The Insides of Some Tablet Pens!

In this post, I will talk about the insides of the tablet pens I have taken apart (for fun because I had extras). This is not really supposed to be a big topic, however, the post itself ended up becoming pretty long anyways. Whoops.

I am writing this post to give you a little bit of insight into the differences between how each company models their pens, and it will show you why the springiness of some pens feel very different than others (mainly, the difference between Wacom and competitor pens).

If you do not understand how battery-free pens work through EMR, please go Google it as this post will not talk about how EMR technology works.

*Please note that any bad soldering you see on the board was caused by me playing with the solder. All these boards came in perfect condition and they had no issues with how they were originally soldered.
**Also, please don’t try to re-solder anything unless you know what you are doing. I rendered a few of my PW100 pens useless by trying to swap parts between them, even though they were the exact same model.

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Wacom LP190K Pen (for Intuos Draw CTL-490)

The first pen I would like to show you is the Wacom LP190K pen, which is the pen for the Wacom Intuos 2015 series (Intuos Draw/Photo/Art/Comic/3D). It is a very basic and simple pen with a plain plastic body, and the inside is just the circuit board and EMR coils.
Since I could not get a good enough grip on the end of the pen to pull it out properly, I resorted to crushing the plastic grip to take the pen apart. In the process, I ended up shattering the metal rod within the coil which is why the coil area is bent in the middle.

There is a metal rod wrapped with a coil at the end, which in turn attaches to the white plastic piece with a rubber stopper. The pen nib goes all the way through the metal rod to the white plastic which holds the pen nib.

The pen nib is held in place by this white plastic part which connects to the rubber stopper. Inside the white plastic part is another smaller metal coil and a plastic contraption which allows slight movement when pressing very hard against the pen nib. The small coil inside the white part moves, while the metal rod and coil outside stay stationary.
This plastic contraption is what gives Wacom’s pens the “Wacom feel”, which is how their pen nibs have very little movement from 0% to 100% pen pressure.

• The pro of this design is that it feels fairly close to how traditional pens/pencils act, which is that their pen tips do not move at all when pressing harder or softer.
• The con of this design is that your small changes in hand pressure result in larger changes in pen pressure. Without practice, the changes in pen pressure will feel hard to control, but that goes for any tablet, really.

This pen costs 30 USD per replacement as given here: Wacom Store
This price seems fair for the effort Wacom has put into the technology inside, but for this model in particular, the amount of effort put into the outside of the pen was very lacking.

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Huion PW100 Pen (for Huion H640P, H950P, H1060P, H610Pro V2, etc)

The second pen I would like to show you is the Huion PW100 pen, which is the pen for many Huion tablets including the H640P, H950P, H1060P, and more. It is a nice pen with a wide rubber grip design that is very similar to the Wacom Pro Pen design. The inside consists of the circuit board and EMR contraption held together by a plastic case.

This pen can be pried open by bending the pen back and forth in the middle. Unfortunately, Huion uses glue to hold the two parts together, so sometimes it will take quite a bit of effort to get the two sides apart. I broke the top casing of one pen because it wouldn’t come apart at all, but the other one I was able to take apart without breaking anything.

The EMR mechanism for the PW100 uses a moving metal rod within the coil area. You first put in the metal rod, then the rubber stopper, and then the spring. Once those are put in, you screw the white piece into the black circuit board casing, then snap the circuit board into place with the latch on the back of the black plastic casing.

With that, the circuit board section is completely assembled, and all that’s left is to slide it into the bottom half of the pen and it will click into place.
If you feel it getting stuck while sliding it in, make sure not to force it through as you will break the coil cable because that is what is getting caught. Just twist it gently to a different angle and it should slide in easier.

Luckily, the fact that the top part is glued on is not a problem because the circuit board is held in place solely by the latching mechanism in the grip part of the pen.

