Rant: My tablet pen stopped working mid-piece and I almost threw it out the window

I was 6 hours into a character illustration on Sunday when my Wacom pen just quit. No warning, no low battery light, nothing. I spent 45 minutes resetting the driver, restarting my PC, and even blew on the USB port like it's a Nintendo cartridge. Turns out the nib had worn down unevenly and was stuck inside the pen body. I had to use tweezers to yank it out and replace it with a fresh nib. Has anyone else had this specific issue where the nib gets jammed?

2 comments

2 Comments

dixon.felix1d ago

Man oh man, I feel your pain. That exact same thing happened to me last year with my Intuos pen and I thought I was gonna lose my mind. I was right in the middle of a detailed line art piece and the pen just stopped registering any pressure at all. After googling for like an hour I finally figured out the nib was wedged in there sideways from all the uneven wear. I actually keep a small pair of tweezers in my desk drawer now specifically for yanking out stuck nibs. Rotating them every couple of hours like stellablack said really does make a difference, I started doing that too and haven't had a jam since. Have you tried switching to the felt nibs? They seem to wear down more evenly for me.

stellablack1d ago

And here I thought I was the only one who ever dealt with that exact issue. I had a similar thing happen with my Intuos pen a few months back, the nib wore down on one side and just got stuck. I was panicking thinking I'd have to buy a whole new pen, but some careful work with needle-nose pliers did the trick. It's like the pen casing got a little warped from the uneven pressure, so now I always rotate my nibs every few hours to keep them wearing down even.