How are pencils made? Production of pencils. How it's made, how it works, how it works. How pencils are made.

Each of us, from an early age, while engaged in creativity, or in school lessons, came across such an object as a pencil. Most often, people treat it as something ordinary, as a simple and useful thing. But few people thought about how complex the technological process of its production is.
By the way, during production, a pencil goes through 83 technological operations, 107 types of raw materials and materials are used in its production, and the production cycle is 11 days. If you look at all this from the perspective of an entire product line, you see a complex, well-established production with careful planning and control.

The government's main goal was to eliminate illiteracy in the country, and for this it was necessary to make stationery accessible. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Krasin factory remained the only pencil manufacturer in the CIS with a full production cycle. This means that everything is produced at the factory - from lead to the final product - pencils. Let's take a closer look at the pencil production process.

To produce pencils, the factory receives specially processed and laid linden boards. But before they are used, it is necessary to make writing rods. Let's move on to the workshop for making pencil rods. Writing rods are made from a mixture of clay and graphite. The preparation of the necessary mixture begins with such technological installations, where clay is crushed. The crushed clay is sent along a conveyor to the next production site.

In the next section, special mills are installed, where the clay is ground more finely and mixed with water. Installations for preparing a mixture of clay and graphite. Here the mixture for future rods gets rid of impurities and is prepared for further processing.
It is worth noting that only natural substances are used in the production of leads, which allows us to consider the production environmentally friendly. Installation for pressing the mixture. Rods are obtained from the resulting semi-finished products. There is virtually no waste from production, since they reuse it.

At this production site, the rods themselves are produced, but in order for them to get into the pencil, a number of technological operations will be carried out on them.
The technology for producing rods itself is reminiscent of extrusion. The carefully prepared and mixed mass is squeezed out through a special stamp with holes.

After this, the blanks for writing rods are placed in a special container.
Special packaging

And dry in the closet for 16 hours.
After this, the rods are carefully sorted by hand.
This is what a workstation for sorting rods looks like. This is a very difficult and painstaking work. Cats sleep behind the table lamp.
After sorting, the rods are calcined in a special cabinet. The annealing temperature ranges from 800 to 1200 degrees Celsius and directly affects the final properties of the rod. The hardness of a pencil, which has 17 gradations - from 7H to 8B, depends on temperature.

After annealing, the rods are filled with fat under special pressure and temperature. This is necessary to give them the necessary writing properties: intensity of stroke, ease of gliding, quality of sharpening, ease of erasing with an eraser. Depending on the required value of the hardness of the rod, the following can be used: lard, confectionery fat, or even beeswax and carnauba wax.
Output products from the rod production area.
After this, the rods go to the assembly. Pencil boards are prepared on such machines. Grooves are cut into them for installing writing rods.
The cutting part of the machine makes grooves in the boards.

The boards automatically go into such a clip.
After this, on another machine, the rods are laid in pre-prepared planks.
After laying, the halves of the planks are glued together with PVA glue and left to dry under pressure. The essence of this operation is that the rod itself is not glued to the boards. Its diameter is larger than the diameter of the groove, and in order for the structure to close, a press is needed. The rod will be held in the wood not by glue, but by the tension of the wooden shell (prestress specially created in this way in the design of the pencil).

After drying, the workpiece is sawed with special cutters into individual pencils.
The pencils are gradually sawn through several processing cycles.
The output is ready-made, but not colored pencils.
Already at this stage, the shape of the pencil is established due to the type of profile of the cutting cutter.

Next, the surface of the pencil is primed on special lines. When painting pencils, enamels made at the factory are used. These enamels are made from components that are safe for humans. Pencil painting line.
I think that many times in stores we have seen gift pencils painted with colorful streaks. It turns out that in order to color them this way, a whole specially developed technology is used. Here is a short snippet of the painting process.
When visiting the paint shop, I happened to see a batch of pencils for delivery to the Russian government of a new type. The tip of the pencil symbolizes our national flag. Pencils dry in special technological frames. The regularity of the rows looks very unusual and attractive.

