Rendering An "improved Version" Of The Waterman Edson Fountain Pen In 3D Studio Max R3 On A Silicon Graphics Visual Workstation 320

[Nicholas Green]

I've started on a model for an "improved design" of the Waterman Edson Fountain pen (The first "proper" fountain pen that I ever bought).

 

This will see subtle changes to the section of the pen, giving it a slightly thicker girth and slightly more refined features. The real change will be the conversion of this design from being a cartridge filler to a much better piston filler design.

 

I want the pen to have a slightly thicker girth overall, more like that of an Montblanc 149, as I feel that the original design was too slender.

 

I would also like the precious resin parts being replaced with deep blue, lead crystal glass, giving the pen more weight and a much better feel in the hand. (As lead crystal glass has a really nice feel to it!)

 

This is what I've rendered so-far:

 

 

 

Although this is really just an exercise to show the rendering capability of one of these machines for my retro computing forum (IRIX Network), I would really like to see a MK II version of the Edson produced by Waterman!

 

Here's a link to my thread on this topic, on IRIX network: http://forums.irixnet.org/thread-1732.html

 

Here's a video that I made, covering the internals of the actual pen made by Waterman (I own three of them: two blue and gold's and one Edson LE)

[video=youtube]

Edited December 28, 2019 by Nick_Green

[Nicholas Green]

Here are my latest renderings:

 

 

 

[Left FPN]

Very nice work indeed.

 

I recall a similar exercise a few years ago but with the Carene. I even put a few ideas to Waterman which did get a response....thanks well show it to the back room team. So what did they come up with, a leather bound £500 model. I would have preferred and probably purchased my Harlequin (Black with diagonal grooving) example.

 

It's all good fun though designing with 3D software.

[Nicholas Green]

Very nice work indeed.

 

I recall a similar exercise a few years ago but with the Carene. I even put a few ideas to Waterman which did get a response....thanks well show it to the back room team. So what did they come up with, a leather bound £500 model. I would have preferred and probably purchased my Harlequin (Black with diagonal grooving) example.

 

It's all good fun though designing with 3D software.

 

 

Thanks very much, I really appreciate your kind words!

 

It's very sad that Waterman seems to be unwilling to release upgraded models of pens such as the Edson! It's a great pen, but does however suffer from a few design flaws, which I will discuss in in detail in the next video I release concerning this great pen! (Why they didn't release it as a piston filler, God only knows!)

 

I know that this is not what most members here would like to hear, but I truly believe that the only way in which pen producers, such as Waterman will survive in the modern world, to to turn their brands into luxury brands, as the common man is no longer interested in buying pens, as they have tablet computers.

 

The wealthy will always appreciate pens! (Especially uncompromised ones!)

 

The Carene is an awesome design from Waterman and may very well turn out to be one of their most successful designs to date! My only problem with the Carene is that Waterman never produced a really high-end model of this pen. (It, like the Edson really has great potential!)

 

I'm very into retro computing, so I love putting my retro machines to work, producing models such as this one. (You really learn volumes about an item such as a pen, when you work on accurately trying to model it.)

 

I am trying to create this model with enough detail, that this item could in fact be manufactured. (If not by Waterman, then maybe by myself.)

 

I think that the Titanium version would be the version worth pursuing! (As the Blue and Gold design has already been done by Waterman.)

 

Besides the solid titanium body, I would have all of the translucent parts of this design manufactured from solid lead crystal glass, to give the pen added weight and a better feel.

 

Because Titanium is so light, the weight of the solid lead crystal glass cap would counterbalance the weight of the solid lead crystal glass section of the pen, when the pen is posted. (So it's designed to be posted.)

 

When it comes to the piston filling mechanism, I'm designing it in such a way, that the entire outer barrel rotates around the inner barrel on bearings, to give it a great solid feel while it's being filled.

Edited January 1, 2020 by Nick_Green

[RMN]

Wow. Too bad Waterman stopped production and I doubt if they would take it up again, but I definitely would covet that Dark-blue and Gold version. WOW.

 

 

 

D.ick

[SpecTP]

I have the blue and gold and the earlier green and gold that I prefer. I do wish Waterman would produce more variants.

[Nicholas Green]

I understand that the world only has so much capacity for pens that cost as much as the Edson did, and I'm sure that the saturation point had been reached and sales were dropping rapidly as a result. (Hence production was stopped!)

 

The interesting thing though, is that I'm the only person I've ever seen carrying an Edson in my pocket out in public, so they are still rather rare.

