Company News
New stainless steel material for ball pen tips is successfully developed by TISCO

By Chen Yan UpDate 2017-01-11

With stable quality and property equivalent to imported products, the new stainless steel material for ball pen tips developed by TISCO was successfully applied by a well-known Chinese pen manufacturer recently, after 5 years of technical research. It marks a key step for Chinese stainless steel industry to independently manufacture the stainless steel material for ball pen tips. It breaks the long term monopoly of overseas suppliers and promotes the structure optimization and upgrade of Chinese steel industry as well.
 
As the biggest ball pen producer all over the world, China produces over 40 billions of ball pens every year. A tips is composed of a ball and a ball socket. The ball material manufactured in China can not only meet the national demands but also be exported largely. While the ball socket, whether the raw material or the production equipment, used to be imported for a long period due to the sophisticated structure and extreme high mechanical property.
 
As a leading company in stainless steel industry, TISCO has always been committed to the development, production and spreading application in China of critical materials. During the 12th Five-Year Plan, TISCO did a lot of basic research and experiments on the stainless steel material for ball pen tips and carried out the “Technical Research, Development and Industrialization of Key Materials in Pen Industry”, a project supported by the 12th Five-Year national technical plan, together with the key manufacturers and related scientific research institutions in China. During that period, TISCO collected up a series of key data, basically mastered the special properties of the tips used stainless steel and understood the requirements on the properties of the materials of the pen industry.
 
In early 2016, the Primer Li Keqiang put forward the “question on the ball pen tips” that caused a strong response in the industry. Actively responding to this summon, TISCO strengthened further the force on the development and research, sped up all the work and started a new round of study on the application of technology and process of the tip-used stainless steel material in massive production. After about 100 experiments in 5 rounds, TISCO made major breakthroughs on 7 technical problems including the free-cutting property, mechanical property stability and corrosion resistance, mastered key technologies such as alloy homogenization of the precious metal and harmless treatment of impurities. All these achievements set a sound foundation for the massive production of the key material. In Sept. 2016, the first batch of stainless steel wires of 2.3 mm in diameter with high free-cutting property was successfully produced in TISCO and passed about 1000 times of limit tests in the lab of a well-known domestic pen producer. The ball pen made of TISCO material can continually write for 800 meters long at different angles without any break. The test shows a generally stable uniformity of the out-let liquid and abrasive resistance of the tips, with equivalent quality to the imported products. In the coming 2 years, the tips-used stainless steel material is expected to be manufactured with full independence in China.
 
While speeding up the research on the new material, TISCO actively promote the production standardization of the tip-used stainless steel material. Besides the high technical requirement, there are various of parameters to follow during the production of the free-cutting stainless steel wire. Based on plenty of experiments and experiences, TISCO set up technical specifications on the category, type, mechanical property and surface quality of the tip-used stainless steel material, and worked out China’s first industrial standard “free-cutting stainless steel wire used to the tips” after perfection by the experts from national steel standard committee. It filled up the gap of the standard of this kind of products in China. This standard was reviewed and approved by the national steel standard committee a few days ago.
 
TISCO is determined to serve the country with industrial development, carry forward the spirit of craftsmanship and be bold to innovate in order to optimize the process of the whole production line based on the existing foundation, improve the key technical index, achieve the stable and massive production of tip-used stainless steel material, meet the demand of the pen producer in an all-around way, realize the complete localization of the material and push forward China’s development by practical innovations.