Be careful not to attract unwanted attention and the mechanical pencil disappear. I never took my special mechanical pencils to college.
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The threads are white
I’m very glad the latest posts made this thread jump up once again: Damdeok’s collection is stunningly impressive, and I can only dream to achieve his spectacular effectiveness.
The Hi-Uni 5050 FF-Matic, the Pentel QX, the FC alpha Exclusive and the FC Tekagraph 9604 are the items that most captured my attention and curiosity: if only the availability here in Europe could be a little higher, and the prices a little lower!
Congratulations to the guy, let us hope to get closer to his status one day. 
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As I now know, you can tell that if you look closely. Aside from the grooves being inked on a 0.3 and not on the 0.5, which could be cleaned out, there is a difference in the number of rows on the grip. The 0.5 has 14 rows and the 0.3 has 12, except for the initial run, which had 11 rows.
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After reading the Mechanica Notes article (https://note.com/leun/n/n2d67d7ff1131) and Dratex’s Twitter (https://twitter.com/c29239/status/1624407614393286656), you have a 2nd or 3rd generation Mechanica.
I have never seen a 1st gen Mechanica until this article, and Dratex’s twitter has a picture of the 1st gen grip on the left, which is very different from later Early Mechanica’s - the arrows have text in them, at least one of which says “SAFE” or “SAFETY”, not sure about the other arrow. You can also see that this only has 11 rows on the grip.
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Wow. Just… WOW. Orgasmic MEC.
Get a load of this:
“MADE IN JAPAN” and “SAFETY” engraved in the metal grip. Never saw this before.
Incidentally, for anyone wanting to save images… you’ll note that these are all being delivered by the server as WEBP files. This is a special lossy format that’s not bad with resolution while conserving server bandwidth. But, if you want better quality, there are some tricks to be had.
You’ll see for quite a lot of these images, the width parameter is provided with rather small sizes in pixels, like 500, 800, and 1000. The highest supported on the server is 2000 (anything larger throws an error). You have to open the images in a separate tab so you can gain access to the parameters in the URL. If you strip off “width” it should default to the maximum. Next… I prefer to get JPG or PNG instead of very lossy WEBP. You can sometimes use parameters to get what you want. Notice in the first few, it’s a JPG extension. Well, “JPG” as the format won’t give you a jpeg file. You actually have to specify PNG. Like so:
“format=png&auto=png&fmt=png”
Put that on the end of the URL following the question mark.
Unfortunately for the PNG files, this doesn’t affect it. On some servers, some formats simply won’t change the file type from WEBP. However, there’s a little trick to that too. First, save the WEBP file (stripping off the width, or putting width=2000). Notice the file size. Now, use those parameters for format, but change “PNG” to “TIF” (tiff). It’ll still be delivered as a WEBP to your browser, but if you save it, you’ll see the file size is larger. It’s kind of a way to reduce the lossy quality of the WEBP file.
Across the great wild wide web, you’ll find so many interesting “back doors” regarding image saving. On some retail servers, where they’re trying to force WEBP or just JPG on you, a “PNG” or “TIF” parameter with width=4000 can nab you a juicy fat low loss image file. On some you get surprises. Bloomingdales and SaksFifthAve for example, will sometimes give you a huge TIF file if you use the PNG format parameter. It’s weird. I don’t know why they do this, but hey… whatever works!
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Thank you very much. I checked more and mine lines up with the 2nd one on the twitter image (L->R) the clip is from a later generation but I’m fine with that, this is a grail pencil for me and I would never imagine I’d be able to get my hands on one.
I’m also in love with the PMG and the 770, they have such a nice weight and design. The blue used in the 770 is pure bliss and the all metal internals? Amazing. I wish to acquire a 925 77 “HEX” Limited next to compare with the 770.
Would anyone know of ways to “conserve” the lettering on the PMG and on the 770? I’ve seen more used pieces that had the lettering fading away, I’d like to try and keep mine as pristine as possible (while still using them – sounds insane I know).
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Dratex posted a short video to show all sides.
https://x.com/c29239/status/1702694358728991091
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Terrific! He just posted it today, too. Did you request it and he obliged that quickly?
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Yes, I aked him about it this morning, and he relied quickly.
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I am posting a 2 page PDF of the Mechanica pencil from the Pentel Book. The first page is what is in the current posted book. The second page is what I have changed to take into account the Mechanica Notes article.
Please let me know what you think. Is it too busy? I lean that way, but trying to make it all clear takes a lot of room, as well as staying consistent with the rest of the book.
Test 2023-09-15.pdf (431.7 KB)
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This is good but I’d include the “SAFETY” version at least as a “footnote”.
And it is busy but it’s very good, it has a lot of information but in a way that is easy to understand.
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Looks good.
I think you can make it a little less busy by consolidating space a bit. Some of the data can be put into 2 columns, like this:
This is in an MS Access database and if you look at some of the other pages, some of these fields take up the entire line.
I can tweak the size of the image window to shrink it down a bit, but not unless there is a need to get more information on the page.
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If you translate what he says on the tweet, that safety one seems to be a prototype or something else, not a 1st edition. He says that the number of rows is different from the 0.3 and 0.5 and that the hardness window has HB (1st edition only has H and 2H) so it’s probably a later model (0.3 HB didn’t exist at the mechanica release).
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It’s probably a combination of several.
I need to see a picture of the grip disassembled and the cleaner pin to confirm.
If it has a short cleaner pin, it’s probably a FIRST or early model.
If you can post a picture of the metal device inside the grip, I can confirm.
Here is a picture of the first model.
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This is correct, I took the grip out and the “dome” mechanism is the same as that latter version you posted, the grip itself is from a 1st version and clip, lead hardness indicator and pin are from that later version.
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Did someone print the Notes page on the Mechanica? That URL is now dead.
Link is working again.
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