What is a Technical Pen and Why Do Drafters Need Them?
Precision tools come in all shapes and sizes. Micrometers and gauges provide dimensional data for carving sections of engineering plastic into parts for automobiles, and laser-guided machining ensures a repeatability factor is always present, delivering high productivity in any manufacturing or architectural discipline. The root of this engineering maxim for accuracy can be traced back through the myriad stages of a process, taken back to the inception of a project, the application of a high-performance technical pen to a blank sheet of paper.
These specialist pens possess numerous features designed to eliminate ill-defined freehand movement. Instead, they promote decisive strokes, omitting the kind of ink seepage associated with traditional pens. Seepage, also known as bleed, reduces the razor-sharp definition applied by a project draftsman, introducing inconsistencies that simply aren't acceptable. The craft of drafting works only in lines of ink and the background those lines are being etched into. What we're illustrating here is an uncompromising necessity for a dramatic demarcation between ink and paper, an aversion to nebulous ink seepage. Of course, the concept of the line we're referring to here includes the drawing of angular properties upon the paper, the positioning of curves and arcs.
A well-designed technical pen utilizes an intricate mechanical release system to optimize ink flow. A wire and an ink reservoir are carefully arranged to ensure the ink is released evenly to a tubular point, and this point is typically sized by manufacturers, positioning the pen for different applications. Each one demonstrates design characteristics for different disciplines, for the everyday draftsman or the artistic illustrator/cartoonist and architect. The pen internalizes design factors designed to promote the same consistency in productivity that the draftsman is intent on putting down on paper. Finally, the specialist instrument is filled with an exceptional ink, a liquid marker design to minimize bleed and clogging, resulting in clean lines that always retain the same width, a delicate span that depends on the chosen characteristics of the instrument.
Look for the right point size for a pen, and partner this accurate point with an ink that won't bleed or fade.