Pretty common issue but I couldn’t find good answers on reddit. The sleeve cant grab the lead well enough to pull it from the clutch. Does anyone know a fix to this? Perhaps finding a way to make the clutch grab less or make the sleeve grab the lead more, or maybe some brands who’s 0.5mm lead is larger would allow the sleeve to grab the lead better? It didnt work at all with softer lead and only worked for a little with HB, I tried neox and high polymer lead
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Could be too much graphite residue on the lead retainer grommet, acting like an unwanted lubricant. I’d try using compressed air first before using anything even slightly abrasive to run through the tip and dislodge the residue.
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if that didn’t work, would a dip in an ultrasonic (jewelry) cleaner be too aggressive?
Tried compressed air and it sorta helped. It works most the time with HB now. Previously i tried cleaning the tip with a kneaded eraser
Maybe i should buy one of those, ive already needed it multiple times for some old fountain pens. I cant imagine its too rough since all the internals are metal right?
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I have a $20 jewelry cleaner from Amazon that I use on my technical pens and it works great.
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Sorta successful update. I don’t think cleaning is the way to go, after soaking the tip in rubbing alcohol the sleeve only seemed to grab the lead even less. My fix was to cover a piece of lead with kneaded eraser then pulling it through the sleeve to hopefully coat the inside of the sleeve with sticky residue to grip the lead better. So far its been working well with HB but one thing to be careful about is getting kneaded eraser in an area that prevents the sleeve from moving back and forth.
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