Back in 1912, by decree of the tsarist government, a factory was created in Tomsk, where they sawed a cedar board for pencils produced throughout the country.
Much time has passed since then. There have been ups and downs in this story. In 1999 the factory was declared bankrupt, and in 2004 the well-known Czech company KOH-I-NOOR Hardtmuth a.s. became part of its owners. Today "Siberian Pencil Factory" is the only one on the territory of the former Soviet Union a manufacturer of pencils and pencil boards from Siberian cedar, the wood of which is used for the production of pencils of the highest price category. In the fall of 2012, the products of the Siberian Pencil Factory, having passed the examination of the commission, became a laureate of the Best Goods and Services of the Tomsk Region competition, and then a diploma winner of the All-Russian competition 100 Best Goods of Russia.
How are pencils that have received such consumer acceptance produced?
TRAINING
The production of a pencil begins at the timber exchange, where the harvested cedar is stored. Now there are more than three thousand cubes of wood here. Last year, the authorities of the Tomsk region greatly helped the factory in providing material. This year they plan to produce about 85 million pencils.
The wood we buy does not come to us as a result of barbaric felling, - says Anatoly Lunin, director of the factory. - In the overwhelming majority - this is sanitary felling of the stagnant cedar, which no longer gives a nut. Cedar grows up to 500 years, but cones appear on it somewhere up to 250, after which it begins to die and be affected by various insects. If you cut it down during this period, a new cedar will grow faster.
Each log from the timber exchange first undergoes mandatory training. Before sawing it, the tree is placed and kept in a special pool of warm water. This is done so that pieces of earth or clay with stones do not accidentally damage the saws. In the summer it is kept here for a short time, up to twenty minutes, but in the winter, the log is kept in the pool until it thaws. This takes up to three hours.
In the upper right part of the photo, a tree trunk is just visible, prepared for immersion in the pool. After 369 hours or 16.5 days, after going through 26 different technological operations, you will get ready-made pencils from it.
At the sawmill, such a beam is made from a log.
Production wooden pencil extremely demanding on the quality of the material. Only pure straight wood is used, and if for joinery the presence of such defects as, for example, knots is not catastrophic, then a pencil from such a tree can no longer be made, therefore it is very difficult to say in advance how many pencils will be obtained from one bar.
To reduce the amount of waste, the company is looking for various ways to increase the depth of wood processing. One of these ways is to expand the range of products. So, from a plank, which is not suitable for the production of a pencil, by the summer they plan to launch the production of wooden puzzle-coloring for children and moth repellent. Some of them go to the production of short pencils, like for IKEA stores, and some go to the production of such wooden skewers.
The timber obtained from the log is sawn into short pieces, each of which is then dissolved into ten planks. In order for all the boards to be the same, they need to be calibrated. To do this, they are driven through a special machine. At the exit from it, the planks have the same size and strictly perpendicular edges.
Then the calibrated plates are placed in an autoclave.
In appearance, it resembles a barrel, to which many pipes of different diameters are connected. With the help of these pipes, a vacuum can be created in the chamber, pressure can be generated and all kinds of solutions can be supplied inside. As a result of these processes, the resin contained in it is removed from the board, and the wood is impregnated (impregnated) with paraffin.
Today this is not the easiest, but one of the most effective ways to improve the important properties of the material and protect wood from the harmful effects of the environment.
This is how "refined" pencil boards look after autoclaving.
It remains to dry them properly and send them to the pencil production. On this, the process of making the board can be considered complete.
PRODUCTION
The finished board goes to the white pencil workshop, where, for a start, grooves are cut in it on the machine, where the rods will then be laid. The word "white" in this case means that the pencil has not yet been painted.
The plank is served at the far end on the right side of the photo. On the way, its surface is sanded for gluing, and recesses are cut out with a special cutter. At the near edge of the machine, the boards are automatically stacked.
This is what a sanded plank with cut grooves looks like.
Now its thickness is 5 millimeters, which is half the thickness of the future pencil. At the next stage, the boards are glued together in pairs to form one pencil block. This is what it looks like.
The machine smoothly feeds the first board and places the rods in its grooves.