If the circuit board was held in place by the top half of the pen (as it is in the XP-Pen P05R pen I will show later in this post), then removing the glue on the top part would cause problems where the top piece would not be able to hold the circuit board in place while drawing.
However, since the circuit board is contained in just the grip part of the pen, there are no problems with removing the glue and having a slightly loose top piece.

• The pro of this design is that it is fairly easy to check the inside of your pen if you accidentally let small particles or liquid in. The springiness of the pen nib can also feel more intuitive because the pen nib moves a decent bit from 0% to 100% pen pressure, meaning the pen pressure will be easier to control with slight changes in hand pressure.
• The con of this design is that the pen will not feel like a “traditional” pencil/pen as the pen nib will move and “spring”, in contrast to how the pen tip of a “traditional” pencil/pen does not move at all.

Personally, I find that being able to feel the pen nib move and “spring” is more intuitive for digital art than having the pen nib move very little. It feels like it makes pen pressure control that much easier.
However, this is from my mindset that traditional art is a whole different artform than digital art, and vice versa, so I do not expect digital art to feel like traditional art in the first place, which is why digital art feeling different from traditional art does not bother me at all.

This pen costs 22 USD per replacement as given here: Huion Store
This price seems more than fair as it performs exceptionally well and seems to be quite robust. Honestly, this is a ridiculously low price for a rubber grip pen with seemingly no downsides as far as I can see. It even supports tilt on some models like the H1060P!

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Huion PW507 Pen (for Kamvas Pro 12/13)

The third pen I would like to show you is the Huion PW507 pen, which is the pen for the Huion Kamvas Pro 12 and 13. It is nice pen with a wide rubber grip design that is very similar to the Wacom Pro Pen design. The inside consists of the circuit board and EMR contraption held together by a plastic case. It appears to be a variation of the PW100 pen which I mentioned above.

Just like the PW100 pen, the pen can be pried apart at the middle by bending the pen back and forth to loosen the glue.

The EMR mechanism for the PW507 uses the exact same EMR contraption as the PW100, using a moving metal rod within the coil area.
The only difference is that the white plastic area is made of grey plastic, and weirdly enough, you cannot screw the grey plastic part all the way if you want the wires to be able to reach the circuit board while it is snapped into place. I believe this was done purposefully to put less tension on the spring because the PW507 is used on a screen tablet, and you don’t want as much pressure to be put on a thin screen like the Kamvas Pro 13’s fully-laminated screen.

Exactly like the PW100, the PW507 latches into place on the grip piece of the pen using the same dot-to-hole mechanism.

This is a repeat of the previous section, but:

• The pro of this design is that it is fairly easy to check the inside of your pen if you accidentally let small particles or liquid in. The springiness of the pen nib can also feel more intuitive because the pen nib moves a decent bit from 0% to 100% pen pressure, meaning the pen pressure will be easier to control with slight changes in hand pressure.
• The con of this design is that the pen will not feel like a “traditional” pencil/pen as the pen nib will move and “spring”, in contrast to how the pen tip of a “traditional” pencil/pen does not move at all.

This pen costs 50 USD per replacement as given here: Huion Store
This seems like a pretty fair cost… until you realize it uses the exact same parts as the PW100 which is only 22 USD. Please read below for how I can tell they use the exact same parts.

As you may have noticed, the PW507 pen seems to have very similar inner mechanisms to the PW100. Well, the thing is, it’s not just similar, it’s almost completely identical!
The above image shows you 3 circuit boards, 1 taken from the PW507, and 2 taken from the PW100. As you can see, all 3 of them have the exact same code and name on the back, meaning they use the exact same circuit board.

The only difference here is that the PW507 board is tuned to have a slightly different wavelength than the PW100 board. This prevents you from using the PW507 pen with a PW100 tablet, or the PW100 pen with the Kamvas Pro 12/13.

