Each of us with early years, while doing creative work, or in school lessons, I came across such an object as a pencil. Most often, people treat it as something ordinary, as a simple and useful thing. But few people thought about how complex the technological process of its production is.
By the way, during production, a pencil goes through 83 technological operations, 107 types of raw materials are used in its production, and the production cycle is 11 days. If you look at all this from the perspective of an entire product line, you see a complex, well-established production with careful planning and control.
In order to see with our own eyes the process of producing pencils, we go to the Moscow factory named after Krasin. This is the oldest pencil production in Russia. The factory was founded in 1926 with government support.
The government's main goal was to eliminate illiteracy in the country, and for this it was necessary to make stationery accessible. After the collapse Soviet Union factory named after Krasin remained the only pencil manufacturer in the CIS with full cycle production. This means that everything is produced at the factory - from lead to the final product - pencils. Let's take a closer look at the pencil production process.
(Total 44 photos)
1. To produce pencils, the factory receives specially processed and laid linden boards. But before they are used, writing rods must be made.
2. Let's move on to the pencil lead manufacturing workshop. Writing rods are made from a mixture of clay and graphite. The preparation of the necessary mixture begins with such technological installations, where clay is crushed. The crushed clay is sent along a conveyor to the next production site.
3. In the next section, special mills are installed, where the clay is ground more finely and mixed with water.
5. It is worth noting that only natural substances are used in the production of leads, which allows us to consider the production environmentally friendly. Installation for pressing the mixture. Rods are obtained from the resulting semi-finished products. There is virtually no waste from production, since they reuse it.
6. At this production site, the rods themselves are produced, but in order for them to get into the pencil, a number of technological operations will be carried out on them.
7. The technology for producing rods itself is reminiscent of extrusion. The carefully prepared and mixed mass is squeezed out through a special stamp with holes.
8. After this, the writing rod blanks are placed in a special container.
9. And dry in the closet for 16 hours.
10. After this, the rods are carefully sorted by hand.
11. This is what it looks like workplace for sorting rods. It's very complex and painstaking work. Cats sleep behind the table lamp.
12. After sorting, the rods are calcined in a special cabinet. The annealing temperature ranges from 800 to 1200 degrees Celsius and directly affects the final properties of the rod. The hardness of the pencil, which has 17 gradations - from 7H to 8B, depends on the temperature.
13. After annealing, the rods are filled with fat under special pressure and temperature. This is necessary to give them the necessary writing properties: intensity of stroke, ease of gliding, quality of sharpening, ease of erasing with an eraser. Depending on the required value of the hardness of the rod, the following can be used: lard, confectionery fat, or even beeswax and carnauba wax. Output products from the rod production area.
14. After this, the rods go to the assembly. Pencil boards are prepared on such machines. Grooves are cut into them for installing writing rods.
15. The cutting part of the machine makes grooves in the boards.
16. The planks automatically go into a clip like this.
17. After this, on another machine, the rods are laid in pre-prepared planks.
18. After laying, the halves of the planks are glued together with PVA glue and left to dry under pressure. The essence of this operation is that the rod itself is not glued to the boards. Its diameter is larger than the diameter of the groove, and in order for the structure to close, a press is needed. The rod will be held in the wood not by glue, but by the tension of the wooden shell (prestress specially created in this way in the design of the pencil).
19. After drying, the workpiece is sawn with special cutters into individual pencils.
20. Pencils are gradually sawn through several processing cycles.
21. The output is ready-made, but not colored pencils.
22. Already at this stage, the shape of the pencil is established due to the type of profile of the cutting cutter.
23. Next, the surface of the pencil is primed on special lines. When painting pencils, enamels made at the factory are used. These enamels are made from components that are safe for humans.
24. Line for painting pencils.
25. I think that in stores many times we have seen gift pencils painted with colorful stains. It turns out that in order to color them this way, a whole specially developed technology is used. Here is a short snippet of the painting process.
