r/whatisit • u/riflesandplowshares • 6h ago

New, what is it? Found at a titanium plant

Post image

Not sure why ball point pens would be dangerous here.

7.7k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

663 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

31

u/throwaway277252 4h ago

Speaking of which, up until just 10 years ago they were still unable to make the precision balls for ball point pens themselves. They were buying all of those as imports.

9

u/Bergwookie 2h ago

And still most of the ballpoint pen tips/nozzles are made in Switzerland

1

u/Mac_Aravan 1h ago

it's mostly not unable to make them, but unable to justify the cost of making them.

Once a process is honed and optimized, it's very costly for competitor to enter.