Pentrifuge

The purpose of this Idea is to extend the shelf-life of ordinary ball-point pens. Over the years I've bought many that ended up getting thrown away, because they sat around unused for so long I couldn't get the ink to flow.

I'm aware that there are various tricks, such as heating the tip of the pen (doesn't work very well when the pen is mostly plastic), or soaking it in water or other substances (messy even if it works).

We need something simple and reliable and fairly safe. The Pentrifuge is offered to fill the bill. It contains two slots, one for the pen, and one for a "dummy" pen that is actually just a counterweight to the real pen. The weight of the dummy pen is adjustable (add/remove some weight, maybe plain sand).

Before putting the real pen into the Pentrifuge, you weigh it so that you can adjust the dummy pen's weight correctly. Then both are placed into the unit and the power is turned on.

The holder for the real pen allows the ball-point tip to be exposed. But nothing touches the tip as the Pentrifuge starts to spin up....

Once up to speed, you now manipulate a kind of wedge or "inclined plane" that is built into the side of body of the Pentrifuge. This thing is removable so you can cover it with a piece of paper before reinsering it.

Once reinserted, a screw-adjustment allows you to move the wedge so that the tip of the pen, revolving inside the Pentrifuge, can gently contact the piece of paper, many many times per minute.

At another point in the body of the Pentrifuge is a small window to let you see the surface of the paper.

Friction as the pen touches and moves across the paper will make the ball-point of the pen turn. Normally this process carries some ink from inside the pen, to the surface of the ball, and then onto the writing surface -- but because the pen in this case is old, there is a blockage of some sort (dried ink, likely).

However, the high artificial G-forces being experienced by the pen should cause the blockage to be overcome by the natural tendency for the REST of the liquid in the pen --however viscous!-- to flow down-hill.

Ink-marks should quickly start appearing on the paper being contacted by the pen. You may now shut the Pentrifuge off, wait for it to stop rotating, and then remove your pen and use it normally.

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Added Oct 30

An additional gadget inside the Pentrifuge should be helpful. This gadget causes the pen-holder to twist (making the pen it carries also twist), during the overall revolution of the pen-holder about the central axis of the Pentrifuge.

One-tenth of a twist per revolution should be fine. It is important that the twisting-rate of the pen be different from the revolution-rate of the pen. The twists need to cause the ball-tip of the pen to be rotated in different directions as it contacts the paper. It is another aspect of how a Pentrifuge can work to break up an ink blockage.