Mark One is a custom machined, all-metal, retractable pen with a ceramic based exterior coating for long lasting durability.
Latest Updates from Our Project:
Shipping Progress
over 5 years ago
– Fri, Dec 14, 2018 at 12:13:17 AM
Hey Folks!
We wanted to come up for air briefly to give an update on shipping progress for Mark One. We’ve been staying up until 2am every night assembling and packing pens for shipment, and making shipments nearly every day, but things are progressing a little slower than we would like. But we are making progress!
To date, we have shipped pens to 1100 backers, over 1/3. So far we have only shipped black pens (the reason why below) to North American backers, but we are building up inventory to make a shipment to our UK warehouse early next week, hopefully. Even though this pace is going slower than we’d like, it feels good to be making steady progress every day, and folks who have received their pens so far seem really happy with them!
Our Cerakote supplier made the majority of the black bodies first before switching to white, which is why this first chunk of shipments have all been black. Upon switching to white, he encountered quite a few problems. It turns out doing white Cerakote at production quantities is very difficult. White, in general, is hard (remember the delayed white iPhone 4? And that was Apple!). However, we have finally arrived at a solution that is producing consistent results. They look really sharp. But, it is a more time consuming (and expensive) process, so the yields are going to be smaller each day, and the upcoming holiday break will slow things down as well. So, it is very likely that the vast majority of orders of white pens won’t ship until January.
We are really sorry and bummed about the delay, but these pens in general just needed a bit more loving attention and QC than we were expecting. This whole shipping process has been pretty nuts, staying up late every night, etc., but finally getting pens into your hands has been worth it. Things will slow a little over the holidays, as vendors will close and we’ll be spending time with family (and Tom’s family is expecting a new baby on Christmas Day), but we hope to ship as many out as we can next week, and then likely make the remainder of the shipments in early January. We can’t thank you enough for your continued patience. As we said in the last update, we don’t really have a way to knowing when exactly your pen will ship, so it doesn’t help much to ask, but we are working as fast as we can. You will receive an email confirmation when your order ships.
When you do receive your pen, if it has any issues, please let us know. The best way is to send us an email to [email protected] and we’ll make it right.
We hope everyone has a wonderful holiday, and we’ll talk again soon!
Tom & Dan
Shipping Soon!
over 5 years ago
– Wed, Nov 21, 2018 at 01:07:20 AM
Greetings Folks!
It’s update time! But first things first, we have just “locked” addresses in Backerkit. You should have received an email about this, it means you have 48 hours to modify your address if it needs to be changed, otherwise, no action is needed. So be on the lookout for that email to please confirm that your shipping address is correct.
What this means is we are very close to shipping Mark One! Our goal is to begin shipping pens next week. It will be a rolling process, we will ship them in batches every couple days, and it will likely take us a couple weeks to get everything shipped out. So, in theory everyone should receive their pens well before Christmas. International folks will take a little longer as they need to travel overseas to our UK warehouse first, but we still think they should arrive before Christmas.
We kindly ask that folks refrain from “when is my pen going to ship?” questions. We know you all are excited and our goal is to ship the pens as quickly as possible, and we don’t really have a clean way to look up individual orders and determine their ship date. Just trust that they will all ship out soon. :)
On that note, we have already begun assembly of some of the components. We have received the majority of the mechanism parts, including the knocks, and are assembling them by hand. In the first time lapse video below, Dan is assembling the inner mechanism piece with the outer piece, and then putting the knock on by hand.
The inner mech piece needs to be orientated in a specific direction for the mechanism to work, so it’s important that careful attention is paid. We also QA the parts as we assemble. As you can see, it is repetitive and labor intensive, but a good time to catch up on podcasts.
The pen bodies have been a whole other ordeal. Our Cerakote supplier in Austin, Black Sheep, decided at the last minute they wanted to charge us three times as much for the parts as they originally quoted. Not cool. After failing to negotiate a fair price with them, we needed to change suppliers, but the company that makes Cerakote helped us find a great supplier in Dallas. We drove up there a couple weeks ago to drop off parts and talk through the process. We hit some snags early on, as the Cerakote process can be tricky to nail down and is in some ways more art than science. But we have finally settled on a methodology that is working great, so hopefully it should be smooth sailing from here.
That’s it for now, we’re going to be heads down assembling pens while we listen to podcasts. And speaking of podcasts, be on the lookout for a new episode later this week, talking about these updates in more detail.
We hope everyone who celebrates has a great and relaxing Thanksgiving, and for everyone else, a great week in general!
Until next time, Tom & Dan
An update about the knocks
over 5 years ago
– Fri, Oct 19, 2018 at 02:06:25 AM
Hey Folks,
As you may have inferred from our various project updates, getting the knocks (the part of the pen you click) just right has been a little bit tricky. Our original plan was to make the knocks out of aluminum and plate them with nickel and copper. We soon realized that while nickel plating aluminum is very tough and robust, copper plated metals can corrode over time, turning the shiny copper color brown (like an old penny). At this point we started looking at PVD (physical vapor deposition), a process used to color and strengthen metals (Apple uses a process like this for their gold colored Apple Watch, for example). We were told that titanium is a better metal for the PVD process than aluminum, which is why we switched to titanium knocks in a past update.
Anyhow, we were finally able to evaluate all the production parts together, for the first time, and we discovered the titanium knocks make an unsatisfying high pitched “zipping” sound every time you click the pen. It’s fairly subtle, but noticeable, especially if it’s pointed out to you (like we are doing now, hah). After some testing, we realized this is a result of the surface finish on the titanium, and there is no way to polish it any further. We tested the same pen with a nickel plated aluminum knock, and it feels *great*. Super smooth and clean, exactly as we want.