After painting, the pencils are put into batches to be sent to the next sections of the factory.
It is a great pleasure to look at thousands of pencils colored using the factory’s proprietary technology. This is a very unusual sight.
Next, the final mechanical operation is carried out on a special machine - processing of the ends. Surface finishing technological line.
Next, on a special machine, markings are applied to the pencil using a special stamp, which is applied to each pencil through a foil strip.
Cabinet for storing stamps. Stamps for the entire range of manufactured products are stored here.
If necessary, pencils are sharpened on a special machine before packaging. The photo shows the intermediate stage of sharpening.
I was amazed by the speed of the machine. Pencils fell into the tray in a continuous stream. I immediately remembered all my personal unsuccessful attempts to sharpen pencils. From these memories this machine began to inspire even more respect.
The factory also produces these interesting oval-shaped pencils, used in construction and repair.

Arrays of stacked pencils look very unusual and attractive. You won't see this anywhere else.
At the packaging area, pencils are sorted and packed by hand. There is a special atmosphere here. People work quietly and silently. Many employees have continuous work experience at the factory for more than 40 years.

The factory has its own equipped laboratory, in which products are tested throughout the entire production cycle and new production technologies are developed. The picture shows an Amsler device for determining the fracture resistance of writing rods.

Before leaving, I went into a room with demonstration stands for the factory's products. The factory logo evokes some kind of nostalgia. After all, these pencils are familiar to each of us since childhood.
The factory produces several product lines. Professional series of pencils for artists, decorators and designers.
Samples of pencils supplied to the government of the Russian Federation. For the design of the pencils, a design was chosen to match the color of the standard malachite desktop instruments of Russian government workers. But besides this, they have other differences from ordinary pencils: firstly, their shape is made with maximum consideration for the ergonomics of an adult’s hand, and in addition, they use a special “lumograph” type rod for making notes in the margins and in a diary; it does not smear with the hand , but can be easily erased with an eraser without damaging the paper.
Pencils for engineering drawing:
Original factory souvenir products.

(b) As a bonus, and for comparison, I offer you a couple of stories from the Discovery TV channel about the production of pencils there. (/b)

The history of the invention of graphite pencils goes back to the distant sixteenth century, when English shepherds found in the ground near their village a strange black mass that was very reminiscent of coal, but for some reason did not want to burn at all. Soon, the new material was finally used - thin sticks began to be made from it, which could be used for drawing, as they left good, clear marks on canvas or paper. However, these sticks were not widely used because they were very impractical: they often broke and got their fingers dirty. Everything changed only when in 1863 the world's first wooden pencil was made in Germany, the shape of which has remained almost unchanged over the past centuries and has survived to this day.

How pencils are made

The production process at a modern pencil factory consists of several dozen separate technological operations. To make one pencil, about a hundred types of different consumables are used, and it takes at least ten days.

What is a pencil made of?

The main materials for the production of pencils are graphite, clay, color pigments and polymers. All of them are used to make the “heart” of a pencil - its writing rod.

The second, no less important component of each pencil is a wooden shell, which reliably protects the rod from mechanical damage, and our hands from graphite dust. Not every wood is suitable for such a responsible task. Pencils are made only from alder, linden, pine and cedar.

How a pencil is made: pencil production

The production of any pencil begins at the sawmill, where the logs are cleared of bark and turned into timber. Next, the timber is cut into short pieces, each of which is then sawn into planks of a given thickness.

The boards are sorted, non-standard ones are rejected, suitable ones are collected into bundles and loaded into an autoclave. There the boards are finally dried and then impregnated with paraffin.

The boards prepared in this way are sent to the next workshop, where they are passed through a complex machine that simultaneously grinds their surface and makes parallel thin and long grooves on it on one side. The cores of future pencils will subsequently be placed in these recesses.

Meanwhile, writing rods are already being manufactured in another workshop. They are made from a mixture of graphite and clay, which are ground into the finest powder. The powder is then mixed with water and formed into rods by squeezing the resulting “dough” through thin holes made in a special stamp, much in the same way as spaghetti is made. Then the semi-finished rods are dried, after which they are baked at a temperature of about one thousand degrees in a special electric oven.

After annealing, the rods are impregnated with fat. This is done so that later you can write with the rods.

The finished rods are sent to the assembly shop, where the machine will place them in the grooves already cut out in the board, and then a second board coated with glue will be placed on top so that the edges of the grooves in the upper and lower parts exactly coincide. The resulting pencil “sandwiches” are stacked and tightened with clamps so that the glue “grabs” well and both halves are firmly glued to each other.

The stacks are dried for several hours at a temperature of 40 degrees, then the clamps are removed and the boards are taken to a machine that will separate them into individual pencils. There, the pencils will be given the usual round or hexagonal shape and the ends will be carefully cut off.