Aside from the different tuning and slightly different length of the coil piece, everything else is identical, from the metal rod, to the coil material, to the spring, rubber stopper, and circuit board. The outer materials and construction, such as the rubber grip and plastic, also do not feel significantly different.

I cannot see any differences that would warrant the 28 USD price difference between the PW100 and PW507.

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XP-Pen P05R Pen (for Artist 15.6 Pro)

The fourth pen I would like to show you is the XP-Pen P05R pen, which is the pen for the XP-Pen Artist 15.6 Pro. It is a nice pen with a wide rubber grip design like the Wacom Pro Pen design. The inside consists of the circuit board and EMR contraption, just like the two Huion pens before.

This pen can be pried apart at the middle just like the Huion pens. However, unlike the Huion pens, there is no glue so it is much easier to open without breaking anything.
It appears this pen was made with serviceability in mind as there are bumps which hold the pen together quite tightly, despite the lack of glue. I really like this design which doesn’t depend on glue.

The EMR mechanism for the P05R uses the moving metal rod design, with a metal rod, rubber stopper, and spring inside the plastic coil piece. Unlike the Huion though, this coil piece is attached to the frame with a latching mechanism instead of a screw design.
After latching the coil piece into place, the circuit board is attached to the rest of the frame using a single screw.

I am not sure if this metal backplate on the plastic frame is there for a reason. Maybe it’s there to add extra support for the circuit board? Maybe to prevent outside electrical interference? I have no idea.

For this pen, the top piece of the pen actually holds the circuit board in place, so try not to open the pen too many times, otherwise the top piece may eventually become too loose to hold the circuit board and pen nib in place once the plastic latches become worn down.
If you are using the pen normally and never opening it, there will be no issues with this.

You may have noticed, but the circuit board has UGEE written on it. This is not a cause for any concern because it is officially known that UGEE works with XP-Pen on tablets now after UGEE stopped developing their own tablets.

This is a repeat of the previous section again, but:

• The pro of this design is that it is fairly easy to check the inside of your pen if you accidentally let small particles or liquid in. The springiness of the pen nib can also feel more intuitive because the pen nib moves a decent bit from 0% to 100% pen pressure, meaning the pen pressure will be easier to control with slight changes in hand pressure.
• The con of this design is that the pen will not feel like a “traditional” pencil/pen as the pen nib will move and spring, in contrast to how the pen tip of a “traditional” pencil/pen does not move at all.

This pen costs ?? USD per replacement.
XP-Pen does not offer replacement pens on their official store yet, so I do not know the exact price. However, the other P05 models appear to be 30 USD, so I assume the P05R will probably be around the same price as well. (It’s completely possible that it will be pricier though.)

I cannot speak on the fairness of the price as I do not know the actual price, but as long as it is not way pricier than the standard P05 pen, it will not be “unfair”.

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XP-Pen P06 Pen (for Deco 02, Artist 12)

The fifth pen I would like to show you is the XP-Pen P06 pen, which is the pen for the Deco 02 and Artist 12. Or well, I would show you the insides if I could figure out how to open it.

The only spot I could somewhat grip properly was the middle area, but no matter how much I pulled, it would not come apart until I had snapped the circuit board in the middle. If that isn’t the right place to open it from, I have no idea how else to open it, so this is as far as I got with it.

It appears this model has no user serviceability, but I can generally guess that it uses a similar EMR contraption as Wacom’s pens due to the pen nib it uses, and how hard the pen nib feels to push (meaning it does not use the spring design that the other pens do).
But that’s about all I can guess about this pen, really.

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Conclusion

I hope this post was somewhat informative to anyone who was interested in seeing the inner workings of some tablet pens. This post kind of also works as the explanation as to why Wacom pens have a different feel compared to other companies, which is because Wacom doesn’t use springs in their pens.

Just as a side note, please don’t start going around opening your pens unless you absolutely need to. More often than not, you will break something when opening it making it unusable, so unless you are just playing with extras, please don’t take that risk.