26. When visiting the paint shop, I happened to see a batch of pencils for delivery to the government of the Russian Federation of a new type. The tip of the pencil symbolizes our national flag. Pencils dry in special technological frames. The regularity of the rows looks very unusual and attractive.
27. After painting, the pencils are put into batches to be sent to the next sections of the factory.
28. Looking at thousands of pencils colored using the factory’s proprietary technology gives great pleasure. This is a very unusual sight.
30. Surface finishing technological line.
33. If necessary, pencils are sharpened on a special machine before packaging. The photo shows the intermediate stage of sharpening. I was amazed by the speed of the machine. Pencils fell into the tray in a continuous stream. I immediately remembered all the personal unsuccessful attempts sharpen pencils. From these memories this machine began to inspire even more respect.38. The factory has its own equipped laboratory, in which products are tested throughout the entire production cycle and new production technologies are developed. The picture shows an Amsler device for determining the fracture resistance of writing rods.
39. Before leaving, I went into a room with demonstration stands for the factory’s products. The factory logo evokes some kind of nostalgia. After all, these pencils are familiar to each of us since childhood. The factory produces several product lines. Professional series of pencils for artists, decorators and designers.
40. Samples of pencils supplied to the government of the Russian Federation. For the design of the pencils, a design was chosen to match the color of the standard malachite desktop instruments of Russian government workers. But besides this, they have other differences from ordinary pencils: firstly, their shape is made with maximum consideration for the ergonomics of an adult’s hand, and in addition, they use a special “lumograph” type rod for making notes in the margins and in a diary; it does not smear with the hand , but can be easily erased with an eraser without damaging the paper.
44. I want to express my deep gratitude to the chief production technologist Marina for her help and clarification of technological processes in production. At the end of the visit to the factory, its management presented the Reedus editorial office with their branded pencils, including those supplied to the government of the Russian Federation.
By the way, during production, a pencil goes through 83 technological operations, 107 types of raw materials are used in its production, and the production cycle is 11 days. If you look at all this from the perspective of an entire product line, you see a complex, well-established production with careful planning and control.
Go...
In order to see with our own eyes the process of producing pencils, we go to the Moscow factory named after Krasin. This is the oldest pencil production in Russia. The factory was founded in 1926 with government support.
The government's main goal was to eliminate illiteracy in the country, and for this it was necessary to make stationery accessible. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Krasin factory remained the only pencil manufacturer in the CIS with a full production cycle. This means that everything is produced at the factory - from lead to the final product - pencils. Let's take a closer look at the pencil production process.
To produce pencils, the factory receives specially processed and laid linden boards. But before they are used, writing rods must be made.
2. Let's move on to the pencil lead manufacturing workshop. Writing rods are made from a mixture of clay and graphite. The preparation of the necessary mixture begins with such technological installations, where clay is crushed. The crushed clay is sent along a conveyor to the next production site.
3. In the next section, special mills are installed, where the clay is ground more finely and mixed with water.
4. Installations for preparing a mixture of clay and graphite. Here the mixture for future rods gets rid of impurities and is prepared for further processing.
5. It is worth noting that only natural substances are used in the production of leads, which allows us to consider the production environmentally friendly. Installation for pressing the mixture. Rods are obtained from the resulting semi-finished products. There is virtually no waste from production, since they reuse it.
6. At this production site, the rods themselves are produced, but in order for them to get into the pencil, a number of technological operations will be carried out on them.
7. The technology for producing rods itself is reminiscent of extrusion. The carefully prepared and mixed mass is squeezed out through a special stamp with holes.
8. After this, the writing rod blanks are placed in a special container.
9. And dry in the closet for 16 hours.
10. After this, the rods are carefully sorted by hand.
11. This is what the workbench for sorting rods looks like. This is a very difficult and painstaking work. Cats sleep behind the table lamp.
