Too many pilot cartridges

[A Smug Dill]

15 minutes ago, awa54 said:

if Pilot is preparing to switch to International pattern cartridges in the US market, that would be "interesting"...

 

There is absolutely no way Pilot would be prepared to do so for the Custom and Capless product lines. Entry-level steel-nibbed pens such as the Pilot MR (note: there is no such model as the “Pilot Metropolitan”), perhaps; for a long time already, it has a variant of that is sold in Europe that takes ‘international standard’ cartridges, but obviously there is no pressure, need, or business reason to do so in the US and Australian markets.

[AmandaW]

When I bought a couple of Pilot Metropolitan in 2017 I deliberately ordered from the US to be sure of getting proprietary cartridge pens. So around here: if it's Pilot it takes a Pilot cartridge or converter, rather than the Standard International required by a European released MR.

 

I think I'd make the same decision now if that still applies.

 

[A Smug Dill]

3 minutes ago, AmandaW said:

I think I'd make the same decision now if that still applies.

 

I'd do the same — not that I'd want to buy another Pilot MR ever again, or really want to use one for that matter — (not the least) because then it'd come with a large-capacity CON-B squeeze converter, which is handy for use in other ‘higher-end’ Pilot pens I have.

[awa54]

3 minutes ago, AmandaW said:

.... rather than the Standard International required by a European released MR.

....

 

I'm a radical Socialist by US standards, but "requiring" the use of a standardized ink cartridge in the EU seems like some serious 'Gubmint overreach!!

 

Now if Pilot just happened to think they might sell more MRs in Europe if they used a more common cartridge standard, that's their business (model) 😁

 

 

 

[awa54]

@Oshic1273

 

Welcome to Pen forums Riley, they're friendly places on the internet, where an innocent topic like having a bunch of extra ink can and will devolve into myriad thread derailments on the minutiae of ink cartridge standards 😵

[grainweevil]

5 hours ago, awa54 said:

 

I'm a radical Socialist by US standards, but "requiring" the use of a standardized ink cartridge in the EU seems like some serious 'Gubmint overreach!!

Now if Pilot just happened to think they might sell more MRs in Europe if they used a more common cartridge standard, that's their business (model) 😁

While the EU does like to throw its weight about on that sort of thing, I'd be pretty confident that it was purely a business decision on Pilot's part. Personally I think it just causes confusion.

 

As to a surplus of Pilot cartridges, it does seem to be a case for a Pilot Parallel. You can eat through ink at an amazing rate with one of those, and have a lot of fun while you're doing it.

[awa54]

11 hours ago, A Smug Dill said:

 

There is absolutely no way Pilot would be prepared to do so for the Custom and Capless product lines. Entry-level steel-nibbed pens such as the Pilot MR (note: there is no such model as the “Pilot Metropolitan”), perhaps; for a long time already, it has a variant of that is sold in Europe that takes ‘international standard’ cartridges, but obviously there is no pressure, need, or business reason to do so in the US and Australian markets.

 

While the base model certainly is the MR, there are several sub-designations that encompass differing colorways, designs on the barrel band and the packaging pens are supplied in. These include Cocoon, Animal, Retro Pop and yes, Metropolitan.  

 

Quite a few retailers omit the MR part of these product sub-line names, or use Metropolitan as the umbrella model, rather than the technically correct MR, that may be where this idea that the Metropolitan is a model, rather than just a variant comes from.

[essayfaire]

On 11/10/2021 at 10:34 PM, A Smug Dill said:

I'd say IC simply stands for ‘ink cartridges’.

  Oh.

 

On 11/11/2021 at 8:58 PM, awa54 said:

I'd love to see pictures of the cartridge mouth of both your old Japanese cartridges and the new ones supplied by Pilot USA

See below; the topmost cartouche came with one of my pens, but from Japan.  They all look  the same.  I would have tried it out had Pilot USA not communicated the information they did.

 

@Smug, does this include the Capless? Or only fatter pens?

On 11/11/2021 at 9:27 PM, A Smug Dill said:

because then it'd come with a large-capacity CON-B squeeze converter, which is handy for use in other ‘higher-end’ Pilot pens I have.

[A Smug Dill]

4 hours ago, essayfaire said:

@Smug, does this include the Capless? Or only fatter pens?

