Visit To Conid Hq

[RMN]

First Conid Penshow sept 2013

 

CONID logo

 

End of august I received an invitation for the 1st Conid Penshow at Conid HQ just south of Antwerp, Belgium. I gladly accepted..

On Sept 21^st 2013 we drove to Antwerp. The address houses Comec-Helsen, a large company producing various machines and parts.

One of the COMEC halls.

 

The owner being a longtime friend of our own Fountainbel, aka Francis Goossens and also an fountain pen enthousiast decided to make pens under the brand Conid.

Last year, after perfection of the Fountainbel Bulkfiller Conid started producing this great fountain pen on their highly specialised computerised machines. Many of the FPN members have already ordered one of these pens, now already available in several versions.

Now Francis and Werner Helsen, owner of Comec and Conid were ready to show the facilities to the interested public. It was an international bunch, cars from Belgium, France, Luxemburg, Switzerland and the Netherlands were seen.

Werner and Francis

The reception was warm. Coffee and cake (baked by Francis himself) and sushi and rolls for lunch.

The modern and quite large canteen already indicated that this was no small business.

 

We were invited to a tour of the facilities, and shown the various materials, machines and stages in the production of Conid pens.

Although the production of pens is only a very small part of the production work, the personnel showing us around were knowledgeable and very enthousiastic. CONID staff

Materials used in the production

It is clear that these pens are not cheaply manufactured. The clip is an example: elsewhere the clip is stamped from a sheet of metal and then bend, but at Conid it is cut from a solid bar of titanium.

Various stages of the clip

Machining the clip

And where others throw a bunch of clips in a bin with woodchips turning around for a night to polish them, at Conid this is handwork, as the other method would leave a slight gap in the finished pen, while with handwork the assembly is flush with no gaps. They aim at perfection and quality, which also explains these pens are not exactly cheap.

 

 

 

After the tour more refreshments were offered and there was the opportunity to try all the different versions of the Bulkfiller (all various nibsizes and materials) including some new projects of Francis (an oversized pen, and his two-nib pen, which he already showed here on FPN)Array of Bulkfillers

Francis with some of his babies...

 

 

Several attending who did not yet own a Bulkfiller took the opportunity to buy one.

Late in the afternoon we went home again, pleased with a well spend day end still enjoying the wonderful hospitality of Francis, Werner and the fabulous team of Comec.

 

D.ick

Photo’s used are gladly borrowed from other visitors as I had no camera. Out of privacy no faces of visitors are shown.

 

 

[hari317]

Wonderful to see Francis and the team and the place where his masterpieces are born.

[NobleDel]

The Conid Bulkfiller is not only a very well thought out and engineered pen, the manufacturing processes look very well engineered, as well. I have worked in various machine shops since 1977, and I have to say Conid's is the cleanest and most orderly I have seen. I only wish I could have taken the tour as well. Thank for making this post. I currently have a Bulkfiller on order, so some of the parts seen that day might wind up in my pen!!!

Edited October 11, 2013 by NobleDel

[trhall]

Would have loved to attend this, but it was cost-prohibitive to fly to Europe. Thank you for sharing details and photos. Francis' work is excellent.