My TWSBI Eco pen flow becomes dry after writing a few pages.

[neo4evr]

Hello,

I have a TWSBI Eco Pen (Fine nib) that I have been using for 3 years now.

I face a strange problem. The pen writes smoothly for a few pages, maybe 4 or 5 pages of A5 paper.

After that, the ink flow starts to get drier and the writing becomes very light.

When I pause writing for a few minutes, then the pen starts to write fine again. But the ink flow again starts to get lighter after a few pages.

I have tried to flush the pen thoroughly with water, reassemble all the components inluding the nib. But this problem is still happening.

Is this normal thing to happen with fountain pens?
Note: I use Parker Quink black ink and Pelikan brilliant black ink.

Your help is much appreciated.

Thanks!

[Recursion]

I must say I never had this issue with my TWSBI Eco extra fine. But this might indicate a slightly clogged feed. When I clean out my pen I brush all the channels of the feed with a soft toothbrush. I hope this helps. 

[neo4evr]

  On 1/2/2022 at 1:03 PM, Recursion said:

I must say I never had this issue with my TWSBI Eco extra fine. But this might indicate a slightly clogged feed. When I clean out my pen I brush all the channels of the feed with a soft toothbrush. I hope this helps. 

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I will try this method. Thank you so much!

[Margalo]

I am also having a problem with my new TWSBI Eco EF nib. At first, the nib wasn't seated far enough into the section for the pin at the top of the feed to be secure in the clear plastic pinhole in the section (I could see the entire "EF" engraved on the nib, and since learned that a proper position for Eco nibs does obscure the size somewhat.) But now I'm writing four or five paragraphs before the flow just stops. Stops dead. I prime the feed and keep going, but that's not the TWSBI I know from my experience with a medium nib, so I'm puzzled. 

 

I've disassembled, cleaned and re-assembled three times. Works fine for a while, then the screeching halt. I'd be very interested to hear any suggestions of what to try next. Thank you.

[MidSouthern-Dad]

It's vapor lock.  It's due to TWSBI using a nib collar meant for a pen with a converter, and putting them on vacuum or piston filling pens.  The air builds up on the back wall of the nib housing, and it can't get into the pen body, to replace the ink that has gone out.  I solve this by breaking out the back wall of the nib housing using a 3.5 mm drill but.  I learned this when my TWSBI Draco started doing this.  After much experimentation I finally figured out that this was the problem.  In my case, I had to drill out the back of the nib housing, and also the clear plastic part of the pen that the nib unit screws into.

 

Additional comments here:

 

[amberleadavis]

Wow, well, we'd love to see pictures.

[MidSouthern-Dad]

Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures of the process.  It's easy enough. 

 

I put the drill bit into my cordless drill.  The only purpose that the drill serves is to hold the 3.5 mm drill bit.  Don't turn on the power!

 

The reason for the use of the 3.5 mm bit is that it converts the nib collar into a cylindrical sleeve, with just a hint of a ledge left to prevent the feed from moving back too far.  Otherwise, it's a straight shot for the air to move right into the barrel of the pen. 

 

 Remove the feed and nib from the collar.  Drill from the open throat of the collar, using the little converter hole in the center as a pilot hole.  Use your hand to turn the plastic nib housing.  In about 2 or 3 revolutions, the drill bit should break through.  Rinse out all debris, reassemble the feed and nib into the collar, and screw it in.  I use some silicone grease on the collar threads.  The problem with ink starvation should be resolved.

 

In the case of my Draco, it still starved a bit after the collar had been modified.  I had to enlarge the hole in the clear part of the pen section that holds the nib housing.  This is to make sure that there is no constriction to air flow here.  I used the same drill bit, and just revolved the pen barrel by hand around the drill bit.  You may want to remove the piston first, to make sure that you don't damage the piston head with the drill bit.  Wash out any debris from the drilling, and reassemble.

