Liquaphite mechanical pencil

Strange, indeed – a ballpoint pen whose “ink” is liquid graphite! It belongs to the same subspecies of writing instruments as the Papermate Erasermate erasable ink pen. And like the Erasermate, the Pentech Liquaphite tends to skip if one writes in a small script, and it occasionally leaves a small blob of graphite on a letter’s loop. But, my guinea pig friends tried it and they found it satisfies and wanted more! The teachers among them really like it for their classrooms. They cite no broken leads, no noisy pencil sharpeners, and no shavings mess. The eraser works well, and the pressurized cartridge holds a lot of ink. . . oops! . . . lead. The company also produces a long Liquaphite cartridge glued into a standard school bus yellow wooden pencil barrel -- the UltraSharp -- which we are evaluating.  |  Don Bell, Proprietor, PencilThings

Update: Users report that the Liquaphite quickly gets smoother with use, largely overcoming the tendency to skip and blob. We are stocking refills for the Liquaphite, and now have the Pentech UltraSharp yellow wooden pencil barrel model in stock.

Comments

[slywy]

From the pencilthings store—I really wish manufacturers could figure out how not to be wasteful while still being profitable!

The refill kit includes one liquid graphite cartridge and one eraser.

It is better, ecomomically, to order another package of the pencils -- in which you receive, effectively, three cartridges and four erasers.

[Wes]

Can marks from these pencils be read by scantron machines (the ones where students fill in bubbles and the repsonses are read by a machine)?