There are six major production countries of ballpoint pens in the world: Japan, Germany, Italy, India, Turkey, and China. Also called Japanese ballpoint pen, Germany pen, Italy pen, India pen, Turkey pen, and China pen. And now China is the world’s largest exporter in this writing instrument field. Most importers and wholesalers of ball pens in the world import types of ballpoint pens from China. China’s ballpoint pens are advanced in four aspects— low price and fast delivery time for ordering pens, fast development speed for new ball pen, the large number of ballpoint pen manufacturers.
As a kind of consumption, ball pen is urgently needed in each country’s market. Experienced ballpoint pen importers and pen wholesalers prefer to select needed ballpen through offline exhibitions. Famous exhibitions in the world might be the followings— the China Import and Export Fair(Canton Fair), East China Fair, Hong Kong Gift Exhibition, Frankfurt Stationery Exhibition, New York Stationery Exhibition, and Tokyo Stationery Exhibition, where people can see many kinds of exhibits and ballpoint pen brands. If pen importers and pen wholesalers buy things from some Chinese ballpen suppliers who don’t care much about the pen quality, sometimes they will find that the quality of the ball pen samples are different from that of the bulk commodities in mass production.
Now more and more small and medium-sized importers and wholesalers of ballpoint pens look for pen suppliers on B2B websites and buy ball pens online, where the quality of pen suppliers’ products varies greatly. They import bulk order pens from China, then find various problems after advertising pens arriving at warehouses in their own countries, causing many after-sales problems, which will seriously tarnish their reputation in the local pen market.
So how to tell the quality differences of the different kinds of ballpen samples from one wholesale pens supplier? Now, with more than 20 years of experience in producing ballpoint pens and doing export trade, I will show you how to find the problems existing in productions from the following aspects, so that you can avoid buying inferior ballpoint pens from unscrupulous pen manufacturers:
1.Materials of Plastic Ballpoint Pens
Plastic ballpoint pens have two kinds of pen raw material: new materials and old materials (also called recycled material), which vary in price. Therefore, some pen factories make use of that for high profits. As for the reputable pens suppliers, they will keep their promises to use the agreed ball pen making raw material for clients. After pen injection molding, the old and new materials can be made into various parts of a ballpoint pen, but there are great differences between these two pen raw materials after injection molding, no matter in terms of gloss or flexibility. When one kind of ballpoint pen is sold in the supermarket or stationery pen store, the quality difference is extremely obvious. From the following figure, you will see the differences between recycled material and new materials:
Recycled Material for Ballpoint Pens
New-Material-for-Ballpoint-Pens
2. Effect of Electroplating
Electroplating is the most widely used surface treatment on ballpoint pens. After pen plating on accessories, the grade of the whole ballpoint pen is greatly improved, which can make the plastic ball pen be sold at a higher price. Generally speaking, electroplating is divided into barrel plating and rack plating. They vary from technological process to methods of surface treatments, so the processing cost is also completely different between them.
Barrel plating is to roll the materials finished injection molding in the processing pool after many procedures, while rack plating is to manually put the materials finished injection molding on the fixed clamps one by one, processing them through several different techniques. From the final effect, using hanging plating is far better than using barrel plating, because the former can make the productions with better gloss, no scratches, and longer shelf life.
Barrel plating for ball pens
Rack plating for ball pens
3. Effect of Rubber Finishing
Why should ballpoint pens be treated with rubber finishing? Because after spraying that, there is a thick layer of soft touch rubber on the ball pen barrel surface, which makes the touch delicate and smooth, so that the user will not feel tired and enjoy the fun of pen writing in the long process of using.
The effect of rubber coating is related to the technique and the glue used. In order to save costs, some ballpoint pen manufacturers use glue of poor quality and raw materials, and even omit a process. After spraying inferior glue, the plastic pen will be affected by the temperature during transportation. When the ball pen importer or pen wholesaler receives the goods, they will find that there are small black spots similar to ink melting on the spraying part of the wholesale pen, which will influence the following ballpoint pen sales. The custom ballpoint pens with inferior rubber coating can be stored in the warehouse for 6 to 12 months, then the glue of ballpoint pens will seep from the rubber finish of these ball pens. When users hold the ballpoint pen by hand, the ball pen surface will stick to their hand. On the contrary, the glue with high quality ballpoint pens will not meet above problems.
