#wacom4

It comes a time in which one shall replace the nib of the stylus of choice. In a Intuos 4, the pen-holder can be opened with a twist and there you will see 10 free nibs. Treasure them.

5 of them are copies of the same black plastic nib it came with your stylus by default. These wear out quite fast, hence their comprise the 50% of your free nib population (why are you rising your eyebrow?).

The others are made of different materials and are coloured differently, 4 grey ones and one black with a core of what I believe is some kind of white polyester (correct me if I’m wrong). One of the white ones comes with a spring and its feeling is pure plastic, much like the default black ones. The other 3 feels like they are made of “felt”. All these are to give a different feeling when using your pencil, and to be honest, they run through the surface with more ease and more control than the default ones, which slips way too fast for comfort.

These 3 white ones are the most close to the feeling of drawing with an actual pencil on paper, and on the plus side, they wear out slower.

The one with a spring feels like plastic, all right, but the feel is more like when you paint with a brush. The most closer feeling I can give is when you use one of those Copic markers which comes with a tip that tries to resemble an actual wet brush. That’s the feeling I get from that one.

The black nib with a white core is a champion. This one wears the slowest of the bunch and its feeling on the surface of the tablet is more akin to the ball of a pen. If you are like me and love to draw with those BIC pens, you are in for a treat. At least is the feeling I get.

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Now onto the real challenge. I was one of those who thought changing the nib should be done when the tip was flat as a stump. DO NOT.

Inside the pen-holder there is a metal ring with a slit on a side and a small notch in it. This is the tool you need to actually use to pull out your nib and exchange them with the rest. However, nobody tells you when to do it, and if you decide to do it late, chances are you will be stuck with a nib you can’t pull with the metal ring. No tweezers can be used to pull the plastic nib outside its fortress. However, in my case, the tip wasn’t fully flat. It was flattened in an angle, but the more I tried to pull, the more it went in, to the point a mere mm and a half was out. It made me to open the tip case and look for a way to push the nib outside, to no avail.

A search on Google made me to locate a solution: to pull it out with a pin.

I was lucky enough to have enough slope outside to trust the pin through the plastic of the nib and pull it outwards (with the help of a thimble and my thumb), but as I perused the post of another affected user, she needed to insert the tip of the pin on one side (causing a notch on the plastic rim of the hole because of how narrow it is), and she managed to pull the nib out along with the pin.

However, this case is extreme, as she accidentally stuck all the nib inside the tip of the stylus. I just can imagine her frustration while trying to fit the pin in a suitable length to force the nib out.

This is how my worn out nib looked like after it came loose. You can see the notch I made on one of its sides where I stuck the pin to push it outwards (and a flake of plastic from trying to grasp at it with the metal ring and later with some tweezers).

Can you see the measly difference in size on both, the new and the old? Lets have a look at the new one sitting inside the stylus.

You can see, with such length outside, you are left barely with enough room to pull it out safely without it becoming stuck.

After considering the width of the metal ring into account. You are safe with a nib worn out as follows:

Lower than that and your metal ring will slip and trust the tip further inside, which is what we don’t wish to ever happen (again). If your tip is wearing out unevenly (like mine, which wears out in an angle), make sure the lower part of it is within the safe boundary. Else, it will slip away and tear flakes of plastic, making the tip smaller. If you are very unsure about the length and wishes to play safely, after you replace your new nib into its place, use your metal ring, squeeze it hard and twist it until you make a noticeable notch on the surface of the body of the nib. This will serve to remind you about how much length you are leaving for the metal ring to safely pull the nib out, and on the plus side, it will give more “grip” to the metal ring in future pulls... but be mindful, if you carve too deep, it will leave a burr on the sides of the notch and the nib will not be able to go into the socket of the stylus, hindering your user experience in way I can barely explain without making another wall of text.

Hopefully this will help anyone to avoid wearing down these particular nibs on the Wacom tablets. I’m not sure how it works for Cintiq and such, but at least up to the Intuos 4, this is how you can enjoy all your 10 free nibs without breaking your stylus (and having to pay 45$ for a new one).