Cleber Martins

When tattoo artists talk about their machines bogging down, it is
not necessarily a bad thing as you might expect. Sometimes it
is good to have your machine bog down to get a desired effect
without damaging the

There will be a time in almost every tattoo where you are trying
to pack in ink. It might be a solid black tribal piece or it might be
solid color. No matter what type of ink you are packing in, you
need to use a

I recommend that when you are doing greys you use the same
setup you would use for a liner, but the traditional setup calls for
a softer hitting machine with a long stroke. The reason I call for
a long stroke here

I consider a Liner Shader to be a machine that I use for shading
gradients and blending. This machine is a similar setup as
a liner, but instead of a hard + fast machine it is a soft + fast
machine. My Liner

The old school trick of the trade was the dime gap liner
nickel gap shader. Take the armature bar assembly and
press down on the armature bar’s nipple (the spot where
the needle bar’s loop attaches to the grommet

The traditional liner setup, in my opinion, is a machine that runs
really fast, hits hard, and has a pretty long stroke. To achieve
this there are numerous things that can be done. The first thing
to look at is

A prime example of technology making an impact on the tuning
abilities of the artists is that of the digital power supply. Even
the power supply that does not give you all the fancy upgrades,
but still has some

Presently, a host of technology is available at reasonable prices
that a few years ago just simply didn’t exist. There are those
who will shun the technology and say it is useless, these are the
same people will

There are tools you can purchase to properly align your springs
and a-bars to the tube hole on the front of the machine. Proper
alignment is very important. In order to get a maximum transfer
of energy from the

IMPORTANT THINGS TO REMEMEBER
WHEN BUILDING MACHINES

You can only bend the rear spring a few times before it is
unstable. Too many bends in a rear spring will cause it to
become brittle and possibly snap during a

Coil tattoo machines have wire wrapped coils that are then
magnetized and will pull the a-bar down. The coils have a core
that is typically made of iron. The core is tapped out to allow it to
be mounted to the

As mentioned earlier the front spring length can be changed to
achieve different results in the tuning of the tattoo machine. The
rule of thumb here is that the shorter the front spring, the stiffer
it will be.

The rear spring on a standard tattoo machine has to be bent
(according to most tattoo artists), at least to some degree. This
is considered a major flaw in the age old design of the armature
bar. It is because the

Similar to the dime gap technique, the manila envelope is another
measurement that has some debate surrounding it. Some artists
will tell you that when you put the a-bar in the stressed position
you should be able

Often times you will hear an artist talk about the importance of
the dime gap. There is some debate as to which way the dime
gap is measured, and if you should even use a dime at all.
There are two basics ways

Triangle (ABC)
starts with point (A) being where the contact point touches the
front spring. Triangle (ABC) continues with point (B) being where
the rear spring is fastened to the deck. Triangle (ABC)’s last
point

There are two springs on the standard tattoo machine, the front
and the rear. In the standard spring setup the rear spring is basi-
cally rectangular, while the front is triangular. Springs will

The ghost of the a-bar is based upon a few things: the human
eye’s interpretation of the reflection of the light off of the a-bar,
the speed of the a-bar, and the actual light source that you have
in the room.

When speaking of how hard a
machine runs we are generally
speaking about the hit of the
machine. When we are talking
about how fast or slow a
machine runs we are referring
to the momentum of the machine.
The hit

Remember you have a host of aftermarket parts available to
you, and you do not have to keep the manufacturer’s parts on
the frame. Sometimes you can increase the performance of the
machine by swapping out just a