Quality Engineering Computation Paper

[EE50NI]

I'm not a fountain pen user, but I figured such a forum would know something about good paper.

 

I'm looking for engineering paper with a heavier weight to it as well as a place (online or otherwise) to buy it regularly. My favorite at the moment are the ones made by Comet School Supplies (3-0236 and its other pad sizes), but I have such a hard time finding it.

 

I just bought an Ampad engineering pad and I hate it. I feel like I'm writing on twice-recycled toilet paper; my 0.3mm pencils tear right through it. I went to another store and picked up a Staedtler pad (937 811E). It's not great, but at least I can write on it.

 

I've searched other threads and this one has already provided me with quite a bit of information. NateB (post #17) provided a picture of a 100-sheet pad of Roaring Spring 95182 compared to another 100-sheet pad, but no location where I can buy it.

 

Any suggestions? Oh, I'm not interested in printing my own engineering paper. I go through about five to seven pads per quarter; I write just about everything on this stuff.

[bigboy]

I like the Maruman Mnemosyne Project Notepad. It comes in a few sizes, I prefer the A4. . The paper quality is excellent for a very wet fountain pen. It's from Japan, and can be purchased online.

[sleeprl]

I know what you mean. I've been using the Ampad pads (standard at my school) for assignments and notes and it fails to impress. I was going to try this one National Brand Computation Notebook, 4 X 4 Quad, Brown, Green Paper, 11.75 x 9.25 Inches, 75 Sheets (43648)(http://www.amazon.com/National-Computation-Notebook-Inches-43648/dp/B00007LV4B/ref=pd_sim_sbs_e_13) for note taking. Hope this helps.

[dgturner]

I know what you mean. I've been using the Ampad pads (standard at my school) for assignments and notes and it fails to impress. I was going to try this one National Brand Computation Notebook, 4 X 4 Quad, Brown, Green Paper, 11.75 x 9.25 Inches, 75 Sheets (43648)(http://www.amazon.co...pd_sim_sbs_e_13) for note taking. Hope this helps.

 

I must second the National Brand Computation Book -- not perfect with fountain pens, but very good.

[Tryek25]

I studied Electrical Engineering so I had my fair share of math classes. I use a Pentel Graphgear 1000 0.3mm all throughout college. My go to paper was Ampad 5x5 Quad because it was durable, held on for all the erasure marks and did not tear with the sharp pencil, even when making cribsheets. As a fallback I always had the Mead Cambridge notbooks which were also very good but pricier. Other than that I would recommend getting some 30-32lbs paper that can be used for printing. That stuff will usually though out most applications.

 

Good Luck!

[Tryek25]

Edit: Double Post!

Edited November 14, 2011 by Tryek25

[NateB]

I purchased the comp pads via mail-order from Ulrich's Bookstore in Ann Arbor, Michigan. You can contact them at (734)

662-3201. They were the only retailer I could find that sold them individually. In 2009 they were priced at $5.69 for a 100 sheet pad. I usually orderd three or four at a time and shipping was ~$5.00.

 

They can be purchased in bulk (24 per case) from Amazon and Buy. The manager at a local book store that carried other Roaring Springs products told me that the pads could be special ordered, but the minimum order was one case.

 

I also like the white National brand pads. The paper is lightweight (prob 15#), but it is very smooth. The chip board backer is very flimsy, though. They can be ordered from Amazon. The price randomly drops to around $3 or less per pad from the current $7. My last order was for 6 pads at $13.80 which is a great price. Students get a free Amazon Prime membership, so they are shipped two-day priority mail at no cost. The price drop lasts a short time, usually around 12 hours. When I need to order more, I just check daily until the price drops...

