Pilot Con-70 Is Driving Me Nuts

[awa54]

duplicate post... I hate my Kindle some days.

 

 

[awa54]

As far as getting both converters and feed systems clinically clean goes, there are non-invasive ways to accomplish these ends:

 

For the CON 70 in specific, (as previously mentioned) using a 10cc (or larger) syringe with a blunt needle that's slightly larger gauge than the center breather tube allows you to force water through the breather and into the top chamber that's under the filler button (accomplished by carefully placing the needle over the breather tube opening and pushing clean water through). This process will remove all traces of ink from the converter after just a few cycles. If it doesn't, add a little ammonia or pen cleaner to the first few flush cycles, then finish with plain water.

 

Near perfect nib and feed hygiene can be had with a combination of ultrasonic cleaning (for dried ink, high dye content ink, or pigment based inks) and pulling warm water through the system with a syringe and dummy cartridge. Between these two techniques, you can remove all traces of previous inks from any pen when done thoroughly. If warm water alone isn't sufficient, adding some ammonia or pen cleaning solution will improve results significantly.

 

This assumes that we're dealing with *fountain pen* inks and that any dried ink has been in the system for less than a decade, long dried carbon inks or any drawing inks will probably require disassembly to remove completely ...or may not be removable at all.

It also assumes that the pen in question is a cartridge filling design, which allows access to the supply end of the feed without dismounting a fixed filler system. For pens like that, I suggest following Ron's suggestion of letting "clean enough for a similar color" be your standard ...it's much easier to attain and once accepted will allow you to sleep better

 

 

The CON 70 is my favorite Pilot converter and as some have stated here, I believe it to be the best of any makers' offerings in terms of both capacity and ease of getting a complete fill. The only real drawback is that it only fits Pilot pens and a very limited number of models at that.

 

 

[Preserved_Killick]

On 11/3/2018 at 4:31 AM, Ardakilic said:

I never heard good feedback about con-70. I currently syringe fill the cartridges and so far I'm happy with the outcome.

 

Or syringe-fill the CON-70 for more ink capacity?

[AmandaW]

Yesterday I uncapped a metal Pilot Falcon SEF to find the cap was full of ink and it's con-70 empty. The pen had been unused for a couple of months, but stored horizontal in it's felt-lined slot in a pen drawer.

 

This my third con-70 with issues. Another flowed too well (with Pilot ink) making a SF nib look like a B. The other one gets more bubbles than ink no matter how slow I press the button or how deep into the ink.

 

Have had enough! With opaque Pilots I can just use cartridges or a con-40, but the clear or translucent pens  either of those options will look pathetic.

[A Smug Dill]

1 hour ago, AmandaW said:

With opaque Pilots I can just use cartridges or a con-40, but the clear or translucent pens  either of those options will look pathetic.

 

Well, the CON-40 is with what Pilot chooses to pair Prera Iro-ai (the ones with clear bodies) to show off the colour of ink; and, to be fair, the CON-40 is less opaque than any of CON-70, CON-50, CON-20, and CON-B converters.

[awa54]

Usually CON 70s fill best with a brisk press (or three), since the floating plug needs to be seated/sealed in the mouth of the converter to allow the quasi-aerometric tube to expel air from the top of the ink chamber.

The bubbles might be from an air leak somewhere in the cartridge interface or the pens section, or it could be that the rubber plug has somehow gotten pushed up too far on the floating aero-ish tube (but of course it could just be a bum converter).

 

As far as syringe filling, I'd guess that you gain 0.1-0.2cc of extra ink compared to a complete fill using the button and a bottle that allows the pen to have its section immersed in ink, but it's certainly a valid method for getting a better fill with half empty bottles!