ACR Feeder for eyedropper pens

[Aravind_A_2310]

As a person who uses eyedropper pens often, it is a long known fact that the feed from a sheaffer no nonsense or school pen is a great way to eliminate burps on an eyedropper pen, the only caveat is the pen should take a 6.3mm feed with the appropriately sized nib(Indian #8, #35 or #40). That is the case for majority of indian eyedropper pens, especially the medium to jumbo varieties. 

 

I have personally used the No Nonsense feed to great success in my pens like my airmail 71s, gama forever, my ever growing collection of woodex and PLP pens, and all have served me well, and have experienced zero burps. And for the Kim fans out there, a similar feed was used in their pens which gave them the popularity and the moniker "the pen that never leaks".

 

Unfortunately, these sheaffer feeds are becoming harder to come by, and not many people are willing to sacrifice their sheaffer pens just to extract the feed.

 

Well GOOD NEWS... Our good doctor,  Dr. Sreekumar, famous for krishna inks and the student of the legendary late Mr. ACR has come up with a solution. He has started to make hos own vewrsion of the kim feeds, and are now up on his site. cost is ₹300 per piece, and by the looks of it, it does resemble old sheaffer and kim feeds:

 

For those interested, here is the link to the site:
https://krishnalyrebird.com/product/acr-multifinned-feeder?referred_from=category

He has also made a variant with deeper cut fins and side spoons, that does not have a tail and has a dual ink channel:

 

These cost ₹200 a pop and can also be bought from the site: https://krishnalyrebird.com/product/acr-double-channel-feeder-without-capillary-?referred_from=category

I have made an order for the feed, and I'll be posting my chronicles in this forum. If anyone else is also having a go at it, please do share your experiences as well.

Have a great day,

Cheers.

Aravind

 

[hari317]

Excellent and thanks for sharing. If successful, these feeders will prove to be a boon.

 

I recall a few years back when 250/- per Sheaffer ebonite feed from Gem and Co was considered too pricey and compared to the then 75/- per plastic sheaffer feed. 
 

 

 

[tommym]

Yes, thanks for the heads-up on this.

 

Tommy

[tommym]

Initially, I thought the one with the tail was intended to be used in some sort of housing, such as in the modern 3-in-1. But the description on his site states that it is a "Capillary tail for flow adjustment."  I never heard of this. How exactly does this work, and why offer two different feeds for the same pen?

 

Thanks,

 

Tommy

[hari317]

10 hours ago, tommym said:

Initially, I thought the one with the tail was intended to be used in some sort of housing, such as in the modern 3-in-1. But the description on his site states that it is a "Capillary tail for flow adjustment."  I never heard of this. How exactly does this work, and why offer two different feeds for the same pen?

 

Thanks,

 

Tommy

The tail in the Sheaffer ebonite feed and the as of yet unknown origin Kim feed (but a very strong guess can be made) is present to facilitate ink/air exchange through the cartridge piercer nozzle. The new feed is based on these legacy feeds I believe. 

However today there is no nib unit housing that accepts a 1/4 inch dia feed. Thus the description omits this to keep things simple.

The tail feed has an "indirect ink path", the other tailless feed has a "direct ink path". I prefer the former. But I haven't used these new feeds yet as i have a good stock of the Sheaffer units.

You can always get the official word on this from Dr Sree.

Best

Hari

 

 

[Aravind_A_2310]

So my order finally arrived. And the feeds does look promising:

 

The feeds does resemble the sheaffer ebonite feeds, with the single channel, fairly deeply cut fins, and the capillary tail which ca be removed

 

 

 

 

 

I've put one of these feeds in my airmail 69T with a Kanwrite Fine nib. and the flow seems to be great and consistent. Will chronicle my updates in this thread.

 

[tommym]

11 hours ago, hari317 said:

The tail in the Sheaffer ebonite feed and the as of yet unknown origin Kim feed (but a very strong guess can be made) is present to facilitate ink/air exchange through the cartridge piercer nozzle. The new feed is based on these legacy feeds I believe. 

However today there is no nib unit housing that accepts a 1/4 inch dia feed. Thus the description omits this to keep things simple.

The tail feed has an "indirect ink path", the other tailless feed has a "direct ink path". I prefer the former. But I haven't used these new feeds yet as i have a good stock of the Sheaffer units.

You can always get the official word on this from Dr Sree.

Best

Hari

 

 

Thanks, Hari. That makes sense.

 

Tommy

[tommym]

2 hours ago, Aravind_A_2310 said:

So my order finally arrived. And the feeds does look promising:

 

The feeds does resemble the sheaffer ebonite feeds, with the single channel, fairly deeply cut fins, and the capillary tail which ca be removed
 

I've put one of these feeds in my airmail 69T with a Kanwrite Fine nib. and the flow seems to be great and consistent. Will chronicle my updates in this thread.
 

 

Thanks so much for posting those detailed photos. I look forward to your updates.

 

Tommy

[K Singh]

12 hours ago, Aravind_A_2310 said:

So my order finally arrived. And the feeds does look promising:

 

The feeds does resemble the sheaffer ebonite feeds, with the single channel, fairly deeply cut fins, and the capillary tail which ca be removed

 

 

 

 

 

I've put one of these feeds in my airmail 69T with a Kanwrite Fine nib. and the flow seems to be great and consistent. Will chronicle my updates in this thread.