 

The only pens with which I've received CON-B converters in their retail packages, as far as I recall, are Pilot MR (or Cocoon, if ordering from sellers operating out of the Japanese market) and 78G pens.

 

Pilot Capless pens were always supplied with CON-50 converters, back in or before 2015; and, after production of the CON-50 was discontinued, CON-40 converters. (Each Capless pen also came with a metal shell for use with the supplied proprietary format ink cartridge.)

 

The Prera Iro-ai, i.e. the ones with the crystal clear barrels and see-through coloured plastic accents, too. I don't know whether the opaque Prera pens came packaged with converters from Pilot, since I never bought any of those; but I wouldn't think so.

 

I don't have a Pilot Explorer, and so I can't comment on that.

 

Pilot Custom 742, Custom Heritage 912, and Custom Maple are supplied with CON-70 (now CON-70N) converters. I can't recall whether the Custom 74 and Custom Heritage 91 are packaged with converters; not according to Pilot, but sometimes Japanese sellers on eBay (and Chinese sellers on AliExpress) will include a CON-40 converter in each listing, even though the models themselves will also accept the CON-70(N).

[Stationery Fan]

On 11/12/2021 at 11:44 PM, awa54 said:

note: there is no such model as the “Pilot Metropolitan”

Wait...I thought there was? Multiple people say Pilot Metropolitan as reference to the pens that use the proprietary cartridges and the Pilot MR as the pens in UK that use standard international. Hence it caused much confusion for me, where my receipt said Pilot MR3 (to denote the Retro Pop release, I'm assuming) but used the proprietary cartridge, but googling didn't reveal the difference. Granted, I didn't chase it too far down the rabbit hole. 

 

5 hours ago, essayfaire said:

I'd say IC simply stands for ‘ink cartridges’.

Oh good, I had some minor worry from the earlier post suggesting it was international cartridges, since the IC ones are the only ones I cold find locally in the art stores nearby.

[AmandaW]

24 minutes ago, A Smug Dill said:

 I don't know whether the opaque Prera pens came packaged with converters from Pilot,

My Yama-guri Ordered from Japan  didn't come with a converter which was an unpleasant surprise since the clear ones had them. There was nothing in the listing to say so and it wasn't possible to see in the pictures!

 

Same thing with the Kakuno IIRC, the clear came with a converter while the opaques did not. It even takes a Con70 which won't fit in the early opaque models, but did in the later colours.  Hopefully someone can confirm and remember when that happened.

[awa54]

@essayfaire

Those all appear to be the current/standard Pilot proprietary type, so I'm a bit baffled by their statement that "the Japanese cartridges will no longer fit the pen" ...they're literally the same cartridge any place you buy them, regardless of packaging.

That statement pretty much has to be wrong, since the original Pilot "Double Spares" cartridges have long been discontinued (last pens made that accept them were some time in the late 60s or *very* early 70s) and it seems the only Pilot product to take International carts is the MR and it's ilk. 

 

Maybe if you sent the pen in with a "mixable colour" (parallel pen), or Petit refill in it, they may have been suggesting that those aren't intended for use in the traditional fountain pen line?

[awa54]

17 hours ago, Stationery Fan said:

Wait...I thought there was? Multiple people say Pilot Metropolitan as reference to the pens that use the proprietary cartridges and the Pilot MR as the pens in UK that use standard international. Hence it caused much confusion for me, where my receipt said Pilot MR3 (to denote the Retro Pop release, I'm assuming) but used the proprietary cartridge, but googling didn't reveal the difference. Granted, I didn't chase it too far down the rabbit hole. 

...

 

The initial assertion was from @A Smug Dill not me, but if you look at Pilot's various official web sites, you'll see that the "Metropolitan" is indeed, a sub-style of the MR, as are the other cosmetic variants. Structurally, they're all the same AFAIK, but the barrel band, color, nib width offerings, intended sales market and packaging differ.

This is really just a technicality though, since anyone here is likely to know what you're talking about if you refer to the type as "Metropolitan".

[essayfaire]

18 hours ago, A Smug Dill said:

 

Won't let me delete, but thanks.  Have you tried a Con B in a Capless? 

