The invention relates to a writing, drawing, painting or cosmetic device and to a method for production thereof or method for producing elements of the device.
Honeycomb bodies and the principle structure thereof are known from catalytic converter engineering, for example from catalytic converter engineering for motor vehicles. Honeycomb bodies of this type are generally characterised by a low density with simultaneously high strength. These honeycomb bodies are usually formed from expensive ceramic or expensive materials and have a large number of hollow longitudinal structures, generally arranged axially parallel to one another.
Honeycomb bodies are understood hereinafter to be encasements or other elements for writing, drawing, painting or cosmetic devices. Devices of this type include, inter alia, pencils, such as lead pencils, colored pencils or cosmetic pencils with coloring leads, wherein the leads thereof are held non-displaceably in encasements and have to be sharpened in order to be functional. This is also true for devices of which the leads consist of eraser material.
Furthermore, honeycomb bodies can be used in a versatile manner as elements of/for writing, drawing, painting or marking devices, such as ball-point pens, fine lead pencils or clutch pencils, etc. Examples of elements that can be formed from honeycomb bodies include shafts, handles, closure caps, grip zones, coloring leads and clips.
Further elements include intermediate products for the production of devices of this type, for example what are known as small boards as are known from the conventional production of wood-cased pencils.
For example, encasements of wood-cased pencils that consist of wood, wood substitute materials or thermoplastics are known from the prior art.
The wood substitute materials have been used more recently in order to preserve natural woods and wood resources.
One form of these ‘wood substitute materials’ is constituted by what are known as wood plastic composites (WPCs), which are thermoplastically processable materials containing different proportions of wood, plastic materials and additives that are processed by thermoplastic forming methods, such as extrusion, injection molding or pressing.
An example for the use of WPC for wood-cased pencils can be found in DE 10 2008 034 013 A1, the WPC as a wood substitute material having isotropic homogeneous physical properties.
Generally, WPC has a very high density (>1.0 g/cm3), higher than the density of woods used for lead pencil fabrication which have a density between 0.3 and 0.6 g/cm3. By contrast, the strength is lower than that of wood. Anisotropic properties such as those present in wood cannot be produced in WPC.
In pencils with a lead sheathing made of WPC, it has additionally proven to be disadvantageous that a higher sharpening torque is necessary in order to sharpen the pencil since the physical properties in WPC are identical in all directions.
It has been found, when wood is replaced by isotropic WPC, that sufficient strength can indeed be set, however higher sharpening torques occur as a result.
High strength with simultaneously good sharpenability as demonstrated by wood has not yet been achieved with use of isotropic WPC. It can be noted that pencils consisting of leads and a sheathing made of WPC invariably constitute a compromise of strength and sharpenability.
Furthermore, DE-PS 801613 shows and describes lead pencil encasements for core pins, the fiber material being arranged so as to run parallel to the pencil axis. A high breaking strength and uniform cutting properties during the sharpening process can thus be achieved or set.
A disadvantage however with pencils of this type has proven to be the fact that, as a result of the orientation of the fibers, the production method is very difficult and sheathed pencils of this type have a relatively high weight. In addition, the achieved compromise between strength and sharpenability is not satisfactory for the operator or user.
A method for producing pencils is known from EP 1150847 B1, in which lead and lead encasement are produced in the method of coextrusion. Both lead and the encasement thereof consist of thermoplastic.
A disadvantage with the pencils produced in this way is that they have a very high weight and the sharpening torque for the user is unacceptably high. With products of this type, a lot of material is used, which makes the production of these products expensive in addition.