That's right Neil, at least one of the pen manufacturers, used to market a small desktop ultrasonic pen cleaner. They obviously also sold their own "special" cleaning fluid. We used water with a single drop of washing up liquid, you know the one that was safe for your hands. The pen cleaners were also used (by me) to clean clockwork DT timers for model aeroplanes. If anyone is going to go rattling off on a nostalgic trip, I would strongly urge them to
1/ Get Rotring pens
2/ Get the best ink they can afford, from memory Rotring ink is good. I think there are several different types of ink for different media. If you are going to draw on mylar (recommended) use the correct ink, it will say on the bottle. If you try and use the wrong ink, the Earth will spin of its axis into the Sun and we will all be fried.
3/ if you are not planning any more nostalgia to happen within a day or so, empty and clean the pens after use. When the ink in the pen is still liquid, it can be rinsed out under a running tap, but you will probably be surprised how far diluted ink can go.
4/ Get some drafting mylar, you can do layouts in (2H) pencil, ink over the pencil, then when the ink has dried erase the pencil marks with a plastic eraser. Few people can afford rolls of draughting mylar, but fortunately there are cut sheets available in A4, A3, A2 etc
5/ Practise your printing, NOTHING looks more amateur than rubbish printing on an inked drawing. As a minimum try and get it all the same height, use faint pencil guidelines
6/ Tracers use stencils for printing, draughtsmen print properly. Sorry, some of my favourite people were Tracers.
If nostalgia gets too much, use CAD!!
cheers
Bill
Edited By Bill Pudney on 21/05/2016 08:55:42