Volume of ink to fill a pen

[Oracle1729]

Does anyone know the volume of ink it takes to fill a converter (or that comes in a cartridge)? In my case it's Waterman.

 

I'm just wondering how many fills I'll get out of a bottle of ink or how much cartridges really cost compared to bottles.

 

Thanks.

 

[kissing]

This is actually a good idea

[maryannemoll]

You can actually measure this yourself. Fill a pen with water, then empty the contents into a small container and then suck up these contents into a syringe with measurement markers. You can just syringe up the water from the converter itself, but then you'll have to make an estimate for the volume in the feed channels. From here, you can make a rough calculation of how many fills a bottle can make.

[Mudge]

Damn, if I'd seen this post two hours ago, it would have been a simple matter for me to give an answer to the microlitre, but I'm not going to be in my lab until Tuesday.

 

If you can wait that long...

 

A note re. maryannemoll's post: the contents of the feed etc will be nearly constant for any pen, so for most useful purposes (unless you change ink a lot ) we can probably disregard it in terms of a price comparison...

Edited April 12, 2007 by Mudge

[lisa]

1ml or bit less would be my rough guess from filling with syringe. I take the ink that gets wiped off from the nib and the ink in the feed into account with that number. (correct english?)

 

If you want to know exactly, fill a clean dry pen until the converter can't be turned up any further. Usually the converter isn't full because you're sucking up the air from the feed first.

Then messure the amount of ink that fits into a converter with a syringe + the amount of ink that would fit in the space that is filled with air after the first fill + 1 or 2 drops for wiping of the nib, but you can leave out the latter because that's about the same as what is in the needle and beginning of the syringe. So those two even eachother out.

 

Good luck. (I'm not doing it for you. I'm better in thinking up messy projects than doing them. )

[JohnS-MI]

I tried the mathematical approach. For a cartridge, it is a cylinderical container, or a tapered conic section. For the cylinders, V = (pi/4)*d*d*h, where d is the INSIDE diameter, and h the height of ink in the cartridge. For a slightly tapered conic cartridge, the diameter at mid-height of the ink is a good estimate, but not exact.

 

On some cartridges, I actually cut some empty ones and measured ID. For converters, I estimated the ID as best I could through the plastic walls.

 

I can't find my page of measurements, but they were all pretty close to 1 mL, the range was perhaps 0.8-1.2 mL, for Parker, Sheaffer, Waterman and Cross. (Short cartridges, and their matching converters are probably less, but I don't have any).

 

So depending on losses to blotting tissues, you ought to get 40-50 converters full from a 50 mL ink bottle. Piston fillers probably have a larger swept volume and hold more ink as would eyedrop fillers.

Edited April 12, 2007 by JohnS-MI

[phillychuck]

those with access to an accurate scale ---

 

weigh the pen & converter when it is dry. fill. weigh the pen and converter when it is filled. Get the difference in grams. 1 gram should be about 1 milliliter (unless someone has better estimates for ink specific gravity)

[churl]

In my experience, most converters take around 1ml, maybe a little more. Of course, this varies from converter to converter.

 

However, it's worthwhile to note that having a converter has its own pluses.

[Viseguy]

QUOTE (Oracle1729 @ Apr 11 2007, 08:11 PM)

I'm just wondering how many fills I'll get out of a bottle of ink or how much cartridges really cost compared to bottles.

As for the second question, a 50 ml bottle of Waterman ink costs $8.25 at Pendemonium. Long international carts of Waterman cost $6.25 for an 8-pack; I believe they hold about 1.5 ml each, meaning that 50 ml of cartridge ink costs about $25.78. In other words, you pay three times as much for cartridges.

[lisa]

Waterman carts hold 1.4ml of ink, I've just messured it.

 

A bottle of Waterman ink is €5. 8 carts are €2. So overhere you pay €8.93 for 50 ml of ink in carts. And non of that ink is going to waste for nib wiping while filling.

(go to ebay and you can buy carts in bulk.)

 

So it depends where you live whether it's worth it or not.

[chemgeek]

A converter holds about 1 mL plus or minus, depending on the manufacturer. My Sailors are a little under, Waterman and Namiki maybe a little more. There are about 30 mL to a fluid ounce.

 

Cheers.

[psfred]

Typical pen fill is between 1 and 1.5 mL (excpet Snorkels and Parker 61s, those are around 0.8 mL in good condition). Pelikans, other piston fillers, and vac-fillers like Sheaffers and Parker Vacumatics hold around 2 mL (and the big Pelikans more).

 

Most carts hold about a mL, short international ones about 0.7 mL.

 

Even with the loss from wiping the nib and section (not applicable to Snorks), bottled ink is about half the cost of cartridges.

 

You can refill carts if you want, but it can be messy. So, however, can leaking pens....

 

Peter

[The Legend]

 

Anyone forgot about the fact that ink evaporates from the converter in time, while in use?

So you cannot make a hard calculation and make a contract with your bottle...

 

The Legend