12. After sorting, the rods are calcined in a special cabinet. The annealing temperature ranges from 800 to 1200 degrees Celsius and directly affects the final properties of the rod. The hardness of the pencil, which has 17 gradations - from 7H to 8B, depends on the temperature.
13. After annealing, the rods are filled with fat under special pressure and temperature. This is necessary to give them the necessary writing properties: intensity of stroke, ease of gliding, quality of sharpening, ease of erasing with an eraser. Depending on the required value of the hardness of the rod, the following can be used: lard, confectionery fat, or even beeswax and carnauba wax. Output products from the rod production area.
14. After this, the rods go to the assembly. Pencil boards are prepared on such machines. Grooves are cut into them for installing writing rods.
15. The cutting part of the machine makes grooves in the boards.
16. The planks automatically go into a clip like this.
17. After this, on another machine, the rods are laid in pre-prepared planks.
18. After laying, the halves of the planks are glued together with PVA glue and left to dry under pressure. The essence of this operation is that the rod itself is not glued to the boards. Its diameter is larger than the diameter of the groove, and in order for the structure to close, a press is needed. The rod will be held in the wood not by glue, but by the tension of the wooden shell (prestress specially created in this way in the design of the pencil).
19. After drying, the workpiece is sawn with special cutters into individual pencils.
20. Pencils are gradually sawn through several processing cycles.
21. The output is ready-made, but not colored pencils.
22. Already at this stage, the shape of the pencil is established due to the type of profile of the cutting cutter.
23. Next, the surface of the pencil is primed on special lines. When painting pencils, enamels made at the factory are used. These enamels are made from components that are safe for humans.
24. Line for painting pencils.
25. I think that in stores many times we have seen gift pencils painted with colorful stains. It turns out that in order to color them this way, a whole specially developed technology is used. Here is a short snippet of the painting process.
26. When visiting the paint shop, I happened to see a batch of pencils for delivery to the government of the Russian Federation of a new type. The tip of the pencil symbolizes our national flag. Pencils dry in special technological frames. The regularity of the rows looks very unusual and attractive.
27. After painting, the pencils are put into batches to be sent to the next sections of the factory.
28. Looking at thousands of pencils colored using the factory’s proprietary technology gives great pleasure. This is a very unusual sight.
30. Surface finishing technological line.
32. Cabinet for storing stamps. Stamps for the entire range of manufactured products are stored here.
33. If necessary, pencils are sharpened on a special machine before packaging. The photo shows the intermediate stage of sharpening. I was amazed by the speed of the machine. Pencils fell into the tray in a continuous stream. I immediately remembered all my personal unsuccessful attempts to sharpen pencils. From these memories this machine began to inspire even more respect.
34. The factory also produces these interesting pencils oval-shaped, used in construction and repair.
35. Arrays of stacked pencils look very unusual and attractive. You won't see this anywhere else.
Will the lead break or not? Today we will try to understand the technological process of producing pencils and find out what will happen to the lead?
Although it is called simple, it is quite a technological product. To make one pencil, over 80 production operations within 11 days. The quality and price of the final product largely depend on what material it is made from and how it is made.
Briefly, the process of making a pencil is as follows.
- Receiving a bar
- The timber is sawn into planks
- The boards are impregnated with wax (paraffin)
- Recesses are made in the boards
- The lead is placed in the recesses
- Another board is placed on top
- Pencil department
- Coloring pencil
- The pencil has a metal rim
- An elastic band is inserted into the metal rim
Wood To make a pencil shell, it must have a number of specific properties:
- to be light, soft and durable, not to break or crumble during the making of pencils;
- have the same resistance to cutting fibers both along and across, and should not delaminate;
- shear when cutting sharp knife should be smooth, shiny, chips should curl, not chip or break;
- the wood must be low-hygroscopic, i.e. should not absorb moisture.