Following this, a second plank, already greased with water-soluble glue, "leaves" from another device, and gently lays down on the first.
The resulting pencil blocks are clamped in a pneumatic press and tightened with clamps.
If the board is made at the factory independently, then the core is mainly purchased in China. There they began to produce it using dry technology, which does not require firing in a furnace at a high temperature. As a result, the prime cost of the rod turned out to be so low that the lion's share of pencil manufacturers switched to such a rod.
To prevent the pencil lead from breaking inside the body, the factory uses the technology of additional gluing of the rod with a special glue system.
After this operation, the glued blocks are kept in a special drying chamber for several hours.
It's pretty hot in the cell. Hot air is blown in by a fan, maintaining the temperature in the region of 35-40 degrees. The wood needs to dry well so that in the future the pencil becomes smooth in one pass and gets the desired geometry. A pencil with a "simple" lead dries here for at least two hours, and a colored one for at least four. Due to the fact that the color contains more fatty substances, it takes longer for it to dry.
After this time, the blocks are disassembled, placed in carts with all further parameters indicated and sent to the next machine, which will divide them into separate pencils.
In its shape, the machine is similar to the one that made grooves in the planks, but it also has its own characteristics. The workpieces are placed in a hopper. They pass through transport hubs, trimmed, sawed, and at the exit you get a familiar wooden pencil, just not yet painted.
The double cutter, which separates the blocks, also sets the shape of the future pencil, and this is all done in one pass.
It depends on the type of profile of the cutting cutter whether the pencil will be hexagonal or round.
More recently, the factory has mastered the production of a triangular pencil. It turned out that the demand for this form is growing. Buyers are attracted by the ergonomics and naturalness of the finger placement on the edges, which certainly makes it easier for the child to learn to write.
Next to the machine is the sorter's work table.
Her task is to sort through the made pencils, select the "good" ones and separate the defective ones. Defects include chips of the rod at the end, roughness, wood burns, etc. There is a memo over the table with marriage rules.
Each tray on the table holds 1,440 pencils.
The sorted pencils are taken on a special lift to the next floor, where they will be painted.
PAINTING AND PACKAGING
The paint is purchased dry and diluted to the desired thickness in the paint laboratory.
Painting is fast enough. The device continuously pushes the colored pencils onto the conveyor.
The length and speed of the conveyor belt are designed so that the pencil dries as it travels on it.
Upon reaching the opposite end of the conveyor, the pencils fall into one of three receptacles.
From there, they are sent back to the next coating.
On average, each pencil is covered with three coats of paint and two coats of varnish. It all depends on the wishes of the customer. You can also paint a pencil in almost any color. The factory produces sets of six, twelve, eighteen and twenty-four colors. Some pencils are coated with varnish only.
After painting, the pencils are sent to the finishing workshop. At this point, they acquire the final form in which they reach the consumer. A stamp is applied to the pencils, an eraser is put on and sharpened.
This machine applies the stamp.
There are quite a few ways to apply it, but at the enterprise they do it using foil different colors... This method is called incubation. The working part of the machine heats up, and the stamp is transferred through the foil to the pencil. So he will not climb and get his hands dirty.
The stamp itself can be anything, it is specially ordered from the engraver. Depending on the complexity, it takes about five days to make.
On some of the pencils, if necessary, put on an eraser.
The last operation is sharpening.
Pencils are sharpened on a sandpaper put on a drum and moving at high speed.
This happens very quickly, literally in a matter of seconds.
In addition to sharpening, the machine can be configured to perform rolling - processing the back end of the pencil at a slight angle.
The pencils are now ready to be packed, and in order to do this, they are sent to the next room.
There they are assembled into a set, put in a box and sent to the consumer.
Packaging for the required number of pencils is printed in Novosibirsk. It comes flat and is first given volume.
Then, through the picking machines, the required number of pencils is laid out in a given color scheme.
This machine allows you to assemble a set of twelve colors.
At the end, pencils are laid out in boxes.
Here at the stand are samples of the products manufactured by the factory.
