduckington5789 This is still true.
That was actually pretty interesting. Good stuff.
Well, a lot of people scream "stolen technology", but that is the industrialization process tho. Otherwise, should China reinvent everything there is? There is one way to make a ball pen then that is the way to go. For example, the British invented the tank, every other tanks came after it's technically a "copy" because they all have tracks, armor and guns. If the Germans decided that copying that is not acceptable, then what is the alternative? How should German reinvent the tank without coping it?
Österreich Ungarn Yeah, everyone stole from everyone most of which is understandable
Yes, plus we technically stole a lit of technologies from China (like the gunpowder, pasta or compass), so...
Österreich Ungarn because chinese dont take the tech and add major innovations like your examples did, they merely pump out the same tech and counterfeit crap
counterfeit craps are there for poor and crapy ppl like you who cant buy anything good. so, go to school and catchup with the chinese then talk you stupid kid
britain did not invent the tank. Leonardo Da Vinci did.
Yes japan! They make good ballpens even korea i bought $1 pen lasted my whole school year
PinoyAviators lol just how?
I go through one within a month or two.
Desmond I don't know plus we write like 2-4 pages a day i guess japan and korea just make good pens
PinoyAviators Like A4 sheet sized exercise books?
I just Japanese pens as well, and my go to are Mitsubishi Jetstreams. Also have pilots but those are erasable ink pens so doesn't count.
Guess you are glad you didn't lose that pen, eh? Back when I was in school, on the average school year I must have lost about 2 packs worth of pens...
You either had good pen or you just don't use it often as most people's pen are either stolen , broken or simply ran out of ink , which in the case how to not run out of ink : simple not use it
0:45 The ball of a ballpoint pen is made of tungsten carbide not steel. The socket is made of steel.
1:10 The sockets is what they can't make, which are made of steel.
1:29 They're talking about making sockets from stainless steel.
Right at the start of this video, there's a short clip of a Chinese astronaut capsule in which the third seat is unoccupied. The first thing that went through my brain was that the guy meant to occupy that seat couldn't get the day off from Foxconn (which manufactures iPhones).
"housing the balls......" lolol
How many resources does humanity waste by not simply sharing knowledge and technologies for the benefit of all? Why do they need to struggle to rediscover how to make a simple ballpoint pen...
Fascinating!
The thing is, the ball point socket is a tiny, tiny, tiny market, there was little incentive to invest in R&D of this type of steel, they only developed this technology because there's other applications for this type of steel today.
Congratulations, gents. After five years of scientific innovation, you finally caught up to where the rest of the world was in 1938.
Very ignorant statement, only Japan, Switzerland, Germany, and now China can manufacture these precision ball tips today, and nobody did in 1938. Bet whatever country you are in doesn’t possess the capability.
Why on earth am even I watching a video about mastering ballpoint pens even though I'm supposed to be studying right now?
Yo
Did you finish studying
What are the odds that corporate espionage and strategic acquisition of companies had something to do with this, vs traditional reverse engineering?
well, the haters gonna hate, but for China, it's a big step up, very well done.
OMG my questioned has just answer by this video, I've been wondering why I only seen a ballpoint that written made in other countries, like 80% everytime I use it I always read it was made in Japan or Germany... and the rest has no any words that says where the ballpoints were made. Like literally I never seen any ballpoint I use that made in china...
idk why tf this appeared on my timeline but that's cool, didn't know about that.
They are so hard to make that i need to change one after a day.
Russia spent millions on a pen for space. Americans used a pencil lol
nice sir
Don’t care where my 50 cent pen comes from, as long as it’s still 50 cents lol
Chances are it still used Japan or Euro steel. The pen is easy to copy, but the material that is made of took China 30 years to figure out.
I thought the thumbnail said " How hard is it to pronounce A ballpoint pen." So I started saying it out loud 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
Doctor: You have 24 hours left...
Me: *Watches What took china so long to master ballpoint pens*
Harbinger (noun): a person or thing that announces or signals the approach of another.
Why not use tungsten carbide instead of other metals/alloys?
Even India can make ballpoint pens and some of the pens are exported to various countries also.
They are talking about precision
It's really a wonder that many Japanese ballpoint pen makers were able to reinvent the humble ballpoint despite it being only introduced to the Japanese people by the Americans shortly after World War II. Nowadays, because of Japan's persistence and passion for innovation, we now have different types of ballpoint pens. For example, we have low-viscosity ballpoint pens like Pilot Acroball, Zebra Surari, and Uni Jetstream. Then there are pressurized ballpoints that can write even in the outer space like the Fisher Space Pen in the U.S.A., the Tombow AirPress, Uni Power Tank and many more.
China can build a rip off of the F-22 Raptor from stolen plans, but Bic is still kicking their ass. lol
They can't. They can't make engines that can supercruise - i.e travel at supersonic speeds for sustained periods in level flight without using afterburner. They also don't have the technology to produce radar-absorbent coatings. They need Russia for those things.
Yep... ballpoint is big challenge for them 😁😁
Only handful countries can make it, maybe not including yours.
