Hero's in China...

[grimakis]

21 plastics are indeed very brittle...as can be 61 barrels...

 

But the 51 got it just about perfect!

 

616s vary widely even in the same box. Some of mine are perfect, some are scratchy, some have better matched clips and caps. Most are ok for what they are, though. I have never broken a clip...odd...that may be a bad batch. 616 plastics are not bad, overall.

 

Fillers vary too. Some are champs, but a lot of mine have to be filled by removing the "cage" and squeezing the sac more directly and vigorously to get a good fill.

 

...and since the "51" came before all of these pens, it would seem silly to change from Lucite to some cheaper, prone to cracking, injection-molded plastic. It is a real shame...

 

Not when you consider that Parker was trying to produce a much much less expensive pen that had the feel of the 51 only...

I doubt that Parker knew that over time the material chosen would become brittle and crack.....

 

I realize that they had no idea, but it is those cost cutting measures that hurt the consumers.

[welch]

Why doesn't Hero offer the 616 with F/M/B nibs, put the same effort as Duke or Picasso into making a smooth nib, smooth off the "cutting edge" cap, and put just a tiny bit of quality control into this pen?

 

Other Chinese pen companies, like Jinhao and Duke, make a good-enough pen. Given that the 616 is so much like the world's greatest pen, Hero could sweep the world with an adequate 616 priced at a highly profitable $10.

 

In fact, if I was a manager at what's left of Parker, I would hire Hero to do just that, and call it the Parker 51 Special. I'd sell it wherever Lamy sells the Safari. Considering how popular the real 51s are, a $15 P51 Special would wipe out the competition.

 

 

[HenryLouis]

Why doesn't Hero offer the 616 with F/M/B nibs, put the same effort as Duke or Picasso into making a smooth nib, smooth off the "cutting edge" cap, and put just a tiny bit of quality control into this pen?

 

Other Chinese pen companies, like Jinhao and Duke, make a good-enough pen. Given that the 616 is so much like the world's greatest pen, Hero could sweep the world with an adequate 616 priced at a highly profitable $10.

 

In fact, if I was a manager at what's left of Parker, I would hire Hero to do just that, and call it the Parker 51 Special. I'd sell it wherever Lamy sells the Safari. Considering how popular the real 51s are, a $15 P51 Special would wipe out the competition.

 

 

Yeah, this is a great idea.... unfortunately, sanford just has parker now for the name... But a hero with better QC would be amazing in my books... I think it's because they want to make as many as they can to throw at the consumers in china... so in bulk the quality suffers.

[cr0acker]

Try Hero 329. I would suggest old version.

[LapsangS]

HenryLouis,

 

How long did the shipment of your H616s take from China? I ordered a similar 10 pack a week ago. Just curious

[wangyang]

I bought a 10 pack of 616's and they arrived yesterday. Total was $14.87. How much do hero pens cost in China? Because $1.49 per pen is a bit cheap. I'd think the nib would cost at least $1 to manufacture.

 

 

Also, I'm not too impressed with the build quality. The clip on one has already broken right off just by clipping on my shirt... I accidently pulled off the aerometric filler on one (it went right back in). What hero models have better quality materials (other than the 100)?

 

Sigh... I should really be getting the Parker 21 I've been looking at but alas! I haven't gotten a summer job yet.

 

 

Thanks

Henry

英雄200A的书写感觉超过了英雄100

[wangyang]

I bought a 10 pack of 616's and they arrived yesterday. Total was $14.87. How much do hero pens cost in China? Because $1.49 per pen is a bit cheap. I'd think the nib would cost at least $1 to manufacture.

 

 

Also, I'm not too impressed with the build quality. The clip on one has already broken right off just by clipping on my shirt... I accidently pulled off the aerometric filler on one (it went right back in). What hero models have better quality materials (other than the 100)?

 

Sigh... I should really be getting the Parker 21 I've been looking at but alas! I haven't gotten a summer job yet.

 

 

Thanks

Henry

英雄200A的书写感觉超过了英雄100

sorry,Hero 200 As writing have felt more than hero 100

 

[ThaIwan]

On www.vintagepens.com there's a nice collection of 21's available right now for not too crazy prices I guess. But can't beat the price of 616. I recently got a pack at 99 cents, had to pay most for the shipping naturally but not more than $11 in total. No issues so far. A bit of smoothening work on the best ones with a nail buffer and there you go. Flying with them is however...less pleasant if you not pack them well or put them in your shirt.