Virginia juniper, which grows in the USA, meets all these qualities. The wood that is closest in its properties and structure is cedar and linden, but for use in pencil production it must first be subjected to special treatment - waxing (i.e. refining). The boards are sawn into bars, the bars are trimmed to the length of a pencil with allowances for machining and drying, and then the bars are sawn into planks on a multi-saw machine. After this, the boards are impregnated with paraffin - this procedure improves the mechanical and repair properties of the future pencil. Steam removes all resins from the boards, and the wood legnin, when interacting with steam, changes its color to pinkish-brown. Then the boards are thoroughly dried. After drying, they are sorted - cracked planks, planks sawn along the wrong grain, etc. are rejected. Paraffin-treated and dried planks are sorted and calibrated - "grooves" (grooves) for the rods are applied to them.
Graphite rod made from a mixture of clay and graphite. The clay is first cleaned. To do this, it is crushed in special crushers, then mixed with warm water in special mills. During the processing process, clay diluted in water is poured with liquid glass, which, settling, removes all impurities from it - pebbles, twigs, sand, etc. Next, according to a special recipe, graphite is added to the clay, and each gradation has its own recipe. The mixture is mixed with aparatine binder made from starch. To make rods, a rod mass of a certain temperature and humidity is required. Under no circumstances should the mixture be allowed to dry out, otherwise it will be like a stone.
Kneaded dough from clay and graphite using a screw press pressed for molding through special equipment - rollers with three different gaps. This is done to grind and grind the mass, average moisture content over volume and remove air bubbles. The thickness of the dough layer is initially 1 mm, with repeated processing 0.5 mm, then 0.25 mm. Then the dough is passed through a die with holes, forming the so-called “noodles”. The “noodles” are formed into cylinders, and from them a rod of the required diameter and length is pressed through a diamond die on a press. The rods are finally dried in special drying cabinets - continuously rotating for 16 hours. After this process, the moisture content of the rod is approximately 0.5%.
Then the rods are calcined in a furnace. Firing is necessary to burn out the binder in the core and bake the clay to form a frame. The degree of hardness (gradation) of a pencil from 6M to 7T depends on the ratio of clay, temperature and duration of firing and the composition of the fatliquor bath. Depending on the gradation of the rod, firing is carried out at a temperature from 800 to 1200 degrees.
After firing is carried out fattening operation: the pores formed after burning out the binder are filled with fat, wax or stearin under pressure at a certain temperature. The choice of substance for greasing depends on the gradation (hardness) of the rod. For soft pencils Confectionery fat is used, for hard ones - wax. Intermediate hardness values, for example TM, are achieved by fattening with stearin. Refills for colored pencils are made from a mixture of pigments, fillers, fatliquors and binders.
What happens next assembly process. The rods are placed in the grooves of the prepared plank and covered with a second plank. The boards are glued together with PVA glue, but the rod itself is not glued to the board, but is held in place by the tension of the board. The diameter of the rod is slightly larger than the diameter of the groove, so it is very important to properly compress the boards in a special mechanism, where future pencils are glued. For each pencil size there is a specific pressure indicator for pressing in, so as not to break the rod.
In addition, to prevent the lead from breaking If a pencil falls, many manufacturers use the so-called SV technology for sizing the lead. If a pencil is dropped, the lead may break only at the sharpened tip, and not inside the body.
Further the ends of the glued boards are processed- trim, remove any remaining glue. On the milling and throughput line, the blocks are divided into pencils. The shape of the future pencil depends on the shape of the knives - it will be round, faceted or oval. “Newborn” pencils are sent along a conveyor belt for sorting.
Finishing pencil surfaces is carried out by extrusion (broaching), and finishing of the end is done by dipping. Extrusion is the process of passing a pencil through a priming machine. At the end of the conveyor, the pencil is turned over so that the next layer of paint or varnish is applied from the other end. This ensures uniform coverage.
