Pencils are used world wide by students , by artists, sometimes by professionals as well.

Let us study how pencils are made.

Many people think lead inside the pencil is actually a lead and may cause illness, if consumed. But the fact is
lead inside a pencil isn't a lead actually. Instead, it is Graphite. Graphite was discovered in England in mid 1500s.
This gave birth to pencil industry. In today's world, different sizes of leads are available in market. If such is
 the case, then their strength will also differ according to their size. Leads inside pencils or leads for pencils
are made from Graphite powder and clay which are then heaten up accordingly to vary their strength according to its
size.

For wood pencils, to cover the lead special type of wood is needed, which is soft enough so that it gets sharpened and
also strong enough so that it doesn't bends with the writer's hand pressure. To prepare pencil, there is a requirement
of 5mm thick wood. Usually, slices of wood arrives in the factory precut with dimensions of 18*7 cms. These slabs are
then passed into joined cutting wheel. At this stage, place of holding a lead is marked on the slabs. Once lead holders
are marked, next machine puts glue on it. This glue is actually in elastic form. This helps in cushioning lead inside the
pencil and reduces the chances of its breakage inside the wood pencil. Leads with the mixture of graphite powder and
clay are baked in oven at the temperature of 108 degrees celsius. Leads are placed onto another machine which places
leads exactly on the lead holding mark which were marked earlier on the wood slabs. Same process is followed for
coloured pencils. Only difference is coloured pencil leads are made of wax, clay and pigments with no baking in
oven required.

Wooden slabs with leads then move onto conveyor belt and another machine places the empty wooden slab(with no leads)
on top of the wooden slab (with leads). Now, making of lead pencil is almost done. Then these slabs are pressed by
machine till the glue gets dried up completely. Once glue gets dried up, slicing of these wooden slabs are done
by the slicer machine and thus turning them into pencils. The same machine then gives the hexagonal shape to the
pencils. As soon as hexagonal shape is given to the pencils, these pencils then gets separated from each other.
From quality perspective, 2-3 pencils are sharpened manually to check the quality of the lead after sharpening.
and also quality of wood is measured by checking whether wood is getting sharpened easily. After this quality process,
these pencils are then painted with wooden paint like yellow. Then black stripes are made on these pencils where
company's trademark, its name are printed.

After this, pencils move into stamping machine where company's information like name, logo , trademarks are printed.
500 pencils are stamped by the machine per minute. After this pencils are then moved towards rubber top assembling
machine where rubber tops are installed on one side of the pencil. In this process, machine squizzes the top of the
pencil a bit so that aluminium cover of rubber top gets installed easily and then rubber is installed inside it.

And this is how, pencils are made.