ROTRING 600 fountain pen with rollerball cap, the crack on the cap just grew?

[ANOTHER MIND]

Last year I found a beaten up a black Rotring 600 fountain barrel (of course with the mandatory crack), section, nib but with no cap. After some time I tried my luck and bought a seemingly NOS 600 rollerball cap that had an almost invisible crack. Fastworded around 2 months and the crack on cap grew considerably. I never dropped it, it was kept in a drawer, it had no exposure to higy humidity, extreme low / high temperatures, it was constantly at around 22 grades C. I have a video (link here: Rotring 600 fp review) where I have the unboxing of the cap when I received it and the rest of the video where the crack is much larger. Did anything like this happened to your black 600? My first impression was: was I so sleepy that I was not able to see this crack or did it really just grew in a couple of weeks?

 

In my case the rollerball cap fits perfectly the fountain pen. Even though it is sort of a frankenpen pen, I like it even better. I do not own 5 or more black 600 fountain pens that are all inked up and I need to remember the nib size. It makes much more sense to remember the ink color rather than the size, like in the case of the 600 mechanical pencils, the lead thickness is marked on the cap, and the selector is for the lead grades B, 2B, H, ...

 

Is this happening only to the black version or also to the silver one? The majority of black ones have the cracks on ebay while the silver ones seem to have no issue with this.

[jchch1950]

A crack in metal pens means a problem in the design or tooling of the pens. They crack because there was something related to the material used, which means that the cracks can appear in any part of the pen, or there was some problem in the elaboration of the pen, in which case, the cracks are usually in the same part. The fact that they are more common in the black pens than in the silver ones can point towards a problem with the material used.

[ANOTHER MIND]

Thanks you. I understand, but it is weird that it can sit calmly for around 25-30 years than in a couple of weeks a crack just appeared.

[mke]

Not really weird. Different humidity, the moving around might trigger a metastable crack getting bigger.

[ANOTHER MIND]

I understand. After all, even though they look like heavy duty tools they are quite fragile due to faulty making processes or materials.

[mke]

or faulty handling sometime during their lifetime

 

I sat on my Pelikan M400 and cracked the outer shell of the barrel 30 years ago.

It was not the fault of the materials nor the production process that it cracked! (Fortunately, it still works well.)

 

[Christopher Godfrey]

Perhaps the push-on cap has something to do with this happening?  There might be extra pressure being experienced in the material when the cap is pulled off (compare with unscrewing, which I imagine puts no stress on the pen)  What do you think?

[ANOTHER MIND]

It could be possible. I wished for this pen to be as tough as it looks, but I will need to carry it much more carefully than my other pens. 

[Azulado]

I saw your video on Youtube and the case caught my attention. I understand that the body endures a lot of stress when the section is screwed on. Note that the Kaweco Special uses an O-ring in that area. I have a German pen called Wörther Compact Metal that has a similar design and the body rests in a central area of the section, not on the facet edges. Also the cap is half loose, but the seal is secure.