Joshua Feng yeah also didnt they get talent from around the world to make that thing
They have the dimensions of the Raptor but not the ability to create the engines, computer systems, avionics, use the advanced missles designed for it or produce high end materials used in its construction and repair. They could make a plane that looks like a Raptor but not one that performs anywhere near it. The Chinese Air industry has always lagged behind due to its lack of high quality manufacturing, it's why they have to import nearly all of there Civilian and Military Aircraft from other nations.
I feel like this has started effecting other products containing stainless steel parts from China as lower end products has started feeling less cheap and tinny.
tungsten carbide(WC) not steel, or did i miss something?
Wow.
Legit was interested, then realized its WSJ.
This is why i hate the wall street journal. they freakin love pens.
Tell you what sucks the most .. When you drop a pen on the nib/ball ... and then you get scratchy incomplete writing ...
Winning war against China: Embargo Ballpoint pens
This was all over the place and didn't provide enough details on subjects that are actually interesting.
All of a sudden, the tech tree of Sid Meiers civilization makes a bit more sense.
At least in a small perspective.
If everywhere else had the perfect alloy already why didnt they just use that???? This is mind boggling.
Whenever I hear the word 'claim' I think of zoidburg waddling away.
“Made in China”
Should use the same principle for car wheels. Just an odd idea.
Did this guy really just say it’s harder to make a pen than planes or rockets
It's a great leap forward from the mass prodection of low quality steel in the 1950s.
Graphics in this article are terrible. They should show the socket capturing more than half of the ball, not less than half. In the diagrams used in this video, the ball would just fall out.
so that's why it's called ballpoint? because of the ball on the point? wow! i'm enlightened!
...i always thought it was due to trying to steal ideas and speciicaions from everyone else...
Heh he said balls
I just watched a video on ballpoint pens. Weird.
funny, just today my tech teacher started talking about how to make a ball point pen.
They should take inspiration from Japan, who has made so made pens that they are now known as 'Pen Island'.
I never knew that ballpoint pens actually rolled, I thought they were called ballpoint because they were round
In my entire life I think I've only used up 2 pens. The rest are either lost or dead. So... 99.99% are waste
According to this video the answer to how hard is really hard.
That's it
5 cent Chinese ballpoints write smoother than expensive western ballpoints since 90's.
true
I thought this was an April fools joke for a second
Why do they need a pen? Just take a pencil?
by the time China reached high end metals, we already in andromeda
Blow it up. Can't let them get any better
So no one else noticed the obvious major inacuracy in the diagram?
The original Bic Crystals are cheap enough and are smooth and perform well so will stick with those.
Now they can not only say "I have a pen" but also "I can make a pen".
so their steel just isn't high enough quality to produce them lol
Why not just use tungstun or tungstun carbide
Do you know china produce their own automatic watch movement (seagull) which in many case are better than the lower spec ETA movements? Watches are micro micro engineering, and youre trying to tell people they cant produce ball point??
It's not that they could not produce a ballpoint pen. That is simple. They could not produce the proper steel so that the pen works properly.
Just what we need, china finally getting some balls of steel
I really hope they love our beef.
couldn't they just google how to do it
Still nothing beats the good old fountain pen.
Good old Mont Blanc never fails. Just wish ink could be cheaper.
Jommy Davi I use Lamy. The only problems are the proprietary cartridges.
Unless you plan to write on a plane, or run with one in yoir back pack
Deadlyaztec27 If you plan to put it in your backpack, can’t you just put the cap on?
Der Ossi fountain pens are for pretentious people who prefer style over substance. Important technical and scientific writing is never done with a fountain pen.
China still import pen tip after solve all the problems, because China finds out there is not much profit from making that
I read the thumbnail as "how hard is it to PRONOUNCE ballpoint pen", and I concluded the video must be about how ballpoint pens didn't take off in China because they couldn't pronounce the word. X'D
ballpoint pens are actually captured and imported from a small planet somewhere in the galaxy
When making a pen is harder than building expensive satellites
This explains why their screws always strip!
China: We might suck at first, but we'll find a solution in the future.
Pilot G2 07.
Adding vandium and titanium to the stainless steel will solve the problem
why don't they just hire an outside engineering company to do it for them then buy the plans?
"Housing the balls"
Housing the balls you say
When i was in school cheapest ballpen would cost ₹5 (0.1 US$) in India . I though they made it everywhere.
things cost more here. cause transport here is more expensive. and store people and all need to be paid. i want to get paid too.
and like 1 cent.
here in the Netherlands, we don't even use that €coin..
it literally be free. unless you bought 3, or bought with a card. (cause the 3 cents become 5 cents. and card does on the cent)
Pretty sure the balls are tungsten carbide.
If you travel to a Bic factory and press the big red 'Start Production' button, - probably not too difficult??
Why is that important to know?
I have been looking for someone who can fix my cheaper pens. Can you fix them? For how much?
These days, people usually fix only the expensive things. But I’m interested in sustainability for all things.
why so many dislikes? its a good video
or... just use tungsten carbide? or is that too expensive...