It is common knowledge that less than 7 layers When painting with pencils, it is not allowed, otherwise the wood will be covered with burrs. Companies that take the quality of their products more seriously usually start with 12 layers. Very expensive products are painted up to 18 times, sometimes up to 20. Then the pencil acquires unsurpassed gloss and an almost mirror-like surface. However, many believe that more than 18 layers are already excessive. Application dark colors made 5 times with paint and 4 times with varnish, light - 7 times with paint and 4 times with varnish. Pencil sharpening is done automatically, and all pencils at the factory are necessarily marked. Packaging of sharpened pencils is done manually; in one full shift, about 15 thousand pencils can be packed.
So, if the pencil was glued using a special SV technology, then rest assured, it will not break.
A pencil is such a common thing that it seems unremarkable and simple tool for drawing. However, to make it, a rather complex production technology is used. I would like to talk about this little-known process.
The stages of pencil production can be divided into two parts: making the lead and making the wooden shell into which it is inserted.
Pencil lead is made from a mixture of graphite powders and special clay. The graphite powder itself is made from slate slate. The mixture of graphite and clay is thoroughly mixed with water, then dried, then ground again into powder, and at the end a small amount of water is added again until a thick paste is formed. The hardness of the pencil will depend on the ratio of graphite and clay in this paste. The more clay, the harder the pencil will be. But the degree of hardness will still depend on another process, which I will describe below.
Then, this paste is fed to special equipment similar to an extruder. Graphite paste is pressed through the forming holes of the stamp and at the exit you can see the familiar pencil core. However, he is still far from a finished rod.
The resulting lead blank is dried. Then they are fired at high temperatures in a special oven. During firing, the graphite and clay combine and the core hardens. As I wrote above, the hardness of the pencil will largely depend on this process. The higher the firing temperature, the harder the pencil will be. The less clay there is in the lead and the lower the firing temperature, the softer the pencil will be. As you know, pencils indicate hardness or in English letters, or Russians. The English "H" means "hard" and the English "B" means "soft". Accordingly, the Russian letter “T” means hard, and the Russian letter “M” means “soft.” There are also different degrees of pencil hardness. For example, 2B or 2M is double soft, and 2H or 2T is double hard. In total, there are about 17 degrees of pencil hardness: from 8M to 8T.
After firing, the graphite rods are placed into special wooden blanks for future pencils. These blanks are wooden plates, half the thickness of a pencil. They are made, as a rule, from cedar or linden. This wood is soft and has fibers well suited for making pencils. Each such blank board produces either 6 or 8 pencils, depending on the production standard. Accordingly, 6-8 grooves are sawn into these boards for graphite pencil leads.
Next, the rods are placed into the sawn grooves. Then, a wooden plate with rods is covered with exactly the same plate on top. Graphite rods are placed between two wooden plates. The rods are securely fixed in the wooden shell in two ways: either by means of glue, or by squeezing the wooden halves of the future pencil. The halves themselves in both cases are connected using glue and a press.
At the next stage of production, these blanks are fed to a special machine, the cutters of which have teeth in the form of half a hexagon or half a circle. These cutters are used to saw a wooden blank with rods, and at the same time give the resulting pencils a hexagonal or round shape.
Well, now the pencil is almost ready! But it hasn't been painted yet. Painting is done with special enamels. And when the pencil is already painted, a marking is made on it indicating the manufacturer, the degree of softness of the pencil, etc. This embossing is done using paint or foil.
This is how it is - the difficult process of making a seemingly simple pencil.
About pencil manufacturing technology
Pencil (from the Turkic kara - black and tash, -dash - stone), a rod made of coal, lead, graphite, dry paint (often framed in wood or metal), which is used for writing, drawing, drawing.
The first description of a pencil was made by Conrad Gesner of Zurich in 1565 in his Treatise on Fossils. It showed a detailed structure of a pencil, showing a wooden tube into which a piece of graphite was inserted.
