Pen brand/type discussion

[Shel]

Hi…

   I’d like this to be a thread where we can discuss the pros and cons of various pens for use with eggbot.

   To start the ball rolling, here’s a comparison between two marker brands.  The brand on the left, “120 markers”, came from Amazon and had a wonderful range of colors (120 of them!).  The brand on the right is Sharpie Ultra Fine, except the blue interior fill of the crescent moon is from the “120 markers”.

   Though the “120 marker” pens seemed to write on paper OK and initially appeared OK on the egg, eventually this water-based ink seemed to diffuse through the shell into nearby areas and resulted in a rather soft and messy image.  The lines which appear bluish in the sun are from the black pen.  It also takes much more time to dry – the smudges are from my fat fingers.

   The Sharpies are darn near perfect in every respect, as long as the limitations on pen tip width and color selection don’t bother you.  I find that about 25% of the colors need considerable coaxing for the ink to start flowing.

   I hope others will post other pen observations and images here!  8^)

Thanks,
…Shel M

[Lenore Edman]

Great comparison, Shel! I’d also encourage you to post brief descriptions on the pen choices page of the wiki.

[Shel]

Thanks for pointing me to the wiki, Lenore!  I have not yet added to the pen choices page, but have done some editing on the Blowing Eggs page, as well as adding to the Support Resources on the main eggbot wiki page a link to the Facebook EggBot Art Gallery group.  (Group currently consisting of just me.)

I have been unable to login as a wiki editor.  I’ve tried to login with my EMS login, with my wikipedia login, and have tried to make a new account.  No joy with any of these three methods.  Is it broken, or am I just afflicted with fog in the cockpit?

Also, a question:  Are you gently suggesting to me that this kind of post does not belong here?

[Lenore Edman]

The wiki has a separate login from the EMS forums, and is not associated with wikipedia. You’ll need to create a new login there (sorry!) 

 And no– you’re welcome to post things like this here– but I wanted to make sure that resource was included in the discussion here.

[Shel]

Well, I tried again and this time was able to create a new account and modify the pen choices page as well – so it was apparently “fog in the cockpit” the last time.  8^)

Another question:  I wonder how to include an image…I tried to do it by following the example in your smiley face tutorial in the wiki.  There, the URL of the image was simply inserted in the text.  I tried to do a similar thing, but with a dropbox.com URL, and all that happened was that the URL appeared in the text.  Any pointers?

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