Cento3.O » 99% Pencil

In 2002, Achille Castiglioni, along with his friend and colleague Arch. Gianfranco Cavaglià, explored the importance and significance of 'grip.' Together, they designed a set of pencils and pens, creating various wooden prototypes, which are still kept in the Castiglioni archive today. The goal was to focus attention on the importance of the pencil as a daily tool and a means to express ideas, visions, and thoughts. For these writing and drawing instruments, they thought of a trilobate arch form that, thanks to its functional characteristics, embodied the true alliance between mind, hand, and object.

Every drawing tool has its essential nature: an irreplaceable instrument for design. A tool of inclusion and intuitive creativity.

Just one atom thick: the thinnest and most seductive substance in the world.

In the challenge of the CENTO3 project and the desire to propose a new material for the world of writing, the EGO.M Team found it interesting to complete the common denominator of the writing concept by using writing itself as the main material: a pencil made of pencil, or graphene. With just one atom of thickness, graphene is today the thinnest and most seductive substance in the world. Under normal usage conditions, it has excellent mechanical properties and resistance to chemical agents. The graphene PLA (Polylactic Acid) filament used is biodegradable. Depending on the environments it is discarded in, it has an average life ranging from 1 to 4 years, compared to over 100 years for commonly used plastics.

It all starts with a pencil...

Graphene is a material obtained in the laboratory from the exfoliation of graphite and is composed of a monoatomic layer of carbon, organized in a hexagonal cell crystalline structure. Its extremely thin thickness of 0.3 nanometers allows it to be defined as a two-dimensional material. It has the theoretical strength of diamond and the flexibility of plastic. Flexible, thin, strong, waterproof, and sustainable, graphene is the material of the new millennium with ancient roots, graphite, which are deeply embedded in our daily lives, the pencil.

The trilobate shape

The unique shape is sharp, although complex to achieve in the artifact, ergonomic, and suitable for being held by three fingers.

It allows the writing object not to slip on the table like all other pens with a circular section, and "this aspect seemed of some interest to us," Cavaglià recalls with a smile.

Tools that propose a new and particular behavior: touch and use become a very particular mode of expression and at the same time create an ideal connection between project and user.

Characteristics:
N°3 HB leads 0.7mm included
Length of mechanical pencil: 13.0 cm
Max diameter of mechanical pencil: 1.1 cm
Weight: 13 gr.
Soft touch cardboard packaging with detailed description of the CENTO3 project.