Prototypes of the pencil - lead and silver pins (which gave a dark gray tone) inserted into metal clamps - were used in the 12th-16th centuries. In the 14th century, artists painted mainly with sticks made of lead and tin, they were called “silver pencils.” From the 16th century. graphite pencils (the stroke of which has low intensity and a slight shine) and pencils made of burnt bone powder, held together with vegetable glue (providing a strong black matte stroke) became widespread.
In the 17th century, graphite was commonly sold on the streets. Buyers, mostly artists, sandwiched these graphite sticks between pieces of wood or twigs and wrapped them in paper or tied them with string. In England, the rod was a stick of soft graphite, suitable for drawing, but not for writing. In Germany, graphite powder was mixed with glue and sulfur, thus obtaining a rod that was not the most High Quality. In 1790, wooden pencils were invented by the French scientist N. Conte. At the same time, the Czech I. Hartmut proposed making writing rods from a mixture of crushed graphite and clay. In principle, this method is the basis modern technology pencil production.
Modern production: At first glance, a pencil appears to be a simple object consisting of a writing rod and a wooden shell. But in order to make one pencil, more than 80 production operations are carried out over 11 days. In addition, the range of products manufactured by the factory uses more than 70 types of raw materials. These are mainly natural nutrients and products.
Sheath for pencils Wood for the manufacture of pencil sheaths must have a number of specific properties:
To be light, soft and durable, not to break or crumble during the making of pencils.
Have the same resistance to cutting fibers both along and across, and should not delaminate.
When cutting with a sharp knife, the cut should be smooth and shiny, the chips should curl, not chip or break.
Wood should be low-hygroscopic, i.e. should not absorb moisture. Virginia juniper, which grows in the USA, meets all these qualities.
None of the tree species growing in Russia fully meets all these requirements. The wood that is closest in its properties and structure is cedar and linden, but for use in pencil production it must first be subjected to special treatment - waxing (i.e. refining).
The boards are sawn into bars, the bars are trimmed to the length of a pencil with allowances for machining and drying, and then the bars are sawn into planks on a multi-saw machine. After this, the boards are impregnated with paraffin in special autoclaves. This procedure allows you to improve the mechanical and repair properties of the future pencil. Steam removes all resins from the boards, and the wood legnin, when interacting with steam, changes its color to pinkish-brown. Then the boards are thoroughly dried. To dry, they are placed in special “wells” using a machine. A special method of laying boards for drying allows you to increase the area of the boards in contact with the drying agent - hot steam, and therefore dry them as thoroughly as possible. The wells are placed in drying rooms for 72 hours. After drying, they are sorted - cracked planks, planks sawn along the wrong fiber, etc. are rejected. “Ennobled” with paraffin and dried planks are sorted and calibrated - “grooves” (grooves) for the rods are applied to them. A graphite rod is made from a mixture of clay and graphite. The clay is first cleaned. To do this, it is crushed in special crushers, then mixed with warm water in special mills. During the processing process, clay diluted in water is poured with liquid glass, which, as it settles, removes all impurities from it - pebbles, twigs, sand, etc. And then, according to the recipe, graphite is added to the clay, and each gradation has its own recipe. The mixture is mixed with a binder - aparatin, cooked from starch.
To make rods, a rod mass of a certain temperature and humidity is required. Under no circumstances should the mixture be allowed to dry out, otherwise it will be like a stone and will lead to equipment wear - there will not be enough press pressure. The kneaded dough from clay and graphite is pressed with a screw press for molding through special equipment - rollers with three different gaps. This is done to grind and grind the mass, average moisture content over volume and remove air bubbles. The thickness of the dough layer is initially 1mm, with repeated processing 0.5mm, then 0.25mm. Then the dough is passed through a die with holes, forming the so-called “noodles”. The “noodles” are formed into cylinders, and from them a rod of the required diameter and length is pressed through a diamond die on a press. The rods are finally dried in special drying cabinets in very nice barrels - continuously rotating for 16 hours. After this process, the moisture content of the rod is approximately 0.5%. Then the rods are calcined in a furnace in special crucibles. Instead of a lid, the crucibles with rods are filled with the same “raw materials”. The crucible filling density affects the quality of the rods. Firing is necessary to burn out the binder in the core and bake the clay to form a frame.