The finished “naked” pencils are then sent for painting. To make new pencils smooth and shiny, they are painted not once, but three and sometimes even four times, and then varnished several more times. There, in the paint shop, markings and the company logo are applied to the pencils.

Bright, shiny, smelling of fresh paint, pencils are transported to the packaging department, where they are put into cardboard boxes, which are then packed into large boxes and sent to stores.

About pencil manufacturing technology

Pencil (from the Turkic kara - black and tash, -dash - stone), a rod made of coal, lead, graphite, dry paint (often framed in wood or metal), which is used for writing, drawing, drawing.

The first description of a pencil was made by Conrad Gesner of Zurich in 1565 in his Treatise on Fossils. It showed a detailed structure of a pencil, showing a wooden tube into which a piece of graphite was inserted.

Prototypes of the pencil - lead and silver pins inserted into metal clamps (giving a dark gray tone) - were used in the 12th-16th centuries. In the 14th century, artists painted mainly with sticks made of lead and tin, they were called “silver pencils.” From the 16th century. graphite pencils (the stroke of which has low intensity and a slight shine) and pencils made of burnt bone powder, held together with vegetable glue (providing a strong black matte stroke) became widespread.

In the 17th century, graphite was commonly sold on the streets. Buyers, mostly artists, sandwiched these graphite sticks between pieces of wood or twigs and wrapped them in paper or tied them with string. In England, the rod was a stick of soft graphite, suitable for drawing, but not for writing. In Germany, graphite powder was mixed with glue and sulfur, thus obtaining a rod that was not of the highest quality. In 1790, wooden pencils were invented by the French scientist N. Conte. At the same time, the Czech I. Hartmut proposed making writing rods from a mixture of crushed graphite and clay. In principle, this method underlies modern pencil production technology.

Modern production: At first glance, a pencil appears to be a simple object consisting of a writing rod and a wooden shell. But in order to make one pencil, more than 80 production operations are carried out over 11 days. In addition, the range of products manufactured by the factory uses more than 70 types of raw materials. These are mainly natural nutrients and products.

Sheath for pencils Wood for the manufacture of pencil sheaths must have a number of specific properties:

To be light, soft and durable, not to break or crumble during the making of pencils.

Have the same resistance to cutting fibers both along and across, and should not delaminate.

When cutting with a sharp knife, the cut should be smooth and shiny, the chips should curl, not chip or break.

Wood should be low-hygroscopic, i.e. should not absorb moisture. Virginia juniper, which grows in the USA, meets all these qualities.

None of the tree species growing in Russia fully meets all these requirements. The wood that is closest in its properties and structure is cedar and linden, but for use in pencil production it must first be subjected to special treatment - waxing (i.e. refining).

The boards are sawn into bars, the bars are trimmed to the length of a pencil with allowances for machining and drying, and then the bars are sawn into planks on a multi-saw machine. After this, the boards are impregnated with paraffin in special autoclaves. This procedure allows you to improve the mechanical and repair properties of the future pencil. Steam removes all resins from the boards, and the wood legnin, when interacting with steam, changes its color to pinkish-brown. Then the boards are thoroughly dried. To dry, they are placed in special “wells” using a machine. A special method of laying boards for drying allows you to increase the area of the boards in contact with the drying agent - hot steam, and therefore dry them as thoroughly as possible. The wells are placed in drying rooms for 72 hours. After drying, they are sorted - cracked planks, planks sawn along the wrong fiber, etc. are rejected. “Ennobled” with paraffin and dried planks are sorted and calibrated - “grooves” (grooves) for the rods are applied to them. A graphite rod is made from a mixture of clay and graphite. The clay is first cleaned. To do this, it is crushed in special crushers, then mixed with warm water in special mills. During the processing process, clay diluted in water is poured with liquid glass, which, as it settles, removes all impurities from it - pebbles, twigs, sand, etc. And then, according to the recipe, graphite is added to the clay, and each gradation has its own recipe. The mixture is mixed with a binder - aparatin, cooked from starch.

