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by wintermutestwin 904 days ago
What a great site! I realize that it is a store, but content like this is valuable:

https://www.jetpens.com/blog/Pilot-FriXion-Erasable-Pens-A-C...

I recently found these erasable pens and they are incredible tech. The friction of rubbing the rubber eraser on the ink heats up the ink and causes the ink to turn invisible. It leaves no ink residue on the eraser.
2 comments
emeril 904 days ago
these are a big deal in Japan - I found out about it through work and now I have my kids use them for homework instead of pencils or typical crappy american style erasable pens

but of course it confuses the teachers at the school and they insist my kids use pencils at school...

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wintermutestwin 903 days ago
Yes - although these are easily available in the states, I found out about them while on vacation in Japan. I asked chatGPT what items were most sought after by visitors to Japan and pens were on that list.
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wizardwes 904 days ago
Of note, any heat will erase these, even including leaving them in your car. For anything that you need to make sure that what you wrote is still there when it is next read, I wouldn't trust these. Also, IIRC, extreme cold can bring the ink back, so I also wouldn't trust these to hide sensitive information.

tl;dr only use erasable pens for the least important writing, never ever use them for signatures.

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wintermutestwin 904 days ago
Good point, but I'll note that I actually use these for court stipulations (i.e. very important writing). My use case is for documents where the document will be photocopied after signed by all parties and the photocopy becomes the filed document so this alleviates the concern.

>Also, IIRC, extreme cold can bring the ink back, so I also wouldn't trust these to hide sensitive information.

Oh fun - I put an erased paper in the freezer and will report back!

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wizardwes 904 days ago
Fair enough. I'll add the bit that they're fine if you don't need the ink to be anything more than short term. Excited to hear how the experiment goes!
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wintermutestwin 903 days ago
Yep - the freezer brought the ink back! Very impressive and interesting.
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