Home-Built Wacom Cintiq Tablets

Many long for the Wacom Cintiq, a tablet with a display that allows one to draw more naturally and with greater precision than with the typical graphics tablet. Most however cannot afford to spend the hefty one to two thousand or more for it, and have to settle for a Bamboo Fun or other cheaper tablet which gives an experience similar to touch-typing.

One artist and tinkerer, however, decided to make his own Cintiq for less. It was a matter of being able to dismantle a monitor and a drawing tablet, and then sandwich the sensor strip of the tablet inside the monitor. Drew Northcott found that a tablet can be used even under nine millimeters of paper, so it would be possible to place the tablet strip inside a thin LCD monitor and have the best of both worlds without breaking the bank. The process had a few hitches, but he ended up with a great product for around half the cost. Here is a video of the homemade Cintiq in action. Others have followed suit and put together their own screen tablets as shown in these youtube videos:

"Hi Mully! (YADTIQ In Action)"
"Homemade DIY Cintiq - The Mad-Tastiq"
"Homemade Wacom Cintiq - initial test"
"Eternal's DIY Cintiq"

There is even a forum for sharing information and examples of finished screen tablets.

With this type of competition in today's economy, as well as rival company Hanvon coming out with a screen tablet of its own, Wacom will need to lower the prices of its products substantially. I speculate Wacom may react to this new trend by either making their tablets harder to tamper with and/or paying off monitor manufacturers to alter the internal designs of their monitors to make it difficult if not impossible to hybridize them with tablets. In the short run this may increase revenue, but sales may drop if another cheap alternative comes along. It will be interesting to see what will happen in the next couple years.

Wacom, "Cintiq 12WX Product Overview." WTC Wacom Technology.
Wacom, "Cintiq 21UX Product Overview." WTC Wacom Technology.

Drew Northcott, "DIY Cintiq." Bongofish.co.uk.
Drew Northcott, "My DIY screen tablet in action." Youtube.
MrDomin0, "Hi Mully! (YADTIQ In Action)." Youtube.
madpsychot, "Homemade DIY Cintiq - The Mad-Tastiq." Youtube.
someone2007, "Homemade Wacom Cintiq - initial test." Youtube.
Eternal10k, "Eternal's DIY Cintiq." Youtube.

Hanvon, "Writing LCD." Hanvon Global Website.