 

I would imagine that if Waterman was to bring out an adequately refreshed version of this pen (must be an evolution on the original pen, not simply a dressed up version), then most of the people who bought and own the original pen would more than likely buy one!

[Nicholas Green]

Here's my latest rendering of this model: (I've made some headway on the piston filling mechanism for the pen.)

 

This image took 1 hour 53 minutes and 45 seconds to render on my SGI 320:

 

[Left FPN]

Very nice. The leather effect rest pad might have consumed at least an hour of the time.

[zaddick]

Why not use a syringe filler? Simpler and could probably hold more ink. The outer pen could be just a sleeve.

[Nicholas Green]

Like with Swiss watches, complications make them interesting.

 

I didn't want to use a standard blind cap as most other piston fillers use. The mechanism used here makes it more interesting in my opinion, and would maintain reliability, as it would be made of solid titanium and features three bearing races.

 

In the rendering the piston is sitting at half of its exertion, so the design would hold quite a bit of ink. If this had to be made, it would be thicker than a standard Edson (More like the thickness of a 149, as the original design was too slender in my opinion.)

 

Funny enough, the bump mapping isn't very costly in terms of time taken to render, so the leather effect doesn't really slow the rendering down. Refraction it the costly aspect here.

Edited January 18, 2020 by Nick_Green

[RMN]

Love it, so far.

 

 

D.ick

[Nicholas Green]

I've redesigned the piston filling mechanism to allow for more travel on the piston, allowing greater ink capacity:

 

Edited January 20, 2020 by Nick_Green

[Nicholas Green]

This concludes my work on this model for the moment: (A video covering the pros and cons of the original Edson, as well as a discussion of this model will follow in due course.)

 

 

Edited January 20, 2020 by Nick_Green

[Mercian]

I've started on a model for an "improved design" of the Waterman Edson Fountain pen...

...I would also like the precious resin parts being replaced with deep blue, lead crystal glass, giving the pen more weight and a much better feel in the hand. (As lead crystal glass has a really nice feel to it!)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Although this is really just an exercise to show the rendering capability of one of these machines for my retro computing forum (IRIX Network), I would really like to see a MK II version of the Edson produced by Waterman!

I know that you have stated that this is mostly an exercise in rendering (and I must compliment you on the beautiful job that you've done of every stage of it ), but let's assume that you may one day use these lovely models to try to ‘pitch’ your design to a manufacturer.

I have a couple of comments/questions about the ‘engineering’ or manufacture of a pen to your design.

 

N.B. everyone reading my questions must bear in mind that I am NOT a qualified Engineer, and that I have never even worked in manufacturing (i.e. I literally have no idea what I'm talking about! ) but:

 

1) the pen as a whole seems to me to contain MANY very small parts. Parts that would need to be manufactured to extremely-tight tolerances, and (even worse) it seems to me that those parts would have to be assembled by hand (by real, live, on-payroll human staff ) - i.e. it would thus be VERY expensive to manufacture.

 

As such, I doubt that the Accountants at a ‘mass-market’ company such as Waterman would be willing to try to make & sell it

That said,I suppose that a low-volume ‘luxury’ producer that specialises in pieces that demonstrate/showcase their mastery of and expertise within the ‘Art’ of fine-precision luxury items might look at it (maybe somebody like Nakaya in Japan?), as long as they could find a market for it at the stratospheric prices required to make such an exceptional piece sufficiently-profitable to justify the required investment in tooling.

I do hope that the ongoing advances in 3D-printing in new materials will make such ‘sunk-costs’ issues a thing of the past, and very soon too. Because worries about those costs have been holding back artistic & technological innovation for years and years and years.

 

2) again, please bear in mind that I am not an Engineer, nor an artisan, or even a very practical person (I am, alas, nobbut a cack-handed klutz ) when you read this, but to me it looks like those beautiful golden zig-zag rings that you have designed to overlap where the barrel screws in to the grip-section might have problems ‘locking together’ (i.e. obstructing each other's motion) whenever one were trying to screw-on or unscrew the barrel.

With the right thread-pitch-angle could this be avoided? Have you already calculated the thread-pitch-angle to allow for this? If you have, you deserve much kudos

 

3) I too love the look and feel (and sound) of lead-crystal glass, but do you think that it is a robust enough material to be used in the construction of a small object that will be manually handled constantly in its intended use, and which may very well be dropped by its end-user, perhaps on to an unforgiving surface such as concrete or tiles?