 

The TWSBI feeds can put out a lot of ink, once the airlock is gone.  Some people have used the Fountain Pen Revolution 5.5 flex nibs, and gotten good results without railroading, out of these TWSBI pens.

[AmethysteBunny]

  On 2/1/2022 at 4:40 AM, MidSouthern-Dad said:

Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures of the process.  It's easy enough. 

 

I put the drill bit into my cordless drill.  The only purpose that the drill serves is to hold the 3.5 mm drill bit.  Don't turn on the power!

 

The reason for the use of the 3.5 mm bit is that it converts the nib collar into a cylindrical sleeve, with just a hint of a ledge left to prevent the feed from moving back too far.  Otherwise, it's a straight shot for the air to move right into the barrel of the pen. 

 

 Remove the feed and nib from the collar.  Drill from the open throat of the collar, using the little converter hole in the center as a pilot hole.  Use your hand to turn the plastic nib housing.  In about 2 or 3 revolutions, the drill bit should break through.  Rinse out all debris, reassemble the feed and nib into the collar, and screw it in.  I use some silicone grease on the collar threads.  The problem with ink starvation should be resolved.

 

In the case of my Draco, it still starved a bit after the collar had been modified.  I had to enlarge the hole in the clear part of the pen section that holds the nib housing.  This is to make sure that there is no constriction to air flow here.  I used the same drill bit, and just revolved the pen barrel by hand around the drill bit.  You may want to remove the piston first, to make sure that you don't damage the piston head with the drill bit.  Wash out any debris from the drilling, and reassemble.

 

The TWSBI feeds can put out a lot of ink, once the airlock is gone.  Some people have used the Fountain Pen Revolution 5.5 flex nibs, and gotten good results without railroading, out of these TWSBI pens.

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can you maybe take a picture of it right now? i'm sure it'd be visable. i'm confused about what you did.

did you just widenthe the radious of the hole on the body where the feed's little uuh stick portion goes into the barrel?

 

an air bobble needs to be stuck near the feed otherwise ink will drop down, however, optimizing the air lock to be just the right amount to ossilate between pouring and stopping during writing without too much vacuum in the barrel is an art and also a science afaik!

[sirgilbert357]

  On 3/20/2022 at 8:27 PM, AmethysteBunny said:

can you maybe take a picture of it right now? i'm sure it'd be visable. i'm confused about what you did.

did you just widenthe the radious of the hole on the body where the feed's little uuh stick portion goes into the barrel?

 

an air bobble needs to be stuck near the feed otherwise ink will drop down, however, optimizing the air lock to be just the right amount to ossilate between pouring and stopping during writing without too much vacuum in the barrel is an art and also a science afaik!

Expand  

 

It's really not that complicated. The TWSBI pens use a nib unit that still has the "nipple" on them for a converter to latch onto. You just need to remove that. Piston fillers do not need that and it just gets in the way of the air exchange. This has been written about quite a bit on this very forum and it is the main reason I sold all of my TWSBIs (I didn't know how to fix it at the time).

[etiggy]

This is an old thread, but though I might chip in with some suggestions that worked for me. I was struggling with the same drying out problem. As a matter of fact, no pen on mine wrote wet enough to my taste, no matter how much I adjusted the nibs, or at least they did not had a consistent flow after each adjustment. I considered carving the feeds, but was always squeamish about it cause it is mostly irreversible. So, based on how many time I saw the suggestion "try another ink", I decided to instead attempt to tweak the inks I use. I read about some inks being "lubricated" or whatnot. I did have a phase during the pandemic where I was trying to pick up painting as a hobby, it never went anywhere, but I still had a lot of supplies from back then. One of them is called a flow improver. It is a simple, diluted surfactant, just like soap, that reduces the surface tension of liquids and makes them kinda "wetter". I added one drop of this flow improver to one fill of my Lamy 2000. Bamm, the pen wrote juicier than ever before! Tried it on my Opus, same result! Managed to conjure some into a Twsbi 580, that was a success as well, though that one could probably use two drops instead of one. Im still a bit wary about adding the flow improver into the ink bottles, in case some of them might react to it badly and precipitate or something, but right now I feel I found the perfect solution to make all my pens juicy using any ink I fancy without any mechanical tweaks.