All of this to say we have made the somewhat difficult decision to have all the knocks remade in aluminum. The silver knocks will be nickel-plated, while the copper knocks will be nickel-plated as well, with an additional PVD step to give them their copper color (turns out PVD on electroless nickel plating works just fine).
Thankfully, our manufacturer said it will only take 10 days to make all the knocks, so it will only delay things by a couple weeks, worst case, but we are hopeful we can overlap some other production and assembly duties to minimize the delay.
This seems like a tough decision to make as we are having to eat the cost of the already made titanium knocks (around $5000), but in the end it actually wasn’t a hard decision because our goal from the beginning was to make the best pen we can, and switching back to aluminum knocks moves us towards that goal.
One minor annoyance: the printed “belly-band” for the packaging has already been printed, and a small “specifications” section on the underside lists the knock as being made from titanium, which is no longer true. We could reprint the packaging, but that is incredibly wasteful, so we will have to tolerate the mistake, as hard as that may be for a couple of detail-obsessed individuals.
And speaking of the packaging, here it is! This is how you’ll receive it:
Final Mark One packaging, in black and white.
Anyhow, thanks for reading this long winded explanation, but we are really excited for how the all-aluminum pen feels. We think you all will love it.
In terms of timeline, as always it’s hard to predict, but we think beginning to ship orders in about a month or so seems feasible (towards the end of November). Also, if you haven’t filled out the Backerkit survey yet, please do so!
Until next time, Tom & Dan
Big Update and Address Surveys!
over 5 years ago
– Thu, Oct 04, 2018 at 11:35:14 PM
Hey Folks!
It’s been a while since our last update, and we have much to report. But, first things first, it is time to fill out the address survey! This is how we collect your information about your order; namely, the color combination of your Mark One, any additional items you want to add on, and where everything should be shipped.
We are using a service called Backerkit to collect all of this information. You should have already received an email from them, the subject of which says: “Response Needed — Get your reward for Mark One: A Minimal, Durable, Retractable Pen.” Check your spam folder if you don’t see it, and if it's not there you can go to markone.backerkit.com to request it be resent (make sure you enter the same email address you used on Kickstarter). And if you have any problems with the survey, simply reply directly to that email from your inbox. Please fill out the survey as soon as you can to guarantee your order is included in the first batch of shipments!
When you fill out the survey, you will have the opportunity to add-on other products. This is your chance to add additional Mark Ones at the Kickstarter pricing (the holidays are fast approaching, makes a great gift!), as well as things like extra ink refills or our other products, like the Panobook desk notebook.
Ok, now on to the production update!
Production of the metal parts in China is nearly finished. We have received raw, un-plated parts from the production run to verify, and they are all to spec and look great. A set of production parts are currently being plated with PTFE-Nickel plating (Teflon + Nickel). They will send those and we’ll evaluate the final fit and finish, and test the friction of the mechanism. If everything is good to go, they will plate the entire production run and ship those to us for assembly. So, if all goes to plan we should have all the metal parts here in Texas within the next couple weeks.
For the PVD coating of the knocks (copper and nickel), we opted to do that in North America. We are evaluating samples from a couple suppliers (in Canada and the US) and will be selecting one very soon.
For the cerakote coating on the pen bodies, we have been working closely with Black Sheep, doing different runs with samples, and we have arrived at the final recipe of time, temperature, and color for the Cerakote application process. So as soon as the parts arrive from China we’ll be able to start the coating process here in Austin.
One aspect of the pen we haven’t mentioned in the past is the spring. The overall length and strength of the spring affects the feel of the click mechanism. We have zeroed in on the exact spring tension we want for the pens, but are waiting until we have final plated parts to specify the spring dimensions.
Regarding the cork packaging, we have received the final parts, and they turned out great! We think you’ll dig it. Also, we have submitted the final artwork for the “belly band” (the synthetic, tear proof paper that wraps around the two cork pieces to hold them together). Those are being printed by Odee in Dallas, TX, the same kind folks that print our Panobook notebooks.
The cork packaging doubling as a desk tray.
Lastly, we have received the custom branded Schmidt refills. They look cool! We now have thousands of these things, ready to be sent out to you all.
Extra refills as available as an add-on. And they're custom branded!
Whew, well that just about covers it! Remember to fill out the survey ASAP, and we’ll have more updates in the coming weeks. Getting closer!
Until next time, Tom & Dan
Quick, informal survey for pen color
over 5 years ago
– Tue, Aug 14, 2018 at 04:54:32 PM
Hey Folks!
We were hoping you would have a minute to fill out this quick (only 3 questions) survey. The purpose of this survey is to get a sense of the color combinations that folks are wanting, so we can order the correct quantities of each. This is NOT the official survey where you select what color combo you want to ultimately receive, this is anonymous and informal just so we can get an idea of how the ratios break down.
Additionally, there is a question about refills in the survey. The Mark One will ship with one black ink refill (Schmidt P8126). If you are interested in purchasing additional refills from us, either now or in the future, let us know, that will help greatly with determining how many refills to order for our initial order. We are also trying to determine if we should order blue ink refills as well, so your feedback here is useful! (Note: the Mark One will only ship with black ink, as it doubles the shipping complexity to offer blue as well, but we may offer blue replacement refills as an add-on option if the demand is shown in this survey).
Lastly, there is an optional open ended question asking if there are any stationary or pen related products you’d like for us to take a crack at next.
Thanks so much for your help and participation! The more people that fill it out, the more confidence we will have in the quantities.
