Fixing A Broken Wacom: Soldering

On my previous post (fixing a broken wacom pen), I accidentally glued the pen tip to the iron core. The glue was a mess; the iron core, the plastic part, and the pen tip, all sticked together 🙁

This causing the Wacom tablet couldn’t detect any pen pressure although the pen tip position is detected. The pen tip is not moveable, that’s why.

Since the eraser part was still working and I rarely use it, I decided to desolder the and move the eraser part to the pen tip.

my soldering plan

my plan

Preparation

I bought a cheap solder iron (around 3 EUR), 10cm tin solder wire (less than 1 EUR, no need to buy one big roll), and if necessary, a solder sucker. I didn’t bought this last item.

If you haven’t done any soldering before, just ask your friend or someone to do it 😉

Soldering Time

The idea is to desolder both pen’s coil wires and the eraser’s one, and exchange them (see my plan above).

First, I open the wacom pen. It’s easy since I have it opened before. Then desolder the pen tip part.

There are two parts you have to desolder: the part which connects the wires from the coil, and the other part which stick the plastic part to the PCB/component board. Once you desolder these parts, the pen component can be easily removed.

desolderpentip

Now, desolder the eraser part. You can desolder first the coil’s wire so you can unplug the coil.

desoldereraser1

Then desolder the plastic component part and re-solder it back to the pen tip area.

solderback

done

Done! I could throw away the pen tip component but I decided to soldered it back to the eraser part. I put the pen cover back and tested it.

It works! Now I have a ‘new’ pen tip 🙂

Note: Actually, I did this almost a year ago but I just remember to post it here last month.

17 thoughts on “Fixing A Broken Wacom: Soldering

  1. Pingback: Fixing a Broken Wacom Pen - Abiyasa Blogs

  2. hello
    thank you for the post.
    I’ve got the same problem as you had.
    i trie gluing but , the tablet hardly detect the tip. so i tried the soldering.
    first time i only exchanged the magnet (without the plastic of the pressure) . but now the click is detected too early and when the tip is in at 1 mm of the tablet it make a click.
    Then, i exchanged the plastic (of pressure?) but still the same problem (but now ther is no pressure)
    i thought of one thing: perhaps the two wire of the magnet mustn’t be soldered by chance (each one has it’s place)
    i don’t know how the tablet dectect the click to figure out what i’ve done wrong !

  3. Unresponsive tip on Intuous2 pen

    Just to note: the Intuos2 pen doesn’t come apart – I used a hacksaw blade to cut the barrel – at the middle point of the button switch area.
    Once this was severed I could slide the barrel off – I just needed to adjust the copper coil.

    Also: if you go to the Wacom control panel and click on ‘About’ with ctrl held down you get the option to ‘recalibrate’…if you click on ‘size’ this sometimes fixes certain problems.

    • The intuos2 pen *does* come apart. I took off the rubber grip and button, used a clothes pin to wedge the eraser side and pulled on the tip side. Hard. It came apart. (And was much easier to disassemble thereafter.)

  4. I was able to make it work without transferring the plastic part. I figured that the coil cylinders were the same so I just transferred the coils. It worked! I was about to give up on my pen but then found this article. Thank you!

  5. cool thank you! my wacom pen also got wacky registration.
    it suddenly only worked very close by the board. the eraser part however worked fine. therefore it couldnt be the board it must be the pen.
    i opened it and the black plastic tube inside the coil was also broken! at first look it seemed ok, but under the wire it was really broken.
    Mine never fell i think its the plastic aging. (or my 2year old playing with it).
    unsolderd the coil from the back and put it in the front.

    (now i need to check if my operation worked out tomorrow but so far so good)
    just some tips on opening the pen:
    i rolled one empty ballon around the front part, and one around the back part for extra grip. then start pulling these parts apart as hard as you can. dont try to be gentle.
    with mine it moved 1 mm after a while, kept on pulling for 2 minutes and another 2mm, after that it went more easy. dont twist more than a few degrees

    also beware there is a mini spring in the head of the eraser side. try not to loose it

    thanks again abiyasa for this post. i would never managed to open the pen otherwise

  6. Increíblemente funcional, hoy lo desarme con tu anterior tutorial, pero este me parece mucho mejor, de todos modos el lado de la goma no lo usas casi nunca, mañana temprano lo llevo a que un técnico lo soldé y comento de nuevo, gracias por tu consejo.

  7. listo funciona de nuevo a la perfección con el truco de la soldadura, gracias por el tip me has hecho feliz de nuevo, la goma no funciona….. pero realmente nunca la usaba

  8. Thx so much! I was afraid I would have to buy new pen, now everythings working great ! 🙂 🙂 I’m going back to my work 🙂

  9. Ok, for all of you that did that and not yet been able to fix their pen, i ve got the solution ( at least worked for me )
    When you disassemble the pen u can see on the pcb( circuit board ) near the button there are 3 circular screw with flat head screws, they re not screw but potentiometers, use a screwdrive with the correct head, and turn them to the left slightly ( near 9 o clock ), it ll pass more juice from the magnet to the circuit board. My pen was non responsive, and jerkyness etc, i ve done that tweaked those 3 potentiometers to the right spot and combinaison and now have a perfectly working pen !!
    Did that after switching the coil and magnet from eraser and pen, dunno if it works without doing it, certainly because switching the side haven’t got my problem solved.

    hope it helps anybody !
    Jey.

  10. Pingback: Fixing a Broken Wacom Pen | Abiyasa Blogs

  11. Thanks a lot for the tip, just fixed a broken Intuos Pro grip pen; it had stopped responding after having repaired it myself 4 times before, and I was about to give up this time and buy a new one until you mentioned about the pressure sensors being the same for both the pen and the eraser (of course – why hadn’t I thought of that before!?). I just de-soldered the plastic component, de-soldered it to the other end and left the coils intact at both ends and it works perfectly again. I will not let this pen die! 🙂

  12. Recently dug out my Intuos 2 (!) and found the pen end of it didn’t work. When I opened the pen up I didn’t find any visible cracks in the coil, but desoldering the coils and swapping them seems to have fixed the problem. Thanks a bunch!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.