17 hours ago, AmandaW said:

It even takes a Con70 which won't fit in the early opaque models, but did in the later colours.  Hopefully someone can confirm and remember when that happened.

 

14 hours ago, awa54 said:

Those all appear to be the current/standard Pilot proprietary type, so I'm a bit baffled by their statement that "the Japanese cartridges will no longer fit the pen"

The pen in question is a Kakuno; now I wonder if that has something to do with it!  Yet, they sent me the larger IC-100s, too, which I imagine are closer to Con-70s in their ink capacity...

[awa54]

1 hour ago, essayfaire said:

The pen in question is a Kakuno; now I wonder if that has something to do with it!  Yet, they sent me the larger IC-100s, too, which I imagine are closer to Con-70s in their ink capacity...

 

Every cartridge capable Pilot that I know of made since the early 1970s, with the exception of the Petit (which uses a shorter version of the current standard cartridge), uses the same standard Pilot cartridge.

 

I was hypothesizing that the Mixable Colour and Petit carts might be seen to be the "wrong" cartridges by Pilot (even though both will fit in pens intended for the "regular" carts), since one is shorter than spec and the other has ink formulated for the Parallel pen in it.

 

In terms of ink capacity, the accepted hierarchy (CON-40<CON-50<CON-20/CON-B<CON-70) is correct, but in practice you need a *perfect* 100% fill on the squeeze converters to equal the capacity of a standard Pilot cartridge, this is hard to confirm, since you can't see the ink in those converters... as to the much vaunted CON-70, in practice it holds only a few percent more ink than a cart, but is easier to confirm a complete fill with than the squeeze converters, making it the best choice in the few pens that can accept it (plus it's just too cool that Pilot made a quasi-vac fill converter!).

[AlexS]

I think the IC-50 and IC-100 refer respectively to packages of 6 and 12 cartridges. The individual cartridges are the same size/capacity.

 

 

Edited November 14, 2021 by AlexS
Added capacity.

[Stationery Fan]

16 hours ago, awa54 said:

The initial assertion was from @A Smug Dill not me

Ah, sorry. I believe I quoted a quote and didn't know how to change it or find the original. But thank you for answering my question, anyway!

[A Smug Dill]

15 hours ago, essayfaire said:

Have you tried a Con B in a Capless?

 

Yes, I have.

 

[essayfaire]

10 hours ago, A Smug Dill said:

Yes, I have.

Would you be so kind as to comment upon whether it fit without further ado or if it either didn't work at all or took longer than your normal refilling process?

 

You didn't need to be so smug, Smug!

[A Smug Dill]

6 hours ago, essayfaire said:

Would you be so kind as to comment upon whether it fit without further ado

 

Does the CON-B fit snugly into a Pilot Capless nib assembly? Yes.

 

Does a Pilot Capless nib assembly with a CON-B installed fit inside a Pilot Capless pen, such that the two halves can be attached to each other properly? Yes.

 

6 hours ago, essayfaire said:

or if it either didn't work at all 

 

Would a CON-B be able to suck ink from a bottle or inkwell, through the Pilot Capless's nib and feed, into the converter's cavity by squeezing the metal bar on it? Yes; so that would tick the box on the converter doing what it was designed to do.

 

6 hours ago, essayfaire said:

or took longer than your normal refilling process?

 

No, it doesn't take longer with a CON-B than a CON-40 or CON-50 to suck up the equivalent volume of ink through the nib and feed. It also doesn't take longer to syringe-fill a CON-B than a CON-40 or CON-50, if I choose to go that way.

 

…

 

As far as I'm concerned, (i) you're asking the ‘wrong’ questions, and (ii) that line of continued questioning — whether they're the ‘wrong’ questions or the ‘right’ ones — doesn't really belong in this discussion thread topic.

 

6 hours ago, essayfaire said:

You didn't need to be so smug, Smug!

 

My terse answer previously given was a compromise between trying to be polite and not just ignore your question when you addressed it to me directly in the open, but also to shut down that line of questioning here.

 

Geez.

 

When I'm verbose in my replies to fully lay out an argument with context, some people complain. When I'm terse and directly on-point in answer to a question as posed, some people complain.

 

Edited November 16, 2021 by A Smug Dill
corrected typo and grammar