Again, I have literally no idea whether or not I am right to worry about that - but I have in the past dropped lead-crystal cut-glass wine/spirits glasses, and then watched aghast as they exploded (in what seemed like slow-motion) when they hit the floor

 

Lastly, please don't let my utterly un-informed worries/nitpicking stop you from continuing with the modelling/rendering exercise - your design is really lovely

 

Cheers,

M.

[Nicholas Green]

2) again, please bear in mind that I am not an Engineer, nor an artisan, or even a very practical person (I am, alas, nobbut a cack-handed klutz ) when you read this, but to me it looks like those beautiful golden zig-zag rings that you have designed to overlap where the barrel screws in to the grip-section might have problems ‘locking together’ (i.e. obstructing each other's motion) whenever one were trying to screw-on or unscrew the barrel.

With the right thread-pitch-angle could this be avoided? Have you already calculated the thread-pitch-angle to allow for this? If you have, you deserve much kudos

 

3) I too love the look and feel (and sound) of lead-crystal glass, but do you think that it is a robust enough material to be used in the construction of a small object that will be manually handled constantly in its intended use, and which may very well be dropped by its end-user, perhaps on to an unforgiving surface such as concrete or tiles?

Again, I have literally no idea whether or not I am right to worry about that - but I have in the past dropped lead-crystal cut-glass wine/spirits glasses, and then watched aghast as they exploded (in what seemed like slow-motion) when they hit the floor

 

Lastly, please don't let my utterly un-informed worries/nitpicking stop you from continuing with the modelling/rendering exercise - your design is really lovely

 

Cheers,

M.

 

 

Thanks very much for the input, I really appreciate it.

 

The zigzag rings are the locking mechanism. In order to ink this pen, the spring loaded outer barrel is pulled backwards and locks into place in that position, allowing the worm-gear system to be actuated, thus moving the piston. Once the pen is inked, the outer barrel will then be pushed forwards, locking it into place against the zigzag rings. I wanted to break from the tradition of using a threaded locking mechanism in this design. (More complicated than it needs to be, but like with a Swiss watch, thats all the fun)

 

I have personally ruined an Edson by dropping it, and am thus of the opinion that you simply shouldn't drop fountain pens, as they will be ruined, period! Hence the crystal glass, although potentially risky, wouldn't really make the pen any more likely to be damaged if dropped.

 

If you take my Montblanc Airbus A380 skeleton, for example, dropping this pen would be akin to crashing a small car, so it simply must not be dropped, EVER!

 

The French glass company Baccarat, makes the type of glass I'd be interested in using here. This egg that I have, looks beautiful and has an amazing feel to it. Far better than the feel of precious resin!

 

Edited January 21, 2020 by Nick_Green

[Mercian]

The zigzag rings are the locking mechanism. In order to ink this pen, the spring loaded outer barrel is pulled backwards and locks into place in that position, allowing the worm-gear system to be actuated, thus moving the piston. Once the pen is inked, the outer barrel will then be pushed forwards, locking it into place against the zigzag rings. I wanted to break from the tradition of using a threaded locking mechanism in this design. (More complicated than it needs to be, but like with a Swiss watch, thats all the fun)

 

The French glass company Baccarat, makes the type of glass I'd be interested in using here. This egg that I have, looks beautiful and has an amazing feel to it. Far better than the feel of precious resin!

 

I told you I wasn't any kind of Engineer!

I bet that everyone else on here could see that the rings were part of the locking mechanism, and that it wasn't screw-closure

 

That Baccarat glass egg looks lovely

 

It also occurred to me today that, as this pen is an exercise in superlative precision engineering, the low-volume manufacturer & engineering company McClaren (of F1 fame) might be the sort of company that might be interested in producing it.

 

After all, it would be a good, portable showcase for their manufacturing expertise, its streamlined shape is very elegant and speaks of speed and luxury as well as precision, AND the buyers of their supercars certainly would have the money to be able to afford it. They perhaps wouldn't want the Waterman logo on the nib though, eh? (Unless you could get Waterman involved as a ‘co-sponsor’ or ‘co-manufacturer’ with McClaren).

 

Actually, thinking about it, Bugatti might be a better ‘fit’, in that, like Waterman, the company is (theoretically at least) French.

 

[Edited to add:] Furthermore, Bugatti has a long-standing relationship with the colour blue, and the clients who buy their hypercars are also likely to appreciate & own bespoke mechanical Swiss watches.

Watches that have several complications AND working parts that are visible through the body of the piece.

 

So, now that ‘we‘ have ‘decided’ which manufacturer to approach, please will you cut me in when you start getting your royalties?

Edited January 21, 2020 by Mercian

[Nicholas Green]