Poor Quality Rubber Finishing on Plastic Pens
High Quality Rubber Finishing on Plastic Pens
4. Effect of Spraying Paint
When spraying the metallic paint on the pen holder or other accessories of ballpoint pens, the color of their appearances has qualitative differences from the solid color with the molding injection by the original machine. The ball pen barrel with metallic paint is completely metallic, which is more popular in the market and can push up the sales of a colored ballpen. Good painting needs at least 4 processes back and forth. Some Chinese ballpen manufacturers will reduce one or even 2 processes in order to save pen costs. The surface with good ball pen paint is free of scratches, and the paint coat of the whole appearance is very smooth and exquisite even if they are cheap ball pens. After long-term use, there will be no more problems such as paint loss on these colour ball pens. The coat color with the inferior paint is different, and it always will have paint loss on these marketing pens after using for a short time.
Uneven Painting on Ballpoint Pens
Good Painting on Ballpoint Pens
5. Effect of Blasting Sand
Sand blasting can be used not only on the transparent accessories of personalized pens, but also on the promotional gift pens holders of solid color. After pen frosty, the surface of transparent ballpoint pen has a slight sand feeling, which makes the transparent ball pen hazy and mysterious. And the surface of types of ballpoint pens with solid color has a more obvious sense of graininess. Compared with the smooth surface before sandblasting, the ballpoint pen after sandblasting shows more texture, and improves the overall grade, making the ballpoint pen user feel stronger forces in the process of writing. Of course, it is also more popular with consumers in the market. Good sand blasting of good ballpoint pens will not change after long-term use. On the contrary, poor sand blasting of cheap custom pens will have many scratches, and it will meet sand loss after the long-term use.
Ball Pen Sandblasting with Poor Quality
Ball Pen Sandblasting with Good quality
6. Effect of Plating Gold
Gold has always been the symbol of nobility. In order to improve the grades of gold plating pen, many pen factories need ballpoint pens equipped with gold elements. There are two kinds of gold used in the plating: plating real gold and plating imitation gold on the gold ballpoint pen. These two vary greatly in the costs.
As for plating imitation gold, the color will be darker and lighter. The short shelf life of gold ball pen is its biggest problem. Basically, the plating gold will turn black and fade after several months. Then the gold is not the original color. On the contrary, the effect of plating real gold will not have the above problems within 2 years. Some wholesale pen manufacturers will use the price gap to export ballpoint pens with plating imitation gold to ballpoint pen importers.
Fading Plating Gold for Pens
Normal Plating Gold for Pens
7. Effect of Silver Spraying
The silver spraying on each part of the ballpoint pen is the most widely used. After being sprayed with silver, the silver pen with molding injection makes its surface with a layer of silver, which has a more high-grade texture. Of course, there are also two kinds of silver paint used in the spraying: ordinary silver and bright silver. After spraying ordinary silver, the color of silver ball pen is more casual. The silver is slightly dark and not wear-resistant. As long as there is friction between the silver ballpoint pen in the assembly process, there will be light scratches on the silver colour pens. It is different from spraying bright silver: the color and the degree of silver are better, and the surface of metallic silver paint pen is with slightly granular sensation. It’s prolonged wear-resisting, and not easy to leave scratches after slight friction. The costs of these two kinds of silver paint are also different, so only can people with certain ballpoint pen experience distinguish them.
Poor Effect of Silver Spraying on Ball Pen
Good Effect of Silver Spraying on Ball Pen
8.Weight of Plastic Pen
From the appearance of the same plastic ball pen with different weights, the ballpoint pen importer or wholesaler can see no differences between the writing pens. But when people hold two types of ball pens in their hands at the same time, they will feel the differences in weight of ballpoint pens. In order to save costs, the corporate gift pens with the lightweight must have subtly changed the structure of the mold by using less raw materials. Even more some will make the thickness of the ballpoint pen thinner, resulting in ball pens cracking easily and bad sense of touch.
More Light Plastic Ball Pen
Heavier Plastic Ball Pen
9. Effect of Click Action
The quality of a click ball pen largely depends on its click function. The most basic requirement for a writing ball pen is smoothness. However, the ballpoint pen wholesalers and gift merchants who often import ballpoint pens don’t find these problems: when these ballpoint pens have arrived at the importers’ pen warehouse, they find that the push buttons of some ballpoint pens fall into the inner boxes after opening the inner boxes or when the ball pen distributors or importers push the ballpoint pens too hard, they will find that the pen push button flies out. If the button accidentally pops into people’s eyes, it’s a big trouble so that the ball pen distributors or wholesalers will face a claim.
