Pencils
Taylor Damrath
Elements Of The Pencils - How Are They Made?
Lead
Pencil 'leads' actually contain no lead whatsoever. They are made of a mixture of graphite and clay that comes from Bavaria, Germany which is finely ground, thoroughly mixed, and fired in ovens to produce a strong fused stick, similar to chinaware.
Wood
Californian incense cedar wood is sawed into small slats, each the length of a pencil but half its thickness, and about nine pencils wide. After months of seasoning, the slats are run through a grooving machine which carves out parallel groves just deep enough to hold half the diameter of the stick. The grooves are then impregnated with a resinous binder that locks the wood fibres into a non-splitting sheath (this is the second half of the super-bonding process) and the sticks are laid in the grooves. Binding glue is applied to a second slat, similarly grooved, and the two slats come together under great pressure to form a 'sandwich'. These sandwiches are washed, thoroughly dried, and fed into a shaping or moulding machine. The cutters first of all shape one side of the pencil; the sandwich is then flipped over and fed through a second moulding machine which shapes the other side. The shaping machine runs at a carefully calculated speed to give the smoothest possible surface to the wood.
Mexico's Natural Resources
Manufacturing in Mexico
Transportation in Mexico
Natural Resources Needed to Make Pencils
Map of Germany
California to Mexico
Cedar Wood From California
Wax - For a Smoother Writing Point
This wax comes from Mexico.
Four Categories of Globalization
Technological - Machines are needed to make the pencils at the factory, and breakdowns occur.
Cultural - There's too many cheap labor, but workers are not skilled enough and not well educated. People are coming and going all the time.
Economic - If pencils made by Mexico are cheaper, and are shipped to the US, people in the US will not buy US made pencils. It's cheaper to make things in foreign countries and be sold to the US.
Possible Solution
Pros & Cons of Globalization
Cons: Say you have a radio made in China and a part breaks. It would be difficult to find a new part or how to fix it.
In other countries, there may not be regulations on how things were made and who is making them. For example, children forced into making things...