Open up the pockets or bag of your nearest design or engineer buddy and you’re bound to find at least a couple of common items: a sketchbook, a pen, a multi-tool or knife, and if you’re lucky…an embarrassing driver’s license photo that you can run and make copies of to post around the office. In any case, pens, sketchbooks and multitools are essential EDC (Everyday Carry) items of the modern-day Maker/Creator.
The Tool Pen aims to marry at least two of those three common denominators together in the form of a…you guessed it: pen that also operates as a multi-tool.
This ingenious concept was no doubt partly-inspired by the cheap plastic ‘stacking pencils’ found in toy stores that feature multiple ‘cartridges’ of sharpened lead that prevent the need for a pencil sharpener.
When a user has worn out the point of their pencil, they can take the used cartridge out, place in the back of the pen, and another ‘new’ cartridge pops out with a new sharp pencil point:
Similar to the stacking pencil, the Tool Pen features multiple cartridges loaded with various bit sizes for whatever repairs need to be made while out-and-about:
“The concept of Tool Pen is based on a winner of 2012 Red Dot Design Concept Award, originally contributed by our designer Hao-Siang Min & his partner Chun-Chi Lin. We obviously loved this idea, and hoped enabling this idea to come true. This project was formally kicked off last year, but we found the mechanical design of Pop-A-Point operation was a big challenge, thus we paid many efforts on running lots of experiments, material testing, features add-on or adjustments, design & re-design over the past eight months.”
If interested, you can pick up a Tool Pen over at Kickstarter for $45.
