I recently did a DIY modification on a matte black Faber Castell Hexo rollerball pen using a Supernote Nomad e-ink device pen refill.
Based on reader posts on the Supernote reddit community page, I thought the Faber Castell pen mod would be an “out-of-the-box” process – remove the rollerball refill and slip in the Supernote pen refill, but it is not.
Upon measuring the two refills, the Supernote pen refill is 100mm in length and the standard Faber Castell Hexo rollerball ink refill is 110mm – which means there is a 10mm gap inside the body of the Hexo pen that will need to be filled up.
To extend the Supernote refill by an additional 10mm I used a small white plastic click rotater from a cheap ballpoint pen that I found lying around the house. I slipped over the very narrow top end of the Supernote refill.
On top of that, I added a small section from the end of a Pilot G2 ink refill so it would have the right refill width (thickness) to push against the small spring in the inside end of the Faber Castell Hexo pen body. As you can see from the photos, the Supernote refill is far more narrower than the Hexo ink refill.
My solution is a bit sloppy but it works. The end goal was to have a Supernote e-ink refill with a total length of 110mm and an end diameter that matches the original Hexo rollerball ink refill – I was able to achieve this using the small end cap piece from the G2 ink refill.
Below is a photo of all the pieces that I used, taken apart to show each of them more clearly.
- Supernote e-ink pen refill
- White plastic rotater end cap from cheap clickable ballpoint pen
- End cap section from a Pilot G2 refill, trimmed to length to achieve overall final length of 110mm to match the Faber Castell refill length
It probably took longer to write this blog post and take the photos than it did to make the mod for the refill. But I hope it was worthwhile to those that want to do this themselves. Enjoy!