Rapidograph: Rotring or Koh-I-Noor?

[Splicer]

The only advantage of the Rapidographs is that you don't need to clean out the air feed spiral every time you refill your pen. It's not a really big deal unless you have no time to clean out your point section or at least tap it on a blotter sheet to clear out the air channels.

 

Today I broke the second point wire in a week's time cleaning the point section of a Koh-I-Noor Rapidograph that wouldn't flow. The 4x0 and 6x0 wires are mighty fragile. If I didn't have to disassemble these things I think I'd be happier.

 

 

I can order Rotring Rapidograph pens and Artpens in if necessary since I am a dealer for Chartpak. I can also get replacement points and cartridges.

 

I might take you up on that.

[Dillo]

Hi,

 

You might want the Rapidoeze cleaner which I am going to start stocking.

 

That effectively cleans the ink out of technical pens. If you clean the fine points, I like to use an ultrasonic cleaner with a technical pen cleaning solution like the Rapidoeze. For most people, I don't recommend taking the finest points apart (<0.25MM), since you can break the thin needle in the point.

 

Dillon

[Amscot56]

When I was in high school I took a drafting class there I used mechanical pencils exclusively. I loved the precision of technical drawings but I didn't think I wanted to go into that field. In college I studied the fine arts and commercial art as it was referred to back then. A lot of the students began to use technical pens both to add ruled lines to their design work but also to take to figure drawing class and to sketch in their notebooks. Once I began working in the advertising field we used technical pens for many different things in our work. I still have the Koh-inoor pens I purchased and the Rotring set I purchased in school which are called "Rapidiograph" they are now frozen relics of my artist past but I now recall I don't think I ever had refills for the cartridges. I had some issues with the Kohinoor brand especially with the finer points. 

 

Now I am retired after a long career in design which of course evolved to computers and am again contemplating the idea of ink drawings. I probably will purchase the Rotring set again but this time I am probably going for the Isograph as I have more patience now and time to do things properly. 

 

Now that some years have passed from your last post how do you like the Rotrings or what are you using now?

[Vladpu]

On 11/28/2021 at 9:53 PM, Amscot56 said:

When I was in high school I took a drafting class there I used mechanical pencils exclusively. I loved the precision of technical drawings but I didn't think I wanted to go into that field. In college I studied the fine arts and commercial art as it was referred to back then. A lot of the students began to use technical pens both to add ruled lines to their design work but also to take to figure drawing class and to sketch in their notebooks. Once I began working in the advertising field we used technical pens for many different things in our work. I still have the Koh-inoor pens I purchased and the Rotring set I purchased in school which are called "Rapidiograph" they are now frozen relics of my artist past but I now recall I don't think I ever had refills for the cartridges. I had some issues with the Kohinoor brand especially with the finer points. 

 

Now I am retired after a long career in design which of course evolved to computers and am again contemplating the idea of ink drawings. I probably will purchase the Rotring set again but this time I am probably going for the Isograph as I have more patience now and time to do things properly. 

 

Now that some years have passed from your last post how do you like the Rotrings or what are you using now?

I was never into drafting, but did learn to do non-professional grade anatomical drawings, primarily as a teaching aid.  I have an old set of Keuffel & Esser drafting templates and stylographic (tube-pointed) pens in a range of sizes.  In the olden days before computerized image analysis, I also used a Keuffel & Esser "compensating polar planimeter" which was meant to be a cartography tool, but we used it to measure the size of infarct in brains after ischemic stroke.  Computers are better, obviously, but I am still impressed by how a mechanical device could be made to be so precise.