Parker Jotter Breakdown

[His Nibs]

Here's an interesting little video of how the Parker Jotter mechanism works.

[Honeybadgers]

His videos are really awesome. The series on a candle is one of the coolest.

[doriath19]

Fun to watch! Thanks for sharing!

[spacecoastpenny]

thanks!

[ISW_Kaputnik]

Very interesting. I knew that the Jotters rotated the tip 90º when you extended it, and another 90º when it was retracted again. That gives you two extended positions rotated 180º from each other to even out wear on the ball. But the explanation of how each rotation consists of two separate 45º stages was new to me. So much going on in such a simple device.

 

His comment on how the Jotter had to "earn" its arrow clip was also interesting.

[MYU]

Hadn't seen this video in a while & plum forgot about it. Great to see again as it's really well done.

 

While there are a number of ballpoint pen cartridge deployment device designs, Parker really hit upon a terrific one. It's no wonder a number of companies licensed it instead of trying to create their own. I didn't realize there were 66 people involved in the design of the Jotter. I wonder how many were involved with engineering the cam system in the mechanism.

 

What's great about the Jotter ballpoint design is that from all I can see, the nature of the friction is minimal and thus the inner cam mechanism in the pen is subject to an extremely small amount of wear over time. I expect due to the softer plastics of the cartridge cam, it bears the brunt of the wear from the repeated click action. And this is why when examining the inner cam of a Jotter that is decades old, only slight signs of wear show up and in such a way as to not interfere with operation.

[esteel]

Now this is what you call a smooth educational video. I love how his video are well paced, simple(without changing the vocabulary) and to the point. The visual demostrations are super clean.