Edited November 15, 2011 by NateB

[ken belanus]

i think you will like the paper sold online by Lee Valley Veritas of Canada. it is very heavy weight (at least 24 lb) and has a dot grid on 16th of an inch with four dots on the quarter inch. i am an engineering professor teaching Statics and Strength who uses vintage sheaffer triumph nib pens and there simply is not any decent paper of the type we call "engineering paper" any more. cheap manufacturing practices and greed have ruined just about everything we once had or could make. if you find an old stock (from the 1990's) of National brand especially the buff color, you will have the last of the real thing. buy the whole case. or get the dot grid paper from Lee. i am a serious woodworker and turner and discovered this fine paper several years ago. i now use this wonderful stuff to do all my design work for the woodworking hobby. it comes in 48 and 96 sheet pads. having worked at a real stationery store back during high school, i am ruined for life by my need for quality in pens and paper. i plan to try the dot grid paper by Rhodia even though it is metric like their quad ruled stuff. it would be my backup suggestion. i hope this helps you.

Edited November 20, 2011 by ken belanus

[Wendell]

Since green calculation pads are a standard tool for engineering students, I expect this discussion would be of interest to a wide audience.

 

I used National Brand computation pads many years ago and the quality was great, but I've heard that quality has become unsatisfactory of late.

 

What we need here is to collect comparisons of what is currently available in this style of writing pad. I have found six brands of the traditional green-tinted, graph-on-the-back paper pads. If you have any experience with recent batches of these, please add your comments, especially if you can compare two or more brands.

 

 

Ampad Evidence Engineering Pad

http://www.amazon.com/Ampad-Evidence-Engineering-Sheets-Squares/dp/B000EFJ6VU/ref=pd_sbs_op_3

 

Comet School Supplies Engineering Pad

http://www.varneys.com/shop_product_detail.asp?catalog_id=896&catalog_name=Tm90ZWJvb2tzICYgQmluZGVycw&pf_id=11904&product_name=Q29tZXQgU2Nob29sIFN1cHBsaWVzIEVuZ2luZWVyaW5nIFBhZA&type=1&target=shop_product_list.asp

 

National Brand Computation Pad

http://www.amazon.com/National-Computation-Inches-Sheets-42389/dp/B0017TMB64/ref=pd_sbs_op_2

 

Roaring Spring Engineering Pad 95382

http://www.rspaperproducts.com/products/writing-pads/engineering-pads/engineering-pad-0

 

Staedtler Translucent Bond Pads 937 811E

http://www.amazon.com/Staedtler-Translucent-Bond-Pads-100/dp/B0006OM7RE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1329438403&sr=8-1

 

TOPS Engineering Computation Pad

http://www.amazon.com/Engineering-Computation-Letter-Sheets-35500/dp/B001J87JTM

[Wendell]

I don't have any of these papers right now, but here is what I got from googling.

 

Ampad was very good when sold as item 22-139, but the pads now sold as 22-142 are said to have very poor paper. One interesting point about the 22-139 is that the 100-sheet pads used 20 lb. paper while the 200-sheet used 15 lb. With the 22-142, all pads use 15 lb. as do the other brands.

 

Comet School Supplies are relatively inexpensive, but I haven't found any description of the quality.

 

National Brand are said to be mostly OK, except that the binder holes are often misaligned.

 

Roaring Spring makes pads in green and buff color. Somebody said the buff pads use heavier paper, but the company web site says they both use 15 lb.

 

Staedtler are probably the most expensive. I found no reviews. It's not your typical paper, so I wonder how well it takes FP ink. The cheapest place I've found for it is http://www.draftingsuppliesdew.com/

 

TOPS used to be very good. I used their white quad pads for years. Sometime around 2010, they switched to an extremely poor paper that is just like newsprint.

[gnjr]

I can speak to the Staedtler engineering pads. I found this thread because I was searching for an alternative to my Stardtler pad! If you are not using a fountain pen, I can find no real problem with this paper. But fountain pen ink bleeds terribly. A real disappointment.

 

I had a stack of Tops pads that I quite liked, but I've used them all up, and it sounds like the ones available today are not of the same quality...

[PJohnP]

Quite frankly, given the lack of quality control with many papers now, it's better to find a plain white paper that one likes, and then print the grid/graph/dot format that's most desirable for the user. I went through multiple pads at one time, needing to discard some as they proved inadequate. Not only did this waste paper, but it also wasted my time.