[MidSouthern-Dad]

I have tried the glycerine and liquitex flow aid additives.  You really have to be cautious - very little is needed.  I put perhaps 0.1 ml in 20 ml of ink.  Even then, the ink will tend to feather, sometimes very badly. 

[marcelo]

I gave up my VAC Mini. Endless drying-out and leaking on several parts (even after changed for new ones). Such a shame, since I love the looks of the pen.

[amper]

I've been using ECOs exclusively for over 5 years, and have never experienced a problem like this. YMMV.

 

[sirgilbert357]

  On 9/1/2022 at 8:50 PM, etiggy said:

This is an old thread, but though I might chip in with some suggestions that worked for me. I was struggling with the same drying out problem. As a matter of fact, no pen on mine wrote wet enough to my taste, no matter how much I adjusted the nibs, or at least they did not had a consistent flow after each adjustment. I considered carving the feeds, but was always squeamish about it cause it is mostly irreversible. So, based on how many time I saw the suggestion "try another ink", I decided to instead attempt to tweak the inks I use. I read about some inks being "lubricated" or whatnot. I did have a phase during the pandemic where I was trying to pick up painting as a hobby, it never went anywhere, but I still had a lot of supplies from back then. One of them is called a flow improver. It is a simple, diluted surfactant, just like soap, that reduces the surface tension of liquids and makes them kinda "wetter". I added one drop of this flow improver to one fill of my Lamy 2000. Bamm, the pen wrote juicier than ever before! Tried it on my Opus, same result! Managed to conjure some into a Twsbi 580, that was a success as well, though that one could probably use two drops instead of one. Im still a bit wary about adding the flow improver into the ink bottles, in case some of them might react to it badly and precipitate or something, but right now I feel I found the perfect solution to make all my pens juicy using any ink I fancy without any mechanical tweaks.

Expand  

 

I know this is old, but figured I'd toss in 2 cents in case it helps someone...

 

I got rid of ALL of my TWSBI's for the same reason....they just did not write wet enough, or would slowly go dry over a page and not come back unless I forced ink into the feed or let it sit for a few mins. One thing that I tried was the "tip of a toothpick in a drop of Dawn dish detergent" trick. You then dip that toothpick tip into a 5 ml sample vial of your ink and fill the pen from there. You have to experiment a bit -- sometimes I'd need more or less Dawn to get the desired effect, but it DOES help. The side effect is feathering of the ink and less (or zero) sheen out of inks that should have had some. YMMV.

 

Oh, I also hacked the feed on some of mine. It helps, but it can also make the nib WAY TOO WET at the beginning of the page. You really want a feed that is consistent, so proceed with caution if you try this method.

[Pub]

Had hit and miss with TWSBI.

Diamond Mini was good. No issues.

Eco very very poor. Nib not good, flow problems, etc.

Swipe terrible in all areas.

Overall 50/50 and I think I’m done with TWSBI.

Disappointed.

 

[jchch1950]

Maybe the problems with the Twsbi pens are not in the design because some of them seems to be good writers and some of the same models have problems. One reason could be lack of uniform quality control or the manufacturing process is done without rigid tolerances. Another one is that certain inks do not work properly with the pens. The last one is that some owners take off certain parts of their pens and somehow make small differences when they put them back in place.

[Guy M]

I have found that drilling out the ECOs has been a great success. Although I recommend 3mm, not 3.5mm. And WHATEVER YOU DO, do not drill out the Diamond model! It will only bring a new meaning to the term "fountain pen". The nibs are tuneable and grindable, if you take the time to learn - less is nearly always more. I love the TWSBIs, but if you want a top notch pen, either work on it, or spend the money?