Design Method of Digitally Fabricated Spring Glass Pen
Kohei Ogawa*

Kengo Tanaka*

Tatsuya Minagawa

Yoichi Ochiai

University of Tsukuba
ruscello1023.kt@gmail.
com

University of Tsukuba
kengodivgrad@gmail.com

University of Tsukuba
cha84rakanal@gmail.com

University of Tsukuba
Pixie Dust Technologies,
Inc.
wizard@slis.tsukuba.ac.jp

Figure 1: (a) Structure of the pen tip where the capillary phenomenon occurs. (b) This is modeled using 3DCAD software.
(c) This figure shows that it is actually written with a pen printed with a 3D printer.

CCS CONCEPTS• Human-centered computing → Haptic devices;

KEYWORDS
interaction, digital fabrication, pen, structure, haptic
ACM Reference format:
Kohei Ogawa*, Kengo Tanaka*, Tatsuya Minagawa, and Yoichi Ochiai. 2018.
Design Method of Digitally Fabricated Spring Glass Pen. In Proceedings of
SIGGRAPH ’18 Posters, Vancouver, BC, Canada, August 12-16, 2018, 2 pages.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3230744.3230809

1INTRODUCTION

In this study, We propose a method to develop a spring glass dippen by using a 3D printer and reproduce different types of writingfeeling. There have been several studies on different types of pens
to change the feel of writing. For example, EV-Pen [Wang et al.
2016] and haptics pens [Lee et al. 2004] changes the feel of pen writing with using vibration. However, their proposed method does not
reproduce tactile sensation of softness by using vibrations.
A pen is a part of our everyday life. Considering that there areso many types of pens available, there is a need to produce a pen
suitable for individuals. A glass dip pen requires technology for its* Two joint first authorship.
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal orclassroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributedfor profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citationon the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored.
For all other uses, contact the owner/author(s).
SIGGRAPH ’18 Posters, August 12-16, 2018, Vancouver, BC, Canada© 2018 Copyright held by the owner/author(s).
ACM ISBN 978-1-4503-5817-0/18/08.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3230744.3230809Figure 2: Development of three types of pens using 3D printers. (a) Glass dip pen. (b) Our proposed pen. (c) Spring pen.

development. Glass dip pens, which were first developed in Japan,
use the capillary phenomenon and require glass artisan skills fortheir development. Therefore, we developed our spring glass dip
pen by imitating a glass dip pen using a 3D printer (Fig. 2(a)). Moreover, we reproduced a new feel of writing and softness by applying
the structure of a spring pen in our design method [Tanaka et al.
2017], which could not be reproduced using a general glass dip pen(Fig. 2(b)).
Recently, stylus pens, which are used as digital terminals, havebecome popular. Generally, a commercially available stylus pen
can only produce the feel of a hard touch when it touches the tablet
screen. Therefore, we developed a soft touch pen, similar to a brush,with a spring pen’s structure using a 3D printer (Fig. 2(c)). The pen
has many writing tastes, and there are various preferences depending on people.

SIGGRAPH ’18 Posters, August 12-16, 2018, Vancouver, BC, CanadaKohei, Kengo, Tatsuya, and Yoichi

Therefore, in this study, we propose a method of freely adjusting
the softness of a pen and developing a user-desired pen.

2IMPLEMENTATION

Our pen is developed using a 3D printer. The pen’s 3D data is designed using the Fusion 360 software (Fig. 1(b)). The skills of craftsmen are necessary to develop a glass dip pen. However, it can beeasily developed by digital fabrication. The capillary phenomenon
is produced by creating fine gaps at the pen tip. Further, ink can betransmitted from the gap of a fine pen tip, which holds a certain
amount of ink, for writing on paper (Fig. 1(a)). Spring-Pen [Tanakaet al. 2017] based on the structure of the spring, between the pen
tip and the handle part of the glass dip pen, cannot be reproducedwith ordinary glass. Thus, we developed a soft glass dip pen toproduce a new writing feel.

Figure 5: Our system workflow.
3D printer with superior lamination accuracy than a thermoforming 3D printer, we realized a pen size as small as that of a commercially available stylus pen with a thinner pen diameter (Fig. 3).
Further, by applying conductive powder UBS-0010LAg, we madeit applicable to tablets.
We can adjust the softness of our pen by changing its parameters, such as coil cross section and number of turns of the spring(Fig. 4( I )). In addition, we can adjust the ink holding capacity bychanging the width of the groove of the pen tip (Fig. 4(II)). In thisway, our pen can be developed by combining simple structures.
Therefore, anyone can easily produce a pen that suits their preferences by using the digital fabrication method (Fig. 5).

REFERENCES

Figure 3: Stylus pen developed by us.

Figure 4: Spring Glass Pen - our proposed structure.
In addition, the stylus pen shown in Fig. 1(a) was created basedon the structure of Spring-Pen as well. By using a stereolithographic

Johnny C. Lee, Paul H. Dietz, Darren Leigh, William S. Yerazunis, and Scott E. Hudson.
2004. Haptic Pen: A Tactile Feedback Stylus for Touch Screens. In Proceedings ofthe 17th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST’04). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 291–294. https://doi.org/10.1145/1029632.1029682
Kengo Tanaka, Taisuke Ohshima, and Yoichi Ochiai. 2017. Spring-pen: Reproductionof Any Softness with the 3D Printed Spring. In SIGGRAPH Asia 2017 Posters (SA’17). ACM, New York, NY, USA, Article 37, 2 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3145690.
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Qinglong Wang, Xiangshi Ren, and Xiaoying Sun. 2016. EV-pen: An Electrovibration Haptic Feedback Pen for Touchscreens. In SIGGRAPH ASIA 2016 Emerging Technologies (SA ’16). ACM, New York, NY, USA, Article 8, 2 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/2988240.2988241