Ink Cartridge Opening Sizes

[bobs51]

Has anyone done a study of the opening sizes of a variety of cartridge brands? Or can anyone point me to a post that has this information? I've searched and not found anything, but maybe I just didn't use the right keywords.

 

I've now got pens that take standard International cartridges, and some that need a wider opening, and some that only take their own brand cartridges.

 

It would be a great help to find a list of sizes as an aid to ordering, especially for non-brand-specific sizes, or for generics that will fit certain brands.

 

Anyone??

 

Thanks

[Chrissy]

You could try searching in the search box (above right)

I found refill finder

It doesn't say the width of the hole, but it's still very helpful. There are other similar sites.

[chromantic]

If it's a Sheaffer, Cross, Parker, Lamy, Pilot, Platinum or Sailor, you have to use their cartridge. Pretty much everything else uses the generic international standard. Sheaffer does make one pen, the VFM, that uses the int'l standard. Parker and Lamy are reportedly interchangeable.

[bobs51]

Not quite what I was looking for, but thanks to both of you.

 

I have found, for example, that the Wing Sung pens need a cartridge with a slightly wider opening than the international size, but there are no Wing Sung cartridges that I've found. And I recently got a pen labeled Marksman that needed a wider end cartridge also.

 

Was hoping someone with the time and resources had done the research to sort it all out.

[dcwaites]

If it's a Sheaffer, Cross, Parker, Lamy, Pilot, Platinum or Sailor, you have to use their cartridge. Pretty much everything else uses the generic international standard. Sheaffer does make one pen, the VFM, that uses the int'l standard. Parker and Lamy are reportedly interchangeable.

 

Jinhao uses two sizes of cartridge, one International and one a bit larger that is not quite Lamy/Parker.

PenBBS uses Parker cartridge / converter size.

I have found that the Parker converter fits in a PenBBS better than the original, whilst somebody else has found that the PenBBS converter fits better in their Parker.

[Dip n Scratch]

I have some Hero cartridges bought on ebay but the packets are all in Chinese, except for "2.6mm".

I can get the Hero Web site but there does not seem to be a way to trace an ink product, not one that stays in English anyway.

[bob_hayden]

In the beginning there was Parker (then in the USA) and international (i.e., European). Parker had a wider opening through which the ink flowed. I believe Lamy was founded by a Parker employee. The opening is very close but does not seem to me to be identical in that I have many pens that work with Lamy cartridges but leak with Parker cartridges. I even have one in which Parker Penman cartridges work but not the common garden variety Parkers. In addition, the shape of the cartridges differ, and I also have many pens in whose barrel the Lamy cartridges either will not fit, or go in but won't come out without a fight. The Lamy cartridges worked in about half the Parkers I had when I experimented years ago (with mostly old, cheap Parkers made in USA).

 

Then a few years ago the Chinese Hero company began selling a 359 model that was a clone of the Lamy Safari. It took yet another cartridges with an opening similar to Parker/Lamy but a body shape different from either. This pen was a huge hit in China, and now I am told that the 359 ink cartridges are the most common type in China today. Many recent models from other Chinese pen companies, such as Wing Sung and Yiren, take these. Using Parker or Lamy cartridges in these pens is hit or miss, with Parker missing by leaking and Lamy missing by not fitting in the barrel. Ironically, my Hero 359s work with all three flavors of large bore cartridges, but the other Chinese brands are much more fussy.

 

My advice is to use Lamy cartridges and converters in Lamy pens, Parker in Parker, and Hero 359 in any Chinese pen taking large bore cartridges. I have purchased the 359 cartridges on eBay. The packaging is all in Chinese except the number 359 appears in large type. I think the nominal opening is 3.4mm compared to two point something for the internationals.

[Noihvo]

 

[bob_hayden]

I agree. Those are some of the reasons for the very conservative advice I gave. I think the international cartridges conform to some international standards, but the stuff from China, pens, cartridges and converters, are usually approximate copies of some Western product. I would expect Parker to make sure their cartridges fit all their pens, and likewise for Lamy, but from China...???

 

If you only use bottled ink, it is not too difficult to keep a pen and the converter that came in it together. But if you often use cartridges, or wash many pens at a time, this is likely to go beyond my pay grade in clerical skills. As a result, I keep piles of small and large bore cartridges on hand and fit by trial and error. Internationals are usually pretty easy though a few pens make rash assumptions so that even if the opening is OK the cartridge itself may run into mechanical resistance fitting into the barrel or section. (I am thinking skinny pens in the first instance and A&W/Reform pens in the second.) However, anarchy reigns with the Chinese large bore converters, and it may take many tries to find a converter that fits a given pen (which is why the big pile).

[Adeline V]

My husband, an (annoyingly so at times) engineer, measured a number of cartridges to come up with the following inner diameters:

 

Pilot: 6mm, 6.1mm, 6mm

Platinum: 4.1mm

Lamy t-10: 3.2mm

Parker: 3.5

Std. Int'l: 3.9mm, 3.9mm, 3.904mm, 4mm, 4mm, 4mm

Sailor 4.9mm, 5mm

 

These were unpunctured cartridges, ie, factory sealed still, full of ink.