During the tour, we asked about the equipment upgrade. “There are twelve factories in the world now,” Anatoly Lunin said. - And all similar equipment. They have been making pencils in Tomsk since the 30s. Since then, the basic principle and production technology has not changed. All processes are well debugged. The modernization of equipment is expressed in the replacement of some units, or the transition to more economical motors, the use of new cutters. Some new materials come, we change something in acceptance and evaluation, but the technology itself remains unchanged. "
When asked if the factory, following the example of Chinese enterprises, plans to switch to the production of a pencil from cheaper wood or plastic, Anatoly Lunin admitted: “I was thinking of trying to make an economical pencil from low-grade aspen, but this is a different technology, and even if the Chinese are doing this ... I am more interested in the topic of increasing the useful yield by improving the quality of wood processing. And from an environmental point of view, to produce something better from renewable raw materials. A plastic pencil will never rot, and a wooden one will completely decompose in a few years. "
It remains only to wish that in the world of global computerization, there is a place for a simple wooden pencil.
Text, photo: Evgeny Mytsik
A pencil in a person's life is a truly irreplaceable thing. Acquaintance with him occurs at a very early age.
Accompanies a person's pencil in school and university years. He is always in the office and at home. In addition, this writing aid is also necessary when doing crossword puzzles.
Some of the waste from the plywood industry is pencils. These are the remains of the block, which are obtained after peeling. Despite the same name, such pencils have nothing to do with office supplies.
Start-up capital
To organize an average production capacity, you will need to purchase a set necessary equipment... The cost of such starts at 2 million rubles. Moreover, this is the price of a used line. In addition, you will need to pay for the rental of the premises where the cars will be located.
A small workshop should be located on an area of \u200b\u200bat least fifty square meters. You will need money to purchase the necessary raw materials, pay wages to employees, and reimburse utility costs. It is difficult to name a specific payback period for such a project.
This period is directly dependent on the number of products manufactured, as well as on the initial investment. In addition, in the initial period, the profit received is necessarily invested in increasing sales. However, many experts say that the minimum payback period for small enterprises is two to three years.
Technology
For the production of pencils, the wooden blank must be carefully sanded. After that, the body of the semi-finished product is primed four times. This stage technological process allows you to ensure the strength of the wood before the next painting.
It is not recommended to save money at any stage of the technological process. Although this will affect the reduction in the cost of production, it will lead to a deterioration in its quality. An important factor for a successful business is the environmental friendliness of the produced pencils, which depends on the composition of the varnish applied to the body of the product.
After all, children, and sometimes adults, love to gnaw on writing supplies. That is why the varnish used must be water-based and not include chemical solvents that are harmful to health.
Necessary materials
In order to make simple pencils, you need a lead made of clay and graphite, as well as wood. For buyers who do not pay attention to quality, cheap alder products are produced. Such wood, in addition to its nondescript appearance, does not hold the lead inside tightly enough.
More expensive products are made from pine, as well as cedar and jelutong, a tropical tree. Their production characteristics are quite high. However, the best wood for pencils is California cedar. Stationery made from this material is considered prestigious and has a high cost.
Technical equipment of production
Equipment for the production of pencils is diverse. For the process during which the clay is refined, special mills are required. Crushers will also be needed. The clay diluted in water is poured with liquid glass.
At the same time, it is freed from unnecessary impurities, which include sand. After that, according to the technology, a starch binder and graphite are added to the clay. The resulting core mass must have a certain humidity and temperature. If this condition is not met, the raw materials are damaged.
The equipment for the production of pencils includes a screw press. A thoroughly mixed “dough” made of clay and graphite is sent to it. In a screw press, the incoming mass is molded. This is done using rollers with three different gaps.
After passing this stage, the mass is crushed and becomes homogeneous, without air bubbles with excessive moisture. The thickness of the resulting layer gradually decreases from 1 to 0.25 mm. This happens after re-processing the mass.
The equipment for the production of pencils includes a die with holes. A mass of graphite and clay is passed through it, taking the form of "noodles". The resulting blanks pass through special cylinders, from which a rod of the required diameter and length is squeezed out by a press.
Equipment for the production of pencils must include drying ovens with a continuous rotation process for 15-16 hours. In these devices, the rods must dry thoroughly, reaching a moisture content of 0.5%. At the next stage, the material is calcined. It is carried out in special crucibles.