[richardandtracy]

As an engineer in the UK, with a production run of 100,000 or more, I'd expect the unit price of each steel nib to be less than 2 pence (approx 3cents), of which 50% would be nib machine amortisation. The plastic to make the pen would be approx 8 pence (pro-rata'd down by weight from an injection moulded component my company is currently using), and a further cost of 50 pence per pen for injection moulding tooling. Yep, I'm talking about $75,000 for the injection moulding tooling. Hand assembly would cost about £1 per pen at 20 pens per hour (don't forget company overheads in that £20/hr rate - and to get it that low we'd be paying National Minimum Wage). Machine assembly wouldn't be viable for only 100,000 pens. Packaging, about 10 pence.

So UK cost price for 100,000 pens, £1.70 each (approx US$2.55 each). Sale price £2.99 minimum.

 

In China toolmaking seems cheaper, and the raw materials can be bought by the tens of tonnes, so the price drops further. Hand assembly of the pens is much more viable if paying $10/day, 20 pens an hour per person (pessimistic), 10 hour days - and this is the biggest part of the cost. So, the labour cost for each pen drops to $10/200 = 5c (3 pence), hence with no other advantage, the Chinese cost is £0.73. If the tooling were to be amortised over a million pens (say 10 pens per shot rather than 1, or extend the tool cycle life to 1million openings - the last pens will be of low quality, but hey, look at the price, not the quality), the cost per pen drops to £0.33 (approx US$0.48). Remember - plastic price may be reduced by bulk purchase.

Thus a Chinese street price of $0.49 seems possible.

 

Regards,

 

Richard.

Edited June 24, 2009 by richardandtracy

[HenryLouis]

HenryLouis,

 

How long did the shipment of your H616s take from China? I ordered a similar 10 pack a week ago. Just curious

 

From Gotoschool888, my pens arrived in 10 days from Gangzhou, china. Who did you order from?

[cr0acker]

As an engineer in the UK, with a production run of 100,000 or more, I'd expect the unit price of each steel nib to be less than 2 pence (approx 3cents), of which 50% would be nib machine amortisation. The plastic to make the pen would be approx 8 pence (pro-rata'd down by weight from an injection moulded component my company is currently using), and a further cost of 50 pence per pen for injection moulding tooling. Yep, I'm talking about $75,000 for the injection moulding tooling. Hand assembly would cost about £1 per pen at 20 pens per hour (don't forget company overheads in that £20/hr rate - and to get it that low we'd be paying National Minimum Wage). Machine assembly wouldn't be viable for only 100,000 pens. Packaging, about 10 pence.

So UK cost price for 100,000 pens, £1.70 each (approx US$2.55 each). Sale price £2.99 minimum.

 

In China toolmaking seems cheaper, and the raw materials can be bought by the tens of tonnes, so the price drops further. Hand assembly of the pens is much more viable if paying $10/day, 20 pens an hour per person (pessimistic), 10 hour days - and this is the biggest part of the cost. So, the labour cost for each pen drops to $10/200 = 5c (3 pence), hence with no other advantage, the Chinese cost is £0.73. If the tooling were to be amortised over a million pens (say 10 pens per shot rather than 1, or extend the tool cycle life to 1million openings - the last pens will be of low quality, but hey, look at the price, not the quality), the cost per pen drops to £0.33 (approx US$0.48). Remember - plastic price may be reduced by bulk purchase.

Thus a Chinese street price of $0.49 seems possible.

 

Regards,

 

Richard.

If thouse nibs are so cheap, why they are writing so great?

 

[jbaumann]

If thouse nibs are so cheap, why they are writing so great?

 

Many of them aren't. Buy a ten-pack of Hero 616 - I did, and half of them were (Potty Mouth). There seems to be no QC at all, maybe except for "does this pen actually have all parts". It's not "these nibs are cheap and STILL good", it's more like "these nibs are cheap and nevertheless sometimes you actually get one which is working correctly out of the box". I suspect that if somebody in China would grab each pen, try writing with the nib and readjusting it so that it is halfway decent out of the box, the amount of "duds" in each pack of pens would significantly go down. But that is exactly what drives the cost per pen up - labour cost. Manufacturing cost per nib is not the problem.

 

 

[Rossini]

Get your self a hero 336 they are a little less common than the 616 and 323's but if you contact one of our singaporean members they should be able to send you 5 for about 6 Singapore dollars + shipping because they only cost about a 1.20 each. Unlike the 616's they are put together much better and actually have abit of history behind them as they were the first pens the hero factory made in 1945 after taking over the parker factory.

[ZeissIkon]

If thouse nibs are so cheap, why they are writing so great?