The degree of hardness (gradation) of a pencil from 6m to 7t depends on the ratio of clay, temperature and duration of firing and the composition of the fatliquor bath. Depending on the gradation of the rod, firing is carried out at a temperature from 800 to 1200 degrees. After firing, a greasing operation is carried out: the pores formed after burning the binder are filled with fat, wax or stearin under pressure at a certain temperature. Some factories use edible and confectionery fats and binders as raw materials. (for example, aparatine is made from starch). The choice of substance for greasing depends on the gradation (hardness) of the rod. For soft pencils, pastry fat is used, for hard pencils, wax. Intermediate hardness values, for example, TM, are achieved by fattening with stearin. Large diameter rods are produced on vertical masonry presses.
Colored pencil leads are made from a mixture of pigments, fillers, fatliquors and a binder. “Assembly” The rods are placed in the grooves of the prepared board and covered with a second board. The boards are glued together with PVA glue, but the rod itself is not glued to the board, but is held in place by the tension of the board. The diameter of the rod is slightly larger than the diameter of the groove, so it is very important to correctly compress the boards in a special mechanism (clamp), where future pencils are glued. For each pencil size there is a specific pressure indicator for pressing in, so as not to break the rod. Next, the ends of the glued planks are processed - they are trimmed, and any remaining glue is removed.
On the milling and throughput line, the blocks are divided into pencils. The shape of the future pencil depends on the shape of the knives - it will be round, faceted or oval. And the “newborn” pencils are sent along a conveyor belt for sorting. The sorter checks (“rolls”) all the pencils, looking for and eliminating defects. Then the pencils should “get dressed” - go for painting. Painting The finishing of the surface of pencils is carried out by extrusion (broaching), and the finishing of the end is done by dipping. Extrusion is the process of passing a pencil through a priming machine. At the end of the conveyor, the pencil is turned over so that the next layer of paint or varnish is applied from the other end. This ensures uniform coverage. Dark colors are applied 5 times with paint and 4 times with varnish, light colors - 7 times with paint and 4 times with varnish. And to finish the end, a dipping machine is used. With smooth rotational movements, the dipper lowers the frame with pencils into the paint tank. Marking of pencils is carried out using the hot impact stamping method. Pencil sharpening is done automatically. All pencils are marked. Packaging of sharpened pencils is done manually, unsharpened pencils - manually and automatically: on automatic and semi-automatic machines. With a semi-automatic machine you can pack 15 thousand pencils in one full shift, with an automatic machine – 180 thousand. The machines are capable of placing both 6 and 12 pencils into boxes.
Quality control Incoming control of all raw materials and technological control of the production process and finished products is carried out by the laboratory. Chemists check everything thoroughly! They also formulate soil formulations. By the way, the products of one well-known factory are even tested for contact with the mouth, like baby pacifiers! In the 2nd half of the 19th century. appeared, and in the 20th century. Mechanical or automatic pencils have become widespread. According to their writing properties and production technology, pencils are divided into graphite (black), color, copying, etc., according to their intended purpose - into school, stationery, drafting, drawing, carpentry, makeup, pencils for retouching, marking and marks on various materials. Special types of pencils are sanguine and pastel. In Russia, graphite drawing pencils of several degrees of hardness are produced; the degree of hardness is indicated by the letters M (soft), T (hard) and MT ( medium hard), as well as numbers before letters. Big number means greater degree hardness or softness. Abroad, instead of the letter M, the letter B is used, and instead of T, N. Automatic pencils are divided by design into: screw pencils - with a writing rod fed by rotating one of the parts; collet - with a writing rod clamped by a split collet sleeve and the rod is fed by pressing a button; multi-colored - with two, four or more rods, alternately extended from the magazine.
