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ART Cast Iron Coil Tattoo Machine Liner & Shader Questions & Answers
I clean the gun and do not work.
you can buy a coil replacement kit from almost any distributor or supplier personally i would do that when you cleaned the gun did you take it apart ?
MY TATTOO MACHINE IS GETTING HOT
too much voltage, too much amperage, your springs may be too heavy, and the return on your armarture/contact spring should be bent just a little to help it assist forward motion in the direction of the coils. play around with the armarture height and bend your springs while trial and erroring (*******, i know it's not a word) at low voltage like 5.5-7.5 volts. if it hits hard, sounds consistent and doesn't kick back or stick you won't overheat. A better power supply may just be the ticket though. spend at least $80 bucks on one. anything cheaper will feed too much power, inconsistent power or will not feature short circuit protection so the moment a coil stick happens your PS blows. stay away from digital power supplies (the little dinky box ones that look like late 90's GPS beacons) and only run your machines momentarily while tuning, when it's tuned you should know it immediately within the first few strokes based on the sound. You should already know all of this if you are tattooing, but I wont give you heat because I know some scratchers that do better work than Kat Von D and Tomas Tomas, just saying. If you are scratching please for the love of sweet baaaaby Jesus, ONLY USE DISPOSABLES and NEVER go without BARRIER PROTECTION aka, wrap it up. - Professional tattoo artist; Brian @ Foxy Tattoos, Raleigh, NC
What speed,dudy,volts be at for shading and lineing
depends on the work. 12v or so with a well tuned machine and a fast stroke of the hand along with good washing skills will produce really smooth shading. The bugpin rounded shader mags are also pretty legit. Lining should be 6-8v depending on your tuning. maybe higher if you line better with fast strokes. be careful though. high voltage comes with high heat if youre not tuned right. the stroke depth is also really important. with a liner my stroke is around 3.8mm while my shader is set at almost 5mm which is deep for some artists but i like to see the needle since i only use 11 diamond tips for lining if it were a tight fitting round tip i wouldn't really need to see the needle as much. so different strokes for different folks. Remember though, Darker is DEEPER and lighter is shallow. but never go too deep. no one likes a blow out. -Professional tattoo artist- Brian @ Foxy Tattoos, Raleigh NC
How to ajust the points on a tattoo gun
be more specific, you mean contact points? that's all about armature height, spring tension, spring load, spring angle, spring slope... you want your armature bar about half a centimeter higher than the vice hole on your iron, you want your spring bent to around 20 degrees to 30 degrees depending on if your'e shading or lining. alignment springs (the one that is on the bottom of the armature bar) should usually be a 16 unless your'e using monster coils which good ol fashioned 10 wraps can do lining or shading if youre any good at tuning. dial back your contact screw so that it is not touching the contact spring when it's idle. Use 5-8v of power and press the pedal and dial it in until it touches. The machine will run, keep playing with the contact screw (screwing it inward) until the armature bar has a visible wobble optical illusion attributed to it. LIGHTLY allow the pole on the armature bar to hit your finger and if the machine speeds up instead of slowing down, you've hit the sweet spot. - Professional tattoo artist - Brian @ Foxy Tattoos, Raleigh, NC
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