wacom sticking?

Nizza_waaarg

hey so i think my wacom might be dieing

What's been going on recently (most noticably in zbrush) is when i lift the pen off the tablet, it still thinks it's making contact...
ie: if i were using the move brush to carefully move some dudes arm muscle around, then i try and pull my wacom away (lifting off), suddenly it's dragged the arm way the fuck to the other side of the screen :poly118:

hoping that makes sense. Not sure if it's faulty software, or if my wacom's just getting old. The pen nib is pretty worn down i guess... dunno if that effects much tho.


I still really love my wacom and don't wanna have to trade in for one of those new, ugly ones with buttons and crap all over the place is all :poly122:
Anyone know what's up with it?

Joshua Stubbles

How far are you moving off? The wacom still registers the tools like 2" away from the tablet, so that would be normal behavior. There's an option to disable non-direct contact in the settings I believe.

Nizza_waaarg

i normally keep the pen pretty close to the tablet.

What it always used to do (for the last few years until now) was you could move the pointer across the screen if you hovered over the tablet, but it wouldn't actually click down unless you made proper contact with the thing.
And now it's still clicking down without proper contact...


actually, if the pen nib has worn down enough, could it be counting that little bit of height it's lost as the clicking down distance to the tablet mebbe? That doesn't seem very plausable tho :shifty:

Neavah

I had a similar probelm, only mine did it non stop when hovering. I thought maybe the sensitivity was shot on it. The problem with mine (I believe) was my cat tipped over my coffee on it the night before. I spent about a hour trouble shooting (trying it on a different computers, changing the tip, and reinstalling the driver and anything else I could think of). Didn't work. Until I bought a ridiculous 'touch and pen' one. (BOO!) And when I got home, it worked again...

that probably didnt help you though... but you can buy a bundle of replacement tips for about 5$(us),
http://direct.wacom.com/stores/5/Standard_Pen_Nibs_P1055C65.cfm
although I sincerly doubt thats the probelm, but it's worth a try

BeatKitano

I had that problem with my first graphire 2 tablet (a long time ago), exactly your symptoms, until it stopped to work entirely, I think it was the pen battery dying.

I hope i'm wrong, i remember it to be VERY tiresome

Calabi

The pen doesnt have a battery. It uses some kind of energy transference, or magnetic field or something cant remember which.

Lamont

If it's registering a touch and you're off the tablet, it's the pen. The tablet keeps track of the movement/orientation, the pen is the one that registers the levels of sensitivity/contact.

dejawolf

Calabi wrote: »

The pen doesnt have a battery. It uses some kind of energy transference, or magnetic field or something cant remember which.

its powered by radio waves from the tablet, pretty much like a crystal radio.

ZacD

Lamont wrote: »

If it's registering a touch and you're off the tablet, it's the pen. The tablet keeps track of the movement/orientation, the pen is the one that registers the levels of sensitivity/contact.

new pen $50, one of my tips for my intuos 4 sometimes has sticking issues, of course it has to be my favorite tip, but if I remove it and put it back in it works.

BeatKitano

Guys, i know wacom do induction based technology tablets, but i "think" it has some battery, i kinda remember opening the graphire pen and finding a small one or some kind of "accumulator device" (i don't know if its how its called and it's been a while though, my memory can be deffective).

Nizza_waaarg

ah, thanks for the info guys.

I'll give the new pen idea a try, sound like a safe bet. Hoorah for not having to throw out my favouritest wacom just yet :poly142:

Yeah, right now it's kindof like the tablet were made out of chewing gum (chewed chewing gum :shifty:). Have to really rip the pen away from the tablet to get it to stop registering contact sometimes.


oh, it's a 6x8 wacom cte-630 (saphire) btw. Got it about 4 years ago.


edit: just found a bunch of replacement pen tips from a friends wacom. His is an intuous 2 tho, so i think it's slightly shorter but seems to work fine for now

pior

Yeah I had the chewing gum problem happen to me a while back. Tho I also remember it wasnt really a faulty tablet, but something else. Might have been the driver, or settings, or worn nib. So I would say, yeah try getting a few fresh ones., since your current nib length might be much shorter than expected by the driver.

Also a friend of mine makes his own nibs out of a special kind of plastic. Will ask him!

adamlewis

I had the exact same problem recently. Normally the nib should seat somewhat loosely inside the pen, so it can shift between the "on" and "off" state as pressure is either applied or released. However, if the internals of the pen are deformed or gummed up, the nib will no longer move freely and will remain in the "on" state long after pressure is released from it, creating the annoying "sticky pen" effect.

While I wouldn't recommend it, if desperate you can try soaking the tip of your pen in a mixture of warm water and dish soap (or a mild solvent if you're really desperate) for a few minutes to help clean out the internals. Attempt this only if you have tried every other possible solution.

Lamont

Wacom pens/accessories are powered by the souls of orphan children from 3rd world countries. Get your facts right.

Also the length of the nib isn't a factor it's just long enough to push in on the sensor inside the device. Your nib can be 12' long, it will still function the same. albeit hard to use. I am sure the driver doesn't know nor does it care.

If you have a Int4 and the pen is acting funky, just call up Wacom, they will send a new one out to you ASAP. Just get the device reg'ed. They are really cool folks.

Slipstream

I had a similar problem recently too, where right clicking or tapping the pen to the screen would result in it pausing for a moment, and often ignoring the command I was trying to execute. Rolling back my driver to last december's fixed the problem. I was running a 6x8 graphire 3 on Xp64
Oddly enough, I had a similar problem at work, on a 9x12 intuos 3 running on vista. Rolling back the driver there helped fix it too.

pior

Hey Lamont, good to hear that nib length is not a factor.
It actually opens a whole world of tweaks! Thanks for the info.

Anyone remembers that tutorial about hand tweaking the driver's value to make the response curve linear instead of exponential-ish ? It was great but I forgot both my values and how to do it :P

crazyfingers

just a shot in the dark... but have you tried pulling the plastic tip out and cleaning it? maybe it's sticky and getting caught in the "pressed" position or something as if its making contact.

cw

pior wrote: »

Anyone remembers that tutorial about hand tweaking the driver's value to make the response curve linear instead of exponential-ish ? It was great but I forgot both my values and how to do it :P

http://www.zimbio.com/Graphic+News/articles/84/Wacom+Cintiq+driver+manual+adjustment+pen

Rick Stirling

Intuos? Got a very small screwdriver? Try this:

Pop the middle button off.

There is a screw in the middle of the rocker. Turn it a quarter turn clockwise.

Nizza_waaarg

It's a graphire 3 i think (according to google, cte-630 sapphire). afaik i can't really take it apart that easily :P... you hafta pull the nib out with tweasers and then slide the new one in the top.

Well the new nib seemed liked it was working but just noticed it doing it again a little yesterday
Could be somthing gunking up/broken with the inside sensor bit mebbe. Imma try and hunt down a new one if i can find it. how simple this one is compared to the button-filled ones.


(google ftw :P)

dolemite

I had this problem with my intuos 3, and like all problems with both tablets I've owned, the solution was 2-3 hours of randomly plugging/unplugging tablet, reinstalling drivers, reinstalling tablet software, uninstalling drivers, etc. Always a nightmare when the tablet isn't behaving.


I blame windows.