Almost all of us have used ballpoint pens at one time or another during our lifespan; but few, very few among us have ever given it a second thought to the difficulty in making the tip of the pen.
Small countries like Japan and Switzerland have mastered the techniques of making not only the special materials but also the ball point and its socket for the tip of the pen and have dominated the trade and trick for long.
As a big country, China is the world's largest stainless steel producing base and also the world's biggest manufacturer of ballpoint pens. But it has taken five years of concentration and efforts before China has cracked the difficulty in churning out ball points and sockets with carbonated tungsten with precision manufacturing as precise as one thousand parts of a millimeter.
The Chinese are hailing the Taiyuan Iron and Steel Group or TISCO for conjuring up its Chinese way of producing ball points and sockets along with the special materials as required.
TISCO says now China-made tips are ready for mass assembly and are expected to replace foreign imports in the years to come.
Stationery manufacturers across China combine to produce 38 billion ballpoint pens every year, but they make less than 0.1 yuan on each pen, despite spending millions of dollars importing the special stainless steel used to make the pen tips. The imports cost 120,000 yuan (17,000 U.S. dollars) per ton.
"The stainless steel for making ball points is Japanese imports. All ballpoint pen makers the world over import Japanese stainless steel," said Xu Jundao, manager of Beifa Group, one of China's largest ballpoint pen makers.
Though making a ballpoint pen may seem straightforward, actually producing a tiny tip set complete with ball point and its socket for fluent and consistent writing can be zigzaging, requiring more than 20 processes.
TISCO joined a countrywide initiative in 2011 to develop domestic ballpoint pen tips to help move the industry up the value chain, but the initial R and D proved difficult, and the toughest part was finding the right formula for the building materials.
Special micro-elements must be added to liquid steel to make a quality tip that is able to write continually and last for at least 800 meters of a single pen stroke. But the formula had long been kept a trade secret by foreign manufacturers, leaving imports the only option for Chinese ballpoint pen makers, until the first China-made ballpoint pen tips were produced in June last year.
Beifa has ordered the first batch of domestically-developed pen tips from TISCO, and expects to completely replace imported materials in two years.
"After 800 meters, the drawn-out lines are as good as at beginning, with no change in color. This indicates that ink flow is evenly and consistent through the ball point and its socket and the tips are highly durable. So the pens we make now with Taiyuan Iron and Steel materials are basically as good as foreign-made ones," said Hu Shengyang, head of Beifa’s quality test lab.
The pen tip dilemma was first brought into spotlight by Chinese Premier Li Keqiang in January last year, and it has given a small insight to a larger problem faced by Chinese manufacturers - weak competitiveness in core technology.
To move up to the upper level of the supply chain, China has implemented an innovation-driven strategy to create growth opportunities and upgrade traditional sectors.
Now by November last year, an industry standard on steel ballpoint pen tips has won approval from the Chinese national steel standard authorities. The standard was drafted by no other than TISCO. Both the Chinese standards and products of China-made ballpoint pens with Chinese materials are examples of innovation-driven initiatives aimed at enhancing the country's competitiveness for higher added values.
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