Twsbi Vac 700 Broken

[tonybelding]

This is no thread revival. I once posted in a thread nearly 5 years after the last reply, since I needed a question answered! Call me the thread necromancer

 

Hey, I'm still here. And I just recently, finally, got around to asking TWSBI for a replacement cap for my smoke colored Vac 700, and they sent the part promptly, as expected. The Vac 700s (I've got two) are still amazing, wonderful pens as long as you aren't bothered by having to jiggle the filler knob once in a while to keep the ink flowing, and if you accept that a part may fracture from time to time.

[Algester]

Vac700 will also be my next pen and I already understand what it takes for actually having a polycarbonate material pen well my mini has been with me for about 5 months always inked but rarely used... I still use it for making journal entries but then again the next tier for vac fill for me is a custom 823... design wise I like it but the clear... eh... is lmited but then again I dont like the clip design on the Pilot custom I'm more into the Custom Heritage and maybe more or less made with the same stuff used by TWSBI which would mean it would also may or may not be prone to stress fractures

Edited June 21, 2014 by Algester

[WaskiSquirrel]

 

Hey, I'm still here. And I just recently, finally, got around to asking TWSBI for a replacement cap for my smoke colored Vac 700, and they sent the part promptly, as expected. The Vac 700s (I've got two) are still amazing, wonderful pens as long as you aren't bothered by having to jiggle the filler knob once in a while to keep the ink flowing, and if you accept that a part may fracture from time to time.

 

They must like you better than me. I'm being charged $3 for a replacement cap. Not a lot, of course, but I'm trying to build up the nerve to use PayPal, which I've never done before.

[Blue_Moon]

 

They must like you better than me. I'm being charged $3 for a replacement cap. Not a lot, of course, but I'm trying to build up the nerve to use PayPal, which I've never done before.

 

Don't mean to hijack the thread, but just a quick aside, You'll hear horror stories about PayPal, and you'll hear from people that have never had an issue. I personally, have never had a problem with PayPal. I've been using it for, I guess, four or five years.

[Lyander0012]

This might sound a tiny bit old-fashioned, but I've never ordered anything online, and I doubt I will for a while yet. About the only thing whittling down my resistance is the immense selection of amazing vintage pens online. While the market for vintage pens is actually quite good here in the Philippines, few enough people are willing to let go of their not-quite babies for me to be able to compete with some of the more enthusiastic collectors, haha (seriously though, some of these pens are more than thrice my age!)

What with incidents like the recent eBay password leaking, though, I'm not all that regretting my slow entry into the world of online shopping. Still, I'm feeling a bit like that kid in an old cartoon staring into a toy shop in the middle of a blizzard with no cash to buy a thing. Something like a slightly older, male Cosette, if you will XD

[Algester]

were derailing here a bit but most of my music disks and uhh artbooks have been ordered online but eh... my credit card limit has been mitigated to about 30 USD as the limit so really you wont see me do online transactions.

so I really rely on B&Ms for most of my pen shopping because there's bare I can spend on 30 USD without shipping pen related wise and I hope that if I ever face problems with TWSBI our local retailer (there's only 1) can actually help me, I don't want to have another bungle like my experience with my country's Lamy retailer/service center ohh god that was a nightmare well t was still free... still a nightmare

Edited June 22, 2014 by Algester

[Pelikan-Vera2]

I also had the cap ring fall off my Vac700 and my mini has ink leaking into the section.....

[overwriter]

Glad I have found this post. This is exactly what mine has done. Twice.

[Lyander0012]

Hey, I'm still here. And I just recently, finally, got around to asking TWSBI for a replacement cap for my smoke colored Vac 700, and they sent the part promptly, as expected. The Vac 700s (I've got two) are still amazing, wonderful pens as long as you aren't bothered by having to jiggle the filler knob once in a while to keep the ink flowing, and if you accept that a part may fracture from time to time.

Nice! TWSBI customer service really is awesome. While I do hope that they release a pen as good as the current offerings someday, one with some extra durability tossed in the plastic they use, I've had no problems with my Diamond even after several months of... somewhat rough usage

 

Well, there's a hairline crack in the threads, but it looks stable (it's under the cap band, though on the distal end of the cap mouth).

 

 

 

They must like you better than me. I'm being charged $3 for a replacement cap. Not a lot, of course, but I'm trying to build up the nerve to use PayPal, which I've never done before.