To make rods, a rod mass of a certain temperature and humidity is required. Under no circumstances should the mixture be allowed to dry out, otherwise it will be like a stone and will lead to equipment wear - there will not be enough press pressure. The kneaded dough from clay and graphite is pressed with a screw press for molding through special equipment - rollers with three different gaps. This is done to grind and grind the mass, average moisture content over volume and remove air bubbles. The thickness of the dough layer is initially 1mm, with repeated processing 0.5mm, then 0.25mm. Then the dough is passed through a die with holes, forming the so-called “noodles”. The “noodles” are formed into cylinders, and from them a rod of the required diameter and length is pressed through a diamond die on a press. The rods are finally dried in special drying cabinets in very nice barrels - continuously rotating for 16 hours. After this process, the moisture content of the rod is approximately 0.5%. Then the rods are calcined in a furnace in special crucibles. Instead of a lid, the crucibles with rods are filled with the same “raw materials”. The crucible filling density affects the quality of the rods. Firing is necessary in order to burn out the binder in the rod and bake the clay to form a frame.

The degree of hardness (gradation) of a pencil from 6m to 7t depends on the ratio of clay, temperature and duration of firing and the composition of the fatliquor bath. Depending on the gradation of the rod, firing is carried out at a temperature from 800 to 1200 degrees. After firing, a greasing operation is carried out: the pores formed after burning the binder are filled with fat, wax or stearin under pressure at a certain temperature. Some factories use edible and confectionery fats and binders as raw materials. (for example, aparatine is made from starch). The choice of substance for greasing depends on the gradation (hardness) of the rod. For soft pencils, pastry fat is used, for hard pencils, wax. Intermediate hardness values, for example, TM, are achieved by fattening with stearin. Large diameter rods are produced on vertical masonry presses.

Colored pencil leads are made from a mixture of pigments, fillers, fatliquors and a binder. “Assembly” The rods are placed in the grooves of the prepared board and covered with a second board. The boards are glued together with PVA glue, but the rod itself is not glued to the board, but is held in place by the tension of the board. The diameter of the rod is slightly larger than the diameter of the groove, so it is very important to correctly compress the boards in a special mechanism (clamp), where future pencils are glued. For each pencil size there is a specific pressure indicator for pressing in, so as not to break the rod. Next, the ends of the glued planks are processed - they are trimmed, and any remaining glue is removed.

On the milling and throughput line, the blocks are divided into pencils. The shape of the future pencil depends on the shape of the knives - it will be round, faceted or oval. And the “newborn” pencils are sent along a conveyor belt for sorting. The sorter checks (“rolls”) all the pencils, looking for and eliminating defects. Then the pencils should “get dressed” - go for painting. Painting The finishing of the surface of pencils is carried out by extrusion (broaching), and the finishing of the end is done by dipping. Extrusion is the process of passing a pencil through a priming machine. At the end of the conveyor, the pencil is turned over so that the next layer of paint or varnish is applied from the other end. This ensures uniform coverage. Dark colors are applied 5 times with paint and 4 times with varnish, light colors - 7 times with paint and 4 times with varnish. And to finish the end, a dipping machine is used. With smooth rotational movements, the dipper lowers the frame with pencils into the paint tank. Marking of pencils is carried out using the method of impact hot stamping. Pencil sharpening is done automatically. All pencils are marked. Packaging of sharpened pencils is done manually, unsharpened pencils - manually and automatically: on automatic and semi-automatic machines. With a semi-automatic machine you can pack 15 thousand pencils in one full shift, with an automatic machine – 180 thousand. The machines are capable of placing both 6 and 12 pencils into boxes.

Quality control Incoming control of all raw materials and technological control of the production process and finished products is carried out by the laboratory. Chemists check everything thoroughly! They also formulate soil formulations. By the way, the products of one well-known factory are even tested for contact with the mouth, like baby pacifiers! In the 2nd half of the 19th century. appeared, and in the 20th century. Mechanical or automatic pencils have become widespread. According to their writing properties and production technology, pencils are divided into graphite (black), color, copying, etc., according to their intended purpose - into school, stationery, drawing, drawing, carpentry, makeup, pencils for retouching, marking and marks on various materials. Special types of pencils are sanguine and pastel. In Russia, graphite drawing pencils of several degrees of hardness are produced; The degree of hardness is indicated by the letters M (soft), T (hard) and MT (medium hard), as well as numbers in front of the letters. A large number means a greater degree of hardness or softness. Abroad, instead of the letter M, the letter B is used, and instead of T, N. Automatic pencils are divided by design into: screw pencils - with a writing rod fed by rotating one of the parts; collet - with a writing rod clamped by a split collet sleeve and the rod is fed by pressing a button; multi-colored - with two, four or more rods, alternately extended from the magazine.