The technology for the production of rods for colored pencils has some differences. In addition to clay, their formulation includes fillers, dyes, fatliquoring and binding components. Such rods are not heat treated. This is important for maintaining color pigments.
In parallel with the rods, product bodies are made. The machine is used for the production of pencils. With its help, future products are trimmed to the required length, taking into account further mechanical processing and shrinkage. On a gang saw, wood blanks are sawn into planks. After that, they are impregnated with paraffin in special autoclaves.
This improves the mechanical properties of the finished pencil. With the help of a special machine, the prepared planks, the thickness of which is equal to half the thickness of the future product, are put into "wells" where the drying process takes place. On the blanks, grooves are made from the slate. After that, the boards are covered with a layer of PVA glue.
The next stage of the technological process is the assembly of the product. The lead is inserted into the groove of one workpiece and covered with another. The boards are squeezed in a special device called a clamp. After that, the resulting blocks pass through a milling-throughput line, where, with the help of knives, they are divided into pencils. At the next stage of the technological process, the blanks are leveled, sanded, primed and varnished and painted.
Souvenir products
Nowadays, pencils with a logo are very popular. The production of such items is carried out for offices and for promotions.
A branded pencil is a great souvenir or corporate gift. In this case, the image on the original product can be applied by one of two methods - hot stamping or pad printing.
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By the way, during the production of a pencil, it goes through 83 technological operations, 107 types of raw materials and materials are used in its manufacture, and the production cycle is 11 days. If you still look at all this from the side of a whole product line, then a complex, well-established production with careful planning and control is drawn.
Go...
In order to see with our own eyes the process of making pencils, we go to the Moscow Krasin Factory. This is the oldest pencil production in Russia. The factory was founded in 1926 with government support.
The main task of the government was to eliminate illiteracy in the country, and for this it was necessary to make office supplies available. 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 the factory produces everything - from lead to the final product - pencils. Let's take a closer look at the pencil production process.
For the production of pencils, specially processed and stacked linden boards are delivered to the factory. But before they can be used, you need to make the writing rods.
2. Let's go to the workshop for making pencil rods. Writing rods are made from a mixture of clay and graphite. The preparation of the required mixture begins with such technological units, where clay is ground. The crushed clay is transported along a conveyor to the next production site.
3. In the next section, special mills are installed, where the clay is ground more finely and mixed with water.
4. Installations for preparing a mixture of clay with graphite. Here the mixture for future rods gets rid of impurities and prepares for further processing.
5. It is worth noting that only natural substances are used in the production of slates, which makes the production environmentally friendly. Installation for pressing the mixture. From the obtained semi-finished products, rods are obtained. There is practically no waste from production, as they reuse it.
6. At this production site, the rods themselves are already received, but in order for them to fall into the pencil, a number of technological operations will be carried out over them.
7. The very technology of producing rods is like extrusion. A carefully prepared and mixed mass is squeezed out through a special stamp with holes.
8. After that, the blanks for writing rods are placed in a special container.
9. And dry in a cupboard for 16 hours.
10. The rods are then carefully sorted by hand.
11. This is how the bar sorting workstation looks like. It is very complicated and painstaking work... Cats sleep behind a table lamp.
12. 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 the pencil depends on the temperature, which has 17 gradations - from 7H to 8V.
13. 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 a line, ease of sliding, quality of sharpening, ease of erasing with an eraser. Depending on the required hardness of the rod, you can use: salomas, confectionery fat or even beeswax and carnauba wax. Output from the bar production area.
14. After that, the rods go to the assembly. On these machines, pencils are prepared. Grooves are cut into them for the installation of writing rods.
15. The cutting part of the machine grinds grooves in the planks.
16. Planks automatically go into such a clip.
17. After that, on another machine, the rods are placed in pre-prepared planks.
18. After laying, the halves of the boards are glued together with PVA glue, and they are left to dry under a press. The essence of this operation is that the rod itself does not stick to the planks. Its diameter is larger than the diameter of the groove, and in order for the structure to be closed, a press is needed. The rod, on the other hand, will be held in the wood not due to glue, but due to the tension of the wooden shell (specially created in this way in the construction of the pencil).
