How to Use Tattoo Guns

Video Transcript

"Shotsie Gorman is a professional tattoo artist, here on behalf of expert village. The tattooing machines themselves are already set up. It's a very simple system with an oscilating relay, the needles are soddered onto the end of the bar, that's the needle bar and needle. This is where we're actually going to start off with a configuration of three point zero twelve stainless steel solid needles. Unlike syringe needles, tattooing needles are solid. It's placed down into the tube. The ancient technology of rubber bands is just to give some flexibility to the needle so that it has the possibility of moving around within the context of that tube. And the bag, of course, protects it from any cross contamination. Once we step on the peddle, we're getting the DC current running through the machine which is causing the coils to magnetize, drawing the armiture bar down, very quickly. And when that circuit is broken it demagnetizes and then the spring tension draws it back up and it does this back and forth motion very much in the order of a door bell system or a car point system. So it's now moving at about three thousand repetitions per minute. Each machine runs at a different speed, each machine has it's own set of spring tension, depending on what it's function is, for line work or for color, or using larger configurations. Needles can go anywhere from one to twenty five for the outline and on the shading I've worked up to fifty needles in a cluster."