Sunday, June 24, 2012

The Tattoo Machine


The Tattoo Machine

I would like to touch on the subject of home made tattoo machines. A
home made tattoo machine is a very nasty thing. They are made from a pen
shaft and an electric motor. Do not ever let anyone tattoo on you with a
home made tattoo machine. You can not properly sterilize a home made
tattoo machine. Holding something under a lighter or boiling it does not work.
Letting some Scratcher dig on you is suicide. I am strongly opposed to
tattooing out of you’re house, but if you have to you can buy a tattoo
machine online for about fifty bucks. Don’t be a jackass, and don’t listen to
the guys that use to tattoo in jail for smokes.
Another thing I would like to clear up is that a tattoo machine is never
or has it ever been a gun. The term tattoo gun is a Scratcher term and shows
you know little about the subject. The tattoo machine is amazingly simple.
It’s nothing more than a switch and as complicated as a door bell. The idea is
that electricity flows through the coils causing them to become magnetized.
This makes the armature bar pull forward to the coil surfaces breaking
contact with the contact screw. This turns off the circuit so there is no longer
electricity flowing through the coils. Now there is no magnetism to hold the
armature bar and the spring pulls it back into contact with the screw
completing the circuit and causing it to start all over again.
This is where the tattoo machine gets its movement and the signature
hum that you hear is really just the armature bar hitting the coil heads and
contact screw. There are a few different types of machines. Cast iron,
copper, brass, stainless steel, and aluminum are what the frames are usually
made of and each does something different. There are many different shapes
and colors as well as many different companies that make them. Tattoo
machines are one of the dirtiest parts of any shop, so handle with gloves and
wash your hands.
Coils
To understand a tattoo machine better let’s break it down to nothing.
The first things you need to look at are the coils. The tattoo machines heart is
the coils. They are nothing more then electro-magnetic coils. A steel shaft
wrapped with usually .022 gauge copper wire that has a thin nylon coating on
them. The electricity flowing through the wire around the coils pulls the
particles of the metal shaft into alignment causing a magnetic field. The steel
shaft is solid with the exception of a screw hole in the bottom center to allow
it to be fixed to the frame. Most of the time any machine parts will have an 8-
32 thread pattern. This is so more parts are interchangeable. On the outside
of the wire is a piece of heat shrink tubing to keep all of the wire nice and
tight, topped off with a round piece of cardboard or plastic to hold its shape
in both ends attached by a ring clip. In between the wire and the shaft is a
thin piece of Teflon tape or cloth to separate the wire from the shaft. Coils
come in different configurations measured by how many times the wire wraps
around the shaft. One wrap counts as one full wrapping of the wire down, the
second wrap is one full wrapping of the wire up, and so on. Do not count up
once and down once as one wrap or you will have a coil the size of a baseball.
The wire has to be going the same direction or the coils will not work. You
can wrap in any direction you like as long as they are both going the same
direction. If the two coils are opposing, then this will interfere with the flow
of the electricity in one direction which is needed to get the magnetism. If
you wrap your own coils then always go from the bottom and end at the
bottom. This is why you will always find coils wrapped in counts of even
numbers, if it starts at the bottom it has to end at the bottom for the sake of
wiring properly. If you decide to be brave and wrap your own coils you can
make a jig instead of wrapping by hand. Trust me, wrapping by hand takes for
ever. Fix your coils of new wire on a screw at the edge of a work bench.
Thread a screw into your coil shaft and put it in a multi-speed electric drill.
Make two small holes in the bottom of your round covering disk.
The bottom of the shaft is the side with the treaded hole. Feed the
wire through one of the holes leaving at least three inches of wire sticking out
for later soldering. Then slowly wind as many wraps as you want while
pinching the wire between your fingers to keep tension. Remember to go
slow, you will make mistakes and have to back up to correct them. The wires
have to be perfectly straight, and can not have any friad spots or kinks. If it’s
not perfect then they will not work. Also make sure the wraps are even, you
do not want to coil to look “pregnant”. It needs to have a nice smooth shape
to allow the least resistance for the electricity. The amount of magnetism
created by the machine is dependant on the amount of electricity cycling
through the coil wires. This means that more electricity controls the strength
of the machine and has no relevant change on the speed at witch the machine
functions. Depending on what the configuration and material of the coils are,
each machine will have to use a different amount of electricity to get the
same exact amount of magnetic pull.
The most common configuration is a ten wrap set of coils. This is what I
recommend for new artists. Coils come in eight, ten, twelve, fourteen, and
sixteen wrap. But like needles they will always make bigger. Eight wrap coils
are much too weak. You have to turn your power supply up really high and
then they get hot at the heavy work load. I have even seen a screw head burn
through a pair of gloves while still on my hand. Ten wraps are standard, great
for lining and shading. Twelve and fourteen are good for shading with large
mags but have a little too much power for lining. You might end up just
cutting your client. Any coil bigger than a twelve is equal to a low grade
chainsaw, so stay away. Another little trick that was taught to me at a
convention involves the screw hole in the coil shaft. When you thread the
screw into the shaft there will be a small gap of air inside. If you put a bit of
steel wool in the hole before you attach the coils to the frame it will fill that
space and give you just a little more bang for your buck. Coil shafts can be
made from steel, brass, copper, and iron. There is little difference between
the different metals as far as magnetic pull is concerned. My only advice on
this subject is to not use aluminum. It’s a little too light and will not
magnetize nearly as well. Steel coil shafts are the most c

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