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So I always heard from teachers and such at the school I once went to about having to be careful with those interactive white board pens, because they're very expensive and such (seriously, how much do people pay for these things? I see Promethean pens for £12 a piece on one site). Well, in reality, you'd be shocked to see what's inside them, part of a little project I'm doing involving a standard pen from the guys you all know and...love(?) includes completely taking apart one of the things, so I thought I'd share my findings with you guys, someone's bound to find it interesting. I managed to get hold of a dead pen to experiment with, whether it's still dead when I'm finished with it is left to be discovered, might actually work when I'm done, that'd be pretty nice. Step 1: Removing that excess plastic tail: http://twitpic.com/show/thumb/2eeyek.jpg Maybe that's where most of the money is, in the excess plastic that only serves as a bit of comfort and to make the pen look a lot bigger than the innards? And you find this... http://twitpic.com/show/thumb/2eewpt.jpg Not much to it, I must say... Step B: A bit of plastic mutilation later and you find this bit under the other side of the ring, that red button is the barrel, as an FYI. Lots of lovely pink wire coil there, no doubt it's coated in pink stuff to scare people away, or perhaps to make it not move one inch unless you unravel it (and boy do you regret it...) http://twitpic.com/show/thumb/2eex4s.jpg Under the tape there seemed to be some sort of brown thing, it looked suspiciously like chocolate from my point of view, unfortunately the camera wasn't very good, so it's rather blurry. It wouldn't surprise me if it was chocolate though. http://twitpic.com/show/thumb/2eex8f.jpg The unravelling... http://twitpic.com/show/thumb/2eexch.jpg At this point, I'm starting to regret what I'd done. Moreso here. http://twitpic.com/show/thumb/2eexfm.jpg The remains of the shell: http://twitpic.com/show/thumb/2eexwc.jpg What was left (had to remove the barrel button to get it out of the shell, not that I need that button) http://twitpic.com/show/thumb/2eeyek.jpg And of course, the mess. http://twitpic.com/show/thumb/2eejuj.jpg I'll keep you guys posted as I work on this, I decided to take a break from untangling that horrible length of wire without breaking anything (either wire or the contact with the board, I'm not that proficient in soldering...). Hopefully I can get this into a glove, with the coil in the index finger of the glove (without cooking the finger, of course). But yeah, your highly expensive IWB Pens are essentially a coil of wire in a plastic shell, always nice to know isn't it?