Wrote in March 25th, 2013

By the way, during production, a pencil goes through 83 technological operations, 107 types of raw materials and materials are used in its production, and the production cycle is 11 days. If you look at all this from the perspective of an entire product line, you see a complex, well-established production with careful planning and control.

In order to see with our own eyes the process of producing pencils, we go to the Moscow factory named after Krasin. This is the oldest pencil production in Russia. The factory was founded in 1926 with the support of the government. The main task of the government was to eliminate illiteracy in the country, and for this it was necessary to make stationery accessible. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Krasin factory remained the only pencil manufacturer in the CIS with a full production cycle. This means that everything is produced at the factory - from lead to the final product - pencils. Let's take a closer look at the pencil production process.
To produce pencils, the factory receives specially processed and laid linden boards. But before they are used, writing rods must be made.

Let's move on to the pencil lead manufacturing workshop. Writing rods are made from a mixture of clay and graphite. The preparation of the necessary mixture begins with such technological installations, where clay is crushed. The crushed clay is sent along a conveyor to the next production site.

In the next section, special mills are installed, where the clay is ground more finely and mixed with water.

Installations for preparing a mixture of clay and graphite. Here the mixture for future rods gets rid of impurities and is prepared for further processing.

It is worth noting that only natural substances are used in the production of leads, which allows us to consider the production environmentally friendly. Installation for pressing the mixture. Rods are obtained from the resulting semi-finished products. There is virtually no waste from production, since they reuse it.

At this production site, the rods themselves are produced, but in order for them to get into the pencil, a number of technological operations will be carried out on them.

The technology for producing rods itself is reminiscent of extrusion. The carefully prepared and mixed mass is squeezed out through a special stamp with holes.

After this, the blanks for writing rods are placed in a special container.

And dry in the closet for 16 hours.

After this, the rods are carefully sorted by hand.

This is what a workstation for sorting rods looks like. This is a very difficult and painstaking work. Cats sleep behind the table lamp.

After sorting, the rods are calcined in a special cabinet. The annealing temperature ranges from 800 to 1200 degrees Celsius and directly affects the final properties of the rod. The hardness of a pencil, which has 17 gradations - from 7H to 8B, depends on temperature.

After annealing, the rods are filled with fat under special pressure and temperature. This is necessary to give them the necessary writing properties: intensity of stroke, ease of gliding, quality of sharpening, ease of erasing with an eraser. Depending on the required value of the hardness of the rod, the following can be used: lard, confectionery fat, or even beeswax and carnauba wax.
Output products from the rod production area.

After this, the rods go to the assembly. Pencil boards are prepared on such machines. Grooves are cut into them for installing writing rods.

The cutting part of the machine makes grooves in the boards.

The boards automatically go into such a clip.

After this, on another machine, the rods are laid in pre-prepared planks.

After laying, the halves of the planks are glued together with PVA glue and left to dry under pressure. The essence of this operation is that the rod itself is not glued to the boards. Its diameter is larger than the diameter of the groove, and in order for the structure to close, a press is needed. The rod will be held in the wood not by glue, but by the tension of the wooden shell (prestress specially created in this way in the design of the pencil).

After drying, the workpiece is sawed with special cutters into individual pencils.

The pencils are gradually sawn through several processing cycles.

The output is ready-made, but not colored pencils.

Already at this stage, the shape of the pencil is established due to the type of profile of the cutting cutter.

Next, the surface of the pencil is primed on special lines. When painting pencils, enamels made at the factory are used. These enamels are made from components that are safe for humans.

Pencil painting line.

I think that many times in stores we have seen gift pencils painted with colorful streaks. It turns out that in order to color them this way, a whole specially developed technology is used. Here is a short snippet of the painting process.

When visiting the paint shop, I happened to see a batch of pencils for delivery to the Russian government of a new type. The tip of the pencil symbolizes our national flag. Pencils dry in special technological frames. The regularity of the rows looks very unusual and attractive.

After painting, the pencils are put into batches to be sent to the next sections of the factory.

It is a great pleasure to look at thousands of pencils colored using the factory’s proprietary technology. This is a very unusual sight.

Surface finishing technological line.

Cabinet for storing stamps. Stamps for the entire range of manufactured products are stored here.

