Platinum Century - Slip & Seal Discussion

[awa54]

1 hour ago, EricSmith1959 said:

What I find interesting is that Visconti seems to have already made this sort of mechanism before Platinum did. Take a look at a photo of a Visconti demonstrator that shows the spring and the inner cap.

 

At least with electronics, Japanese patents can be pretty esoteric and one can be granted for a similar effect/result as another patented item, if obtained by a slightly different process.

 

...it's also entirely possible that Visconti didn't choose to patent their version.

[mke]

3 hours ago, awa54 said:

it's also entirely possible that Visconti didn't choose to patent

That might be the case.

 

Japanese patent applications are cheaper than European or US or WO. So Visconti would need to spend much more money than Platinum did.

 

If the Visconti cap structure is really first and very similar to the Platinum cap than someone could go to court to nullify the patent. Worth the money that procedure would cost?

 

Platinum patented in Japan only - less costly and their main focus is to protect the Japanese market - mostly against Sailor and Pilot. Speculation!

 

 

[arcfide]

I don't know much about the Visconti spring caps, but if I read the Slip and Seal design documents correctly, there are a few specific features that define the mechanism:

• The inner cap freely rotates and also moves under spring pressure, so that the cap doesn't rub in any way against the section when screwed on
• There is a locking shelf built into the inner cap that prevents the cap from extending too far and "pulling" the spring out of tension
• It's based on a spring and inner cap

I think Sailor and Visconti have both made spring loaded inner caps, but did they also include the two other features? If not, then that might be sufficient to distinguish the Platinum design from a patent POV.

 

[arcfide]

8 hours ago, awa54 said:

those who regularly use pigment based or overly saturated inks

 

I think this is an important point. I the past, the level of saturation in inks wasn't as great, and they were much more reliable in terms of behavior when they evaporated a little bit (at least the popular inks were). The influx of pigmented, saturated, and hyper-saturated inks I think created a situation that brought cap sealing more to the front of the discussion than might have been in the past. For example, in the form of "ink crustaceans" (c.f., Goulet Podcast) with hyper sheening inks and other highly saturated inks. I believe in the 90's that was part of the issue with the Parker Penman line of inks in some form or another. 

 

If you write frequently enough or flush your pens regularly, you probably won't have issues, but if you followed traditional practices, where you might have just kept inking up a pen with the same ink over and over, and may or may not have written frequently with it, then ink drying out could have become a problem with highly saturated inks, and I think we see this more today among pens that don't seal as well, whereas if you put a "normal" ink in those pens, they tend to work quite reliably for a lot longer without flow issues. 

[ridiculopathy]

To support a few of arcfide’s many fine points, the marketing materials that came with my Platinum 3776 Shoji (2012) touted the ability to use their new Pigment Blue ink without fear due to the Slip & Seal cap and even came with a Pigment Blue cartridge. Also, the silhoutte and name of each of the Fuji lakes was printed on the Shoji’s inner cap so you could watch it rotate as you screwed your pen closed. 

[essayfaire]

On 11/22/2021 at 6:54 PM, A Smug Dill said:

I'd say the average Sailor Pro Gear Slim's cap seal effectiveness is good enough

I concur.  

 

My concern is whether the pens dry out or not with occasional (versus daily use).  I don't have an old Platinum (other than some Preppies) but my newer ones certainly seem to write properly after being ignored.

 

I have a modern Parker, on the other hand, which seems to dry out so quickly that the only reason I don't part with it is it was a gift and has sentimental value.