 

The more you make of something, the more alike they tend to be (barring tooling wear). That'll mean that out of a run of a million pens, if you test (say) a thousand, and 99% of those work, you can be confident that 99% of the full run works.

 

For whatever it's worth, both of my cheap Chinese pens (one of which was bought direct from China) are great writers, and I suspect that most of the "dud" Hero 616s are suffering from assembly errors or simple nib misalignment (which plagues far more expensive pens) -- neither of which has much to do with the process of making a million nibs for three cents each.

[parilla]

My 616 pens are great... I have quickly and simply made them into eyedroppers and they hold a LOT. Also some of mine write better than my Parker 51s (and I have had a professional smooth and set up a nib on a 51...but the Hero is still better.)

Iwould like to try a Hero 110 but they are never on ebay when I look.

[cr0acker]

If thouse nibs are so cheap, why they are writing so great?

 

The more you make of something, the more alike they tend to be (barring tooling wear). That'll mean that out of a run of a million pens, if you test (say) a thousand, and 99% of those work, you can be confident that 99% of the full run works.

 

For whatever it's worth, both of my cheap Chinese pens (one of which was bought direct from China) are great writers, and I suspect that most of the "dud" Hero 616s are suffering from assembly errors or simple nib misalignment (which plagues far more expensive pens) -- neither of which has much to do with the process of making a million nibs for three cents each.

Than why in the old times (when fountain pens were still mainstream) there were so much writers (mostly from non U.S. producers) with absolutely horrible scratchy nibs? Even Soviet steel nibs were a peace of steel ^)

Edited June 25, 2009 by cr0acker

[ZeissIkon]

If thouse nibs are so cheap, why they are writing so great?

 

The more you make of something, the more alike they tend to be (barring tooling wear). That'll mean that out of a run of a million pens, if you test (say) a thousand, and 99% of those work, you can be confident that 99% of the full run works.

 

For whatever it's worth, both of my cheap Chinese pens (one of which was bought direct from China) are great writers, and I suspect that most of the "dud" Hero 616s are suffering from assembly errors or simple nib misalignment (which plagues far more expensive pens) -- neither of which has much to do with the process of making a million nibs for three cents each.

Than why in the old times (when fountain pens were still mainstream) there were so much writers (mostly from non U.S. producers) with absolutely horrible scratchy nibs? Even Soviet steel nibs were a peace of steel ^)

 

If you make a million of something and don't test any of them, you could easily turn out a million pieces of scrap metal in little boxes labeled as "Nib, Fountain Pen, 24 Each" (or Russian equivalent) -- and not know it until they get assembled into pens and the end users (since the pen factory doesn't do any more QC than the nib factory did) find out that 99.9% of them write about like a rusty nail. Something Chinese industry has learned in the last couple decades that Soviet industry apparently never did before the fall of the Communist government is that it doesn't matter how much you produce if it's all useless junk -- they're starting to get the hang of producing decent stuff in places like Shanghai and Hangchow (or however they prefer to spell those names these days), and doing the QC to be sure it really is decent stuff. And you can still do this cheaply when your worker wages are on the order of a few dollars a day...

[txinsk]

Henry,

 

You had asked about nib grinding instructions. Well look here. I have followed these instructions to turn a cheap yongsheng into a really crisp italic. I need to fiddle with it some more and practice for a better pen. The really expensive ones I might pay to have done, but the cheap ones are not that hard to do.

 

Rick

[ZeissIkon]

Henry,

 

You had asked about nib grinding instructions. Well look here. I have followed these instructions to turn a cheap yongsheng into a really crisp italic. I need to fiddle with it some more and practice for a better pen. The really expensive ones I might pay to have done, but the cheap ones are not that hard to do.

 

Rick

 

That is a fantastically detailed and complete guide to nib grinding. I might suggest that Hero and other Chinese pens are the best possible candidates for practicing this -- pay a dollar or two for a pen, you won't cry if you make a grinding mistake...

[HenryLouis]

Henry,

 

You had asked about nib grinding instructions. Well look here. I have followed these instructions to turn a cheap yongsheng into a really crisp italic. I need to fiddle with it some more and practice for a better pen. The really expensive ones I might pay to have done, but the cheap ones are not that hard to do.

 

Rick

 

That is a fantastically detailed and complete guide to nib grinding. I might suggest that Hero and other Chinese pens are the best possible candidates for practicing this -- pay a dollar or two for a pen, you won't cry if you make a grinding mistake...

 

I'm about to grind my own...

 

Is it worth buying a loupe from ebay? Because I have a magnifying glass.