19. After drying, the workpiece is sawn with special cutters into separate pencils.
20. Pencils are gradually sawn over several processing cycles.
21. The output is ready-made, but not colored pencils.
22. Already at this stage, the shape of the pencil is laid due to the type of profile of the cutting cutter.
23. Next, on special lines, the surface of the pencil is primed. When painting pencils, enamels made at the factory itself are used. These enamels are made from components safe for humans.
24. Line for painting pencils.
25. I think that in stores we have seen many times gift pencils painted with colorful streaks. It turns out that in order to color them like this, a whole specially developed technology is used. Here is a small snippet of the painting process.
26. While visiting the paint shop, I happened to see a batch of pencils for delivery to the government of the Russian Federation of a new sample. The tip of the pencil symbolizes our national flag. The pencils dry in special technological frames. The regularity of the rows looks very unusual and attractive.
27. After painting, the pencils are stacked in batches for shipment to the next areas of the factory.
28. It is a great pleasure to look at thousands of pencils colored according to the proprietary technology of the plant. This is a very unusual sight.
30. Technological line for surface finishing.
32. Locker for storing stamps. It stores stamps for the entire range of products.
33. If necessary, pencils are sharpened on a special machine before packing. The photo shows an intermediate stage of sharpening. I was amazed at the speed of the machine. The pencils fell into the tray in a continuous stream. All personal unsuccessful attempts to sharpen pencils immediately came to mind. From these memories, this machine began to inspire even more respect.
34. The factory also produces such interesting oval-shaped pencils used in construction and repair.
35. Arrays of stacked pencils look very unusual and attractive. You won't see anything like this anywhere else.
How pencils are created in each specific factory can only be learned from the manufacturers themselves. However, everyone has general pointsthat usually do not change for decades.
For a classic wood pencil, an important component is the wood from which it is made. Not every tree can be cut down and made into a pack of pencils. It is not easy to find out what kind of wood a particular pencil is made of: the seller in the store does not know about this, and there is no identification mark on the pencil itself, so you need to pay attention to the cost of the pencil and the authority of the manufacturer.
Wood used to make pencils:
1. Alder
Figure:
Alder is common in the temperate zone of the Northern Hemisphere. Wood is not durable, but it has a fairly uniform structure. This facilitates handling and gives it a beautiful reddish color. Smoother and thicker trunks are therefore used for crafts, for joinery and turning products.
In the production of pencils it is used inactively due to the fact that it does not hold the lead well. Mostly used for making souvenirs, including souvenir pencils.
2. Linden
Figure:
Linden is perhaps the most common tree, which fully satisfies all the requirements for the raw material of inexpensive pencils.
Linden grows almost everywhere, it is a well-known material to everyone, viscous enough to hold the lead tightly.
Linden wood, depending on the type of processing, is divided into several types: linden (from English - "linden"; the halves of a pencil made of such wood may differ slightly in color), white linden (more carefully selected material, white wood, pencil color smooth), rose wood (linden, tinted pink to give more nobility) and chemical wood (also tinted linden pink, but of higher quality, the wood looks uniform). Price also varies depending on the quality of wood processing.
A fairly fast growing deciduous tree, most widespread in European Russia. The lifespan of linden trees is much shorter than that of oak, and only rare individuals live up to 150 years.
3. Cedar
Figure:
Cedar wood is lightweight, strong and easy to cut in all directions, making it a valuable raw material for pencil production.
4. Jelutong
Figure:
Dzhelutong (Jelutong) belongs to the kutrovy family (lat.Apocynaceae). It is a tree species in Malaysia. Also found in Borneo, Sumatra and Thailand.
An adult jelutong usually grows up to 60 meters in height, and the diameter of the tree trunk reaches 2 meters. In rare cases, up to 80 meters, with a diameter of up to 3 meters.
Jelutong wood is usually white or straw-colored, straight grained. Dries easily with no splitting, easy handling and finishing.
Especially jelutong is suitable for creating art products. Great for pencil modeling and production.