 

There are a fairly substantial number of resources on the internet for various formats that a person can print using either an inkjet or laser printer, depending on their personal needs and the paper in question. I've done it with both printer types over the years, currently using a laser printer with Double-A paper for my needs. I get exactly the worksheets that I want, and if I determine an improvement over time, the next batch includes the improvement(s). Double sided worksheets with narrower margins so that I can use each page more efficiently ? Sure. It took me about three tries to get that right in "junior" size, two for full-sized sheets, and now I have precisely what I want for my work (and punched to fit my Arc notebooks as another bonus item for my needs).

 

Yes, with a desirable paper in hand, it will take you perhaps a couple or four hours to decide on just what you want - I do recommend only printing one or two pages of each test until you've come to some reasonable decisions - but just how long will it take to order off the internet or sort through paper in stores ? What do we do with paper that's proven wholly inadequate for our needs ? Do we give to someone else knowing that it's not good ? Throw it out ? Try to return it to the store (and spend the requisite time and petrol/diesel to get to and fro) ? The balance of a person's time can tilt the scale of decisions rather sharply, in my experience.

 

As for the costing of this approach, it's actually not anywhere near as high as one might think. The actual toner or ink used per page is small by comparison with a fully printed page of text, and one can get pretty much any colour or tonal level that they would like for their own needs. I've personally tweaked back the degree of tone/colour on my dots for my engineering sheets to just preceptible, which suits me well for my notes, calculations, and drawings (in fact, scans or PDFs of my worksheets either show no dots or much more darkly shaded ones than the real ones I enjoy using - which is "just so" for my writing on the real worksheets).

 

I would suggest "make your own" is worth a try for many people, especially the more refined tastes of fountain pen users where the specific paper can be critical for one's enjoyment. On top of that, I'd (nicely) point out that engineers should be able to design or engineer just what they'd like in worksheets. Put together the finely honed tastes of fountain pen users with keen engineering know-how, and the worksheet designs should be exquisite.

 

 

 

 

John P.

[raging.dragon]

Disappointing paper is condemned to feeding the laser printer.

 

I like the Rhodia graph paper. It's been awhile since I've used the Veritas paper, but I vaguely remember it being good.

[Ethereal Winter Wind]

I'm interested what are these engineering pads? They look like normal 5x5mm grid pads, what makes them different. I'm currently a 3rd year engineering student albeit in Australia and I've never heard of these engineering pads.

[Justjcez]

Engineering pads for the lay person would also be called "graph paper." Although there are some specifics that engineers use: the borders are wide for labeling the calculations, The grid is generally a different color so that you can see the pencil/pen marks (also, traditionally blue so that the grid would not show when photocopied), the grid is usually also highly transparent so that you don't have dark lines crowding up your work.

 

Long story short, it's a specific type of graph paper that engineers use because its features make it more useful.

[PJohnP]

Engineering pads will also typically have a "project block" on the top that details the work being performed with several different lines, often with a "check box" to allow for the calculations to be verified/signed off by another person.

[NateB]

The grid is printed on the back. The front has rules down the margins and across the top.

 

 

Common stuff for US engineering students. You can see examples of how assignemts are formatted here and here

[CatBookMom]

I'm not a fountain pen user, but I figured such a forum would know something about good paper.

 

I'm looking for engineering paper with a heavier weight to it as well as a place (online or otherwise) to buy it regularly. My favorite at the moment are the ones made by Comet School Supplies (3-0236 and its other pad sizes), but I have such a hard time finding it.

 

 

 

Any suggestions? Oh, I'm not interested in printing my own engineering paper. I go through about five to seven pads per quarter; I write just about everything on this stuff.

 

 

Why not just contact the Comet School Supplies company? Their catalog is here and page 20 seems to have an assortment of engineering paper on it. Call or email and ask them where to find a vendor that you can buy from.

[gnjr]

I have found a source for the Roaring Spring engineering paper, and can report that it is very good. No feathering or bleed-through with my fountain pen.

 

I got it from the on-line book store of Rose-Hulman Institute:

http://rose-hulmanbooks.collegestoreonline.com/ePOS?store=505&item_number=7097295389&form=shared3%2fgm%2fdetail.html&design=505