For retractable ball pen, there are three kinds of click action structures: tight fitting structure, screw structure and internal reverse buckle structure. The problem of push button often appears under the tight fitting structure. If there is a small difference in the thickness during the injection molding process, the push button will become loose and easy to fly out. Since this structure has the trouble on the retractable ballpoint pens, why do some pen factories still take this structure? Because this structure of click ballpoint pen is easy to assembly, and the ball pen workers save much time, which can also reduce costs greatly. Next, I will show these three ballpoint pen structures in the form of pictures:
Ballpoint Pen Tight Fitting Structure
Ballpoint Pen Screw Structure
Ballpoint Pen Inside Structure
10. Effect of Rotation
Another structure of the ballpoint pen is to rotate the ball pen refills out to write. The bad effect of it is that the rotation is not so smooth that the twisty pens can be easily stuck in the process of rotation. Another situation is that the rotation action is good, but ballpoint pen writing can’t bear too much force when writing.
When the pen user uses a little force, the thread at the rotation pen is so loose that it results in the top half of the ball pen falling off, which is the most likely cause for clients claiming for. What can cause the above two situations? On one hand, the ballpoint mold cost is too low, which uses ordinary or inferior mold materials; on the other hand, the ball pen mold manufacturers are inexperienced. Here are two videos to help you know these two situations:
Too Heavy to Rotate for Ball Pen
Insufficient Bearing Pressure for Ball Pen
11. Ballpoint Pen Inspection
Inspection is the most critical part to ensure the ballpoint pen quality of products. The ball pen factory’s inspection standard and whether it needs full inspection determines the quality of the whole batch of ballpoint orders. In order to save costs, some Chinese ballpoint pen manufacturers set the low inspection standards. To save labor costs, they don’t inspect ballpoint pens one by one but by sampling or even not inspecting. What’s more, they can also accept products with problems in their standards.
For orders of ballpoint pens shipped in this way, will there be no problem after clients receive these poor quality ball pens? Won’t they claim?
Poor Effect of Silver Spraying on Ball Pen
Good Effect of Silver Spraying on Ball Pen
12.Ball Pen Refills
1) Writing Length
The writing length of ball pen refills ink is determined by the amount of ink in the pen refill tube and the thickness of the pen point. The thickness of the pen point is determined by each country’s market. At present, there are probably the following three specifications: 0.5mm ball pen, 0.7mm ball pen and 1.0mm ball pen.
Then the only reason that can influence the cost of ballpoint pen refill is the pen ink. Therefore, the pen refill manufacturer will make the tubes smaller, so that it still looks like the standard length of refill tube.
In fact, the ballpoint pen ink used is reduced, so the pen writing length becomes shorter. I use the following figures to illustrate the thickness of the ballpoint pen refill tubes:
Inside Diameter of Normal Slim Pen Refill
Inside Diameter of Parker Refill
2) Smooth Writing
As for a ballpoint pen, the fluency of pen writing is one of the important standards. The ballpoint pen refill will be sampled for scribing tests in the production process. The ballpoint pen can be assembled only after the writing line is continuous. Some pen refill manufacturers use inferior machines and pen inks, which will cause unsmooth writing when using.
Pen Refill Diagram Under Unsmooth Writing
Pen Refill Scribing Test Chart Smooth Writing
3) Shelf Life:
For the refill of ballpoint pen, the normal warranty period is 2 years. If the ballpoint pen importer sells ballpoint pens well and quickly, this problem may not have been found yet. After a year, some ballpoint pens in the warehouse will be found some problems, like writing not smoothly or being unable to write, which show that the ballpoint pen supplier provides the pen refills with substandard quality.
Pen Refill Unsmooth Writing or Unable to Draw
Pen Refill Normal Smooth Writing
To sum up, if you are a ballpoint pen importer or ball pen wholesaler, you must learn how to tell the ballpoint pen quality differences, and then select quality ballpoint pens or smooth writing ball pens and good Chinese ballpoint pens suppliers or manufacturers. From the above analytical points, it can be seen that a ball pen manufacturer or ball pen supplier can save costs in many ways. Then there will be a big price gap for the same plastic pen. Therefore, ballpoint pen importers should not think too highly of price and ignore the pen quality.