 

Bear in mind the inner walls of these cartridges aren't parallel, the inner walls do to some degree squish inward the deeper you go into the inside of the cartridge.  To get a better sense, one ought to measure the outer diameter of the posts that the cartridges mount onto as well to find really the zone of best fit.

 

Also be aware that he appeared thrilled (in a way only an engineer would) to use his special and amazingly relevant caliper tool to figure this issue out, and also provided me with numerous caveats (again, with that magical sense of pessimism that only engineers possess,) about the issues that could render these measurements less than optimal.

 

For my purposes, I am hoping to find a way to cap off and seal cartridges that I have refilled to take along with me.  I am basically in a process where I take piston fillers along with me to do art on location, but until then, I do have a number of pens that take cartridges and converters.  (And converters don't cap off generally any better than cartridges.)   Ideally I could refill either and take them along for times I need something smaller than an ink bottle but still a refill for the permanent inks I use that do not come in cartridges.

 

I  found this web site listing for anyone who is interested in trying to stopper up reused cartridges.  I have not yet purchased these plugs and have no idea yet if they work- buyer be aware. 

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000426883801.html?spm=a2g0o.search0302.0.0.6b8c5ce13BwZIj&algo_pvid=9b160b24-4a0d-4e5c-b419-e86f376823d4&algo_exp_id=9b160b24-4a0d-4e5c-b419-e86f376823d4-0

 

Enjoy my potentially less accurate than desired information.  hopefully it will be accurate enough for anyone's purposes.

[A Smug Dill]

25 minutes ago, Adeline V said:

For my purposes, I am hoping to find a way to cap off and seal cartridges that I have refilled to take along with me.

 

Try sealing the refilled cartridges with a glob of low-temperature hot glue applied with a hot glue gun.

 

Those silicone plugs are an interesting find. However, so-called ‘international standard’ cartridges are ~2.4mm bore, as I understand it, and the thinnest plug on offer in that product listing has a 2.5mm-diameter stem. There isn't a good size listed to fit Parker, Aurora, and the larger of two quasi-standards used in Chinese fountain pens of 3.4mm bore, either.

 

 

[Monophoto]

Most of the major pen shops (eg, Goulet, Fountain Pen Hospital, etc) publish charts that show which pens require proprietary cartridges/converters, and which use standard international cartridges/converters.  I would think that using one of those charts would be a far more reliable way of selecting cartridges/converters than attempting to match the OD of the mail nipple in the pen section with the ID of the female opening in the cartridge/converter.  And the list of pens that are designed with proprietary fittings is relatively short - Parker, Lamy, Platinum, Cross, Montblanc, Schaeffer, Aurora, Faber-Castell, Namiki, Sailor, Waterman, and  few others - with all others (including, AFAIK, all 'kit pens') using standard international.

 

There are some crossovers - I seem to recall that Parker cartridges fit Aurora pens, and I know that Cross makes a few 'private label' pens for other companies (such as Franklyn Covey) that are standard international. 

 

Normally, compatibility is determined by the dimensions of the male nipple and female opening, but in some cases other dimensions impose constraints.  Probably the most common is the differentiation between the short and long versions of standard international cartridges.  Most pens that have standard international fittings will take the short cartridges, but not all will take the long cartridges.  And not all pens that take standard international cartridges will take standard international converters - for example, the J. Herbin roillerball takes short cartridges, but is too short for converters.

[DvdRiet]

1 hour ago, Monophoto said:

I would think that using one of those charts would be a far more reliable way of selecting cartridges/converters

 

As someone who fairly regularly buys older c/c pens for which the original cartridges and converters are no longer available, I would very much appreciate a chart that gave all the measurements, or at least the sizes of the openings (I have not yet found any myself), and preferably also the length and end width (have seen a couple of these) on proprietary cartridges and converters rather than just 'blind' compatibility lists. It would be a dream if it also included some of those discontinued sizes to make it easier to compare and to find an effective replacement!

[MatthewTierney]

A Chinese online retailer sells cartridges in either 2.6 mm or 3.4 mm caliber.  I think these correspond to Standard International (narrower) and Parker/Lamy (wider), but my own measurements do not quite match.  We should perhaps think of the caliber of a cartridge not as the outer diameter of the nozzle, nor the inner diameter of the mouth of the nozzle; it is really the narrowest part of the inner diameter -- the part that fits snugly around the tail of the feed.

To measure this narrow inner diameter it is necessary to examine a cartridge that has been opened for use.  The attached image shows the result of pressing three cartridges into Blu Tack to make inner diameter moulds.  By measuring the diameter of the knob or pillar formed in the middle one can get a pretty good figure for the caliber.  Result:  Standard International = 2.1 mm approx.  Parker & Lamy = 3.0 mm approx.

I have not yet done this for any of the other proprietary cartridge systems.