If necessary, pencils are sharpened on a special machine before packaging. The photo shows the intermediate stage of sharpening.
I was amazed by the speed of the machine. Pencils fell into the tray in a continuous stream. I immediately remembered all my personal unsuccessful attempts to sharpen pencils. From these memories this machine began to inspire even more respect.

The factory also produces these interesting oval-shaped pencils, used in construction and repair.

Arrays of stacked pencils look very unusual and attractive. You won't see this anywhere else.

At the packaging area, pencils are sorted and packed by hand. There is a special atmosphere here. People work quietly and silently. Many employees have continuous work experience at the factory for more than 40 years.

The factory has its own equipped laboratory, in which products are tested throughout the entire production cycle and new production technologies are developed. The picture shows an Amsler device for determining the fracture resistance of writing rods.

Before leaving, I went into a room with demonstration stands for the factory's products. The factory logo evokes some kind of nostalgia. After all, these pencils are familiar to each of us since childhood.
The factory produces several product lines. Professional series of pencils for artists, decorators and designers.

Samples of pencils supplied to the government of the Russian Federation. For the design of the pencils, a design was chosen to match the color of the standard malachite desktop instruments of Russian government workers. But besides this, they have other differences from ordinary pencils: firstly, their shape is made with maximum consideration for the ergonomics of an adult’s hand, and in addition, they use a special “lumograph” type rod for making notes in the margins and in a diary; it does not smear with the hand , but can be easily erased with an eraser without damaging the paper.

Pencils for engineering drawing:

Original factory souvenir products.

The visit to the factory was very exciting and educational. I was very interested to see how much original technology and labor goes into making such a seemingly simple object as a pencil.

I want to express my deep gratitude to the chief production technologist Marina for her help and clarification of technological processes in production. At the end of the visit to the factory, its management presented the editorial office with their branded pencils, including those supplied to the government of the Russian Federation.

A short video about how pencils are made.

Drawing is a pleasant and useful activity for any age. And one of the most important artistic materials for any child is pencils. But few of us know how pencils are made, what kind of wood is used for these purposes. It is noteworthy that the creation of these stationery products is carried out differently in each factory. The editors of the site conducted their investigation and will tell the story of the origin of the pencil and the technology for its production.

History of the pencil began approximately 300 years ago, when a new mineral, graphite, began to be used instead of lead. But it is very soft, and therefore they began to add clay to the graphite mass. This made the graphite rod harder and stronger. The more clay, the harder the pencil. That's why there are different types of pencils: hard, medium and soft.

But graphite also gets very dirty, so it has “clothes”. She became wooden. It turns out that not every tree is suitable for making a pencil body. You need wood that is easy to plan and cut, but it should not become shaggy. Siberian cedar turned out to be ideal for this purpose.

More fat and glue are mixed into the graphite mass. This is so that the graphite glides across the paper more easily and leaves a rich mark. So, about two hundred years ago, the pencil became similar to the one we are used to seeing.

How pencils were made

At that time, pencils were made by hand. A mixture of graphite, clay, fat, soot and glue diluted with water was poured into a hole in a wooden stick and evaporated in a special way. One pencil took about five days to make, and it was very expensive. In Russia, pencil production was organized by Mikhail Lomonosov in the Arkhangelsk province.

The pencil was constantly improved. A round pencil rolls off the table, so they came up with the idea of making it hexagonal. Then, for convenience, an eraser was placed at the top of the pencil. Colored pencils appeared in which, instead of graphite, the leads used chalk with a special glue (kaolin) and a coloring agent.

People continued to look for material to replace wood. This is how pencils in plastic frames appeared. A mechanical pencil in a metal case was invented. Nowadays wax pencils are also produced.

From the beginning of creation to the finished product, a pencil goes through 83 technological operations; 107 types of raw materials are used in its production, and the production cycle is 11 days.

What wood are pencils made from nowadays?

In most cases, they are made from alder and linden, of which there are a huge number in Russia. Alder is not the most durable material, but it has a uniform structure, which simplifies the processing process and preserves its natural color. As for linden, it meets all operational requirements, and therefore is used in the production of both cheap and expensive pencils. Due to its good viscosity, the material holds the lead firmly. A unique material for creating pencils is cedar, which is widely used in factories in Russia. It is noteworthy that it is not healthy wood that is used, but specimens that no longer produce nuts.