 

I'm with ya there! All my purchases to date have been made in person at book stores or during local pen meets (I love it here in the Philippines, there's an awesome group of FP nuts that meet monthly, and it's usually a blast! ). Though I'm aware that buying online is safe and whatnot... well, paranoia and suspicion usually get the better of me. It limits my selection of purchases quite a bit, but I (and my wallet) can live with that XD

 

 

Cheers!

 

Kevin

[moylek]

I was going to post a new thread about my broken Vac 700 cap. Silly me.

 

So let me just join the "me, too" chorus ...

 

http://ms.mcmaster.ca/~moylek/pub/temp/TwsbiVac700-broken-cap.jpg

 

... and note that I have contact Twsbi to ask about getting a replacement cap and that I will check in here with updates.

[moylek]

I was going to post a new thread about my broken Vac 700 cap. Silly me.

 

So let me just join the "me, too" chorus ...

 

 

 

... and note that I have contact Twsbi to ask about getting a replacement cap and that I will check in here with updates.

 

 

 

I heard back from Philip Wang within an hour: Twsbi will send me a new cap, though I'll have to pay for the shipping.

 

"Don't tighten the cap too hard", adds Mr. Wang.

[magnus919]

After reading a bunch of positive reviews, I ordered my first TWSBI pen yesterday... a Vac 700. I generally stay down at the cheap end of the spectrum, with my most expensive WORKING pen being a Lamy Al-Star. There was that one time I bought a basket case Namiki Falcon but we won't talk about that. Everything else is cheaper... mostly Jinhao. But I wanted to have a vacuum filler for long, uninterrupted writing sessions. And while the Pilot Custom 823 is where this longing is likely going, I guess I needed to feel good about a $50+ pen purchase before I spent over $200 on a pen. This thread has me a bit leery about the purchase decision I just made.

[tonybelding]

But I wanted to have a vacuum filler for long, uninterrupted writing sessions.

 

 

Experience with many different filling systems has led me to conclude that the quest for ever larger ink capacity is folly.

 

Your common converter holds about 0.6 ml. Many popular piston-fillers have capacity about 1.0 or 1.1 ml. To me this is a healthy quantity of ink.

 

The Vac 700 draws about 1.2 ml with a single plunger stroke, so that's not any great improvement. If you use the special filler bottle (which is actually pretty nifty) to fill the whole barrel, then you're looking at about 2.0 ml of ink. However, I never was able to solve the flow problems with my 700s, which meant that I still had to jiggle the cap once in a while. So that's not exactly "un-interrupted" writing.

 

The Gate City Belmont is a syringe-filler that draws 1.7 ml with a single plunger stroke. It's easily disassembled for cleaning, the entire ink supply is visible, it doesn't require any jiggling or fiddling to keep the ink flowing, and it doesn't break. To me, it really lived up to everything the Vac 700 seemed to promise. Unfortunately, the Belmont was also rather more expensive, and was produced in modest numbers, and is now out of production. So it goes.

 

My Edison bulb-fillers hold about 2.5 ml of ink. However. . . They have proven to be somewhat finicky, and there are some inks I'm afraid to use in them because of the rubber bulb.

[Oldparkerguy]

I've got a couple of Vac 7s and mine are holding well for a couple of years now. I bought one once out of Canada in the dead of a super cold winter (below zero F.) the barrel had some cracks at the threaded part when it arrived. I was able to get a parts pen with a perfect smoke barrel. Excellent pen over all.

[moylek]

 

 

I heard back from Philip Wang within an hour: Twsbi will send me a new cap, though I'll have to pay for the shipping.

 

"Don't tighten the cap too hard", adds Mr. Wang.

 

 

US$5 for shipping, btw (CDN$7.31 ... ouch). Via PayPal.

[davyk]

Whats interesting to me, is that Twsbi designed much of the vac700 using specifications from Pilot's custom 823. I'm referring to the dimensions of the plunger washer, o-rings etc.

 

What I do not understand, is why they didn't use the custom 823 as the basis to design the cap.

[Algester]

because then it would be outright stealing?

[davyk]

Not necessarily copy the design but engineer a cap with the same principle in mind. The metal ring shouldn't be at the end of the cap.

[moylek]

 

 

US$5 for shipping, btw (CDN$7.31 ... ouch). Via PayPal.

 

 

And I finally got my free replacement cap for my Vac 700 on March 4th - 38 days after it was posted from Taiwan.

[Francis_Rex]

The cap on my VAC 700 broke: the chrome ring came away from the body of the cap.

 

I contacted TWSBI and Mr Philip Wang organised a replacement for just USD 5 in days from Tapei to the UK.

 

Respect! ( as the younger members of the community might say!)

 

That is great customer service.