June 3, 2021

Coming soon: a look at an Italian-made pen ^[1]available as lead holder, mechanical pencil and fountain pen, designed 20 years ago and now 3d printed using graphene. I got the lead holder and the mechanical pencil on loan from Write Here and will have a closer look in the next week or so.

My understanding of chemistry is very limited. With graphene not being very think (one layer of atoms) I am not sure how something three-dimensional can be graphene without turning into graphite. Maybe it is a flat ‘two-dimensional’ layer rolled up. I wonder whether this requires very special 3d printers so that the graphene layers don’t melt together into a lump of graphite. In any case the result is a very special pen.

As expected the pens are very light, but as seen in the mechanical pencil comparison above there are lighter mechanical pencils available.