Core: what is the basis

Pencil production is carried out using a special rod. Graphite lead consists of three components - graphite, soot and sludge, to which organic binders are often added. Moreover, graphite, including colored graphite, is a permanent component, since it is the lead that leaves a mark on the paper. The rods are created from a carefully prepared mass, which has a certain temperature and humidity. The kneaded dough is formed using a special press, then passed through equipment with holes, which makes the mass look like noodles. These noodles are formed into cylinders from which rods are extruded. All that remains is to heat them in special crucibles. Then the rods are fired, and after it fattening is performed: the formed pores are filled with fat, stearin or wax under pressure and at a certain temperature.

How are colored pencils made?

Here, the fundamental difference is, again, the rod, which is made from pigments, fillers, fatliquoring components and a binder. The rod production process is as follows:

The manufactured rods are placed in special grooves on the board and covered with a second board;

Both boards are glued together with PVA glue, but the rod should not stick;

The ends of the glued planks are aligned;

Preparation is performed, that is, adding fat to the existing mixture.

It is noteworthy that the production of pencils is carried out taking into account the consumer properties of the products. So, cheap pencils are made from wood that is not of the highest quality, and the shell is exactly the same - not of the highest quality. But pencils that are used for artistic purposes are made from high-quality wood that is double-size. Depending on what the pencil is made of, it will be sharpened. It is believed that neat shavings are obtained if the products are made from pine, linden or cedar wood. In addition, it is important that the lead is properly glued - such a pencil will not break even if dropped.

What should the shell be like?

The simplicity and beauty of the pencil depends on the shell. Since pencils are made from wood, it must meet the following requirements: softness, strength and lightness.

During operation, the shell must

Do not break or crumble, like the entire body;

Do not delaminate under the influence of natural factors;

Have a beautiful cut - smooth and shiny;

Be resistant to moisture.

What equipment is used?

Pencil production is carried out using a variety of equipment. For example, cleaning clay from which a graphite rod will subsequently be created requires special mills and crushers. Processing of the mixed dough is carried out on a screw press, where the core itself is formed from the dough using rollers with three different gaps. For the same purposes, a die with holes is used. Drying of wooden blanks is carried out in drying cabinets, where the products are rotated for 16 hours. When properly dried, the wood acquires a moisture level of a maximum of 0.5%. As for colored pencils, they are not subject to heat treatment due to the presence of fillers, dyes and fattening components. Pencils are trimmed lengthwise on a special machine.

How pencils are made

Drying plays an important role in the production process. . It is carried out in special wells using machines, and the boards are laid so that drying is as efficient as possible. In these wells, drying is carried out for approximately 72 hours, then the boards are sorted: all cracked or unsightly products are rejected. Selected blanks are refined with paraffin and calibrated, that is, special grooves are cut out on them where the rods will be located.

Now a milling-through line is used, on which the blocks are divided into pencils. Depending on what shape the knives are used at this stage, the pencils are either round, or faceted, or oval. An important role is played by fastening the stylus in a wooden case: this should be done firmly and reliably, which reduces the risk of the stylus elements falling out. The elastic glue used for binding makes the lead stronger.

Modern pencils and colored pencils come in a huge variety of designs and colors. Since pencils are made in a factory, close attention is paid to each stage of production.

Painting is one of the important stages, as it must meet a number of requirements. The extrusion method is used to finish the surface, and the end is finished by dipping. In the first case, the pencil passes through a priming machine, where at the end of the conveyor it is turned over to apply the next layer. This way, an even coating is obtained.

There are two large pencil factories in Russia. Pencil Factory named after. Krasina in Moscow― the first state-owned enterprise in Russia to produce pencils in wood casing. The factory was founded in 1926. For more than 72 years, it has been the largest manufacturer of office supplies.

Siberian pencil factory in Tomsk. In 1912, the tsarist government organized a factory in Tomsk that sawed cedar planks for the production of all pencils produced in Russia. In 2003, the factory significantly increased the range of products and introduced new brands of pencils known for their quality to the market. "Siberian cedar" and "Russian pencil"» with good consumer characteristics. Pencils of new brands have taken their rightful place among inexpensive domestically produced pencils made from Russian environmentally friendly materials.

In 2004, the pencil factory was sold to a Czech company KOH-I-NOOR. The factory received investments, and new opportunities arose for the distribution of products not only in the domestic but also in the global stationery market.