 

Looks good 👍 Nice to see bottom view of the feeder as well which was missing on the sales page. Look forward to hearing your experience with it.

[hari317]

16 hours ago, Aravind_A_2310 said:

So my order finally arrived. And the feeds does look promising:

 

The feeds does resemble the sheaffer ebonite feeds, with the single channel, fairly deeply cut fins, and the capillary tail which ca be removed

 

 

 

 

 

I've put one of these feeds in my airmail 69T with a Kanwrite Fine nib. and the flow seems to be great and consistent. Will chronicle my updates in this thread.

 

great pics.

Can you pls post a pic of the back of the feed where the tail enters it? I can see a lateral slot there, but it's not very clear.

Also interesting to note the depth of the bore for the tail, its nearly 3/4 the length of the feed inside plus extra outside on the Sheaffer ebonite. 

[Aravind_A_2310]

4 hours ago, hari317 said:

great pics.

Can you pls post a pic of the back of the feed where the tail enters it? I can see a lateral slot there, but it's not very clear.

Also interesting to note the depth of the bore for the tail, its nearly 3/4 the length of the feed inside plus extra outside on the Sheaffer ebonite. 

Sure @hari317, here is the photos to the best of my camera's capacity:

 

The tail end of the feed

 

With the capillary tail removed. It just slots in, and it does go quite deep

 

For reference, this is how far the tube goes inside the feed. The second tube was yanked out of another ACR feed, since I bought 5 of them.

 

 

Hope this helps.

Thanks,

Aravind

[hari317]

1 hour ago, Aravind_A_2310 said:

Sure @hari317, here is the photos to the best of my camera's capacity:

 

The tail end of the feed

 

With the capillary tail removed. It just slots in, and it does go quite deep

 

For reference, this is how far the tube goes inside the feed. The second tube was yanked out of another ACR feed, since I bought 5 of them.

 

 

Hope this helps.

Thanks,

Aravind

That's very helpful Aravind. Thank you.

[tommym]

So, did all the KIM ACR pens come with the tailed feeder, or only specific models? 

 

Thanks,

 

Tommy

[hari317]

12 hours ago, tommym said:

So, did all the KIM ACR pens come with the tailed feeder, or only specific models? 

 

Thanks,

 

Tommy

When I started buying them in 2011 or so, they used to come fitted with a 28mm long nib (Indian no 8 ) and the so called Kim feed with a tail. The kim feeds are short and when longer nibs started to be fitted, the usual Indian feeders were fitted. So it's not necessary that each Kim pen made by ACR had the finned feed with a tail.

 

You can still view the images of the first post by copy pasting the photobucket links in a new browser tab.

[tommym]

14 hours ago, hari317 said:

When I started buying them in 2011 or so, they used to come fitted with a 28mm long nib (Indian no 8 ) and the so called Kim feed with a tail. The kim feeds are short and when longer nibs started to be fitted, the usual Indian feeders were fitted. So it's not necessary that each Kim pen made by ACR had the finned feed with a tail.

 

You can still view the images of the first post by copy pasting the photobucket links in a new browser tab.

Thanks so much! 

 

Tommy

[tommym]

Heatsetting the feed to the nib...

 

I'm thinking that on the Sheaffer production line, they slapped the nib onto their plastic No Nonsense feed, pressed the assembly down into the housing, and called it day.  I could be wrong.  For those of you who have done this swap using the Sheaffer No Nonsense feed, was there more involved than simply swapping out the feed?

 

Thanks,

 

Tommy

[Aravind_A_2310]

9 hours ago, tommym said:

Heatsetting the feed to the nib...

 

I'm thinking that on the Sheaffer production line, they slapped the nib onto their plastic No Nonsense feed, pressed the assembly down into the housing, and called it day.  I could be wrong.  For those of you who have done this swap using the Sheaffer No Nonsense feed, was there more involved than simply swapping out the feed?

 

Thanks,

 

Tommy

I've been using the plastic sheaffer feeds for quite some time, and its just a direct swap. No faffing about... Though I have had instances where the feed does not quite make contact with the nib... And in those cases, these ebonite feeds are a great help since you can hear set them... But for 95% of the time, a simple swap will do. The only issue is getting the feed out of a no-nonsense. It's very hard to do without cracking the section.

 

 

Hope this helps,

Aravind

[hari317]

9 hours ago, tommym said:

Heatsetting the feed to the nib...

 

I'm thinking that on the Sheaffer production line, they slapped the nib onto their plastic No Nonsense feed, pressed the assembly down into the housing, and called it day.  I could be wrong.  For those of you who have done this swap using the Sheaffer No Nonsense feed, was there more involved than simply swapping out the feed?

 

Thanks,

 

Tommy

The plastic feeds extracted from NN pens have already taken a "set".  When these feeds are fitted with third party nibs, the contour may or may not match. Therefore I prefer the Sheaffer ebonite feed which be easily heat set for a perfect fit.