Setting the Correct Voltage- Tattoo University

Nik Durant here with

tattoo

University and today I'm going to show you how to set your

tattoo

machine to the proper

voltage

before you start tattooing and how to check your machine and needle to make sure everything is working properly so you can tattoo.

correct

ly, I'm

setting

up my station for a tattoo right now. Typically I would have my power supply covered, it would be wrapped. I haven't started tattooing yet and I need to show you how this works so I don't have this finished yet so you can see my numbers. I really believe in protection and that everything should be covered, including your tattoo machine.

It is a safety issue that must be followed before putting it in the bag, although you must ensure that this is the case. It's working properly that way, you don't need to modify it while it's covered, which makes your life a little more difficult, so you prepare everything first and then you cover everything. This is probably an area where a lot of artists make the mistake of just turning up the

voltage

and just going to town on someone and just hammering a tattoo on them that will bleed and scab a lot and not look good because they don't follow this procedure and don't set up. machine. so that it works and works

correct

ly with the correct voltage and you are not just increasing the voltage because you think that will make it work, you are simply going to do a tattoo and you will adjust the voltage until it is correct and it works for what you are doing and how you are tattooing and that is a skill that will improve your tattoos 100%, so after making sure I don't have too much tension on my rubber bands, the needle is set up correctly. the machine is set up correctly and ready to go.

I'm going to start with a very low voltage. I'll just slow it down to the point where I know the machine will barely work and I'll put my foot down. Now you can see my machine is running, but here's what you have to be careful about, the machine is running, but if I put a little bit of resistance against this truss rod nipple, it will stop and then I will slowly go up. my voltage until the machine turns on so I have four volts the machine turned on but you can hear it doesn't have all the power it needs and if I put my finger right here I can stop it very easily so if I stop this and I have moved it and it will start again, some people call it as a jump start or jump start, which means your machine doesn't have much power to run, you have to crank it up to get it to start. what your finger does is simulate the skin when you put your finger under the truss rod you are simulating this needle hitting the skin and whether this truss rod is going to continue pushing the needle into the skin or will it stop, so if I just put my finger here and it stops the needle that tells you that the needle, if it hits the skin, it will stop the armature bar and it won't go into the skin and it will leave the pigment, it will touch the skin and it will bounce back.

It will look like you have a tattoo, but that tattoo will heal and fade because you need enough force for the needle to enter the skin. People have different terminology for sweet spot, but the term I use for sweet spot is when you hear your machine clicking and you know it's working properly and has enough power to run. You can hear it, you can hear it when it cuts out and you know you're good, that's the sweet spot because you know it's good, it's going to work and you can hear it if you do this I'm going to turn the machine on and slowly increase my voltage here until I can hear the machine do click and work correctly.

Did you hear the change in the sound of the machine? I turn it down again and I'll turn it up again, okay, it's barely kicking on the first step here as I turn up the voltage, it will turn on, it might even start listening, that won't attack anyone, it's just the machine. Now listen as I turn this up, you can hear it get a little more power when it goes up. Did you hear that? Lower it again. I'm going to do this one more time. You have to listen to your machine. I'm going to emphasize this point.

I'll do it one more time. Listen, don't just listen to the Machine. I don't put it close so you can hear it. Close your eyes and listen to the Machine. Don't even look. There is no video anymore, just close your eyes and listen to your machine. The tattooing part is looking, feeling, listening and that's how I know while I'm tattooing if something isn't working properly, because if my machine doesn't sound like it should, something's not working. working properly you have too much tension on the elastic bands something is blocking the tip you know something is not quite right if your machine doesn't sound right so close your eyes and just listen to the machine right there while I listen to the machine click and work properly .

I know it will get tattooed, but it can still be a little soft on the stroke if I put my finger here. Look how it still stops it a little bit, so if I was doing very light shading, I could tattoo it properly. there, but if we want to do some solid line work, I'm at four point seven, let me turn this up another point five volts, let's go to five point five and start there. Oh, it was running at four point seven, but we turned it around. up to five point five now if I put my finger here it's probably going to hit and not stop it so now we know there's enough force at four point seven this would probably be a tattoo but very lightly I want to get a lot of penetration with the needle so we just turn it up a little bit to make sure we get the right amount of voltage and then if you give your machine too much voltage, it gets hot, it gets really hot, your coils get hot once they get hot, it doesn't work properly, so that you have to turn it up higher because you actually lose some of the magnetism once the coils get hot, but if you leave it as low as you can but it will still work properly, your machine won't heat up now.

This is a mistake that many of you make. I can tattoo here. This is the sweet spot I can tattoo since there is voltage. My duties at 55 my vaults are as low as possible with this machine and they still work. get a nice tattoo that will heal properly, but what many of you do is buy your tattoo machine and set it to 8 volts. 8 volts is the magic number because that's what I hear all the time, all 8 volts, 8 volts. All along what you have done is simply turn your tattoo machine into a jackhammer. You know that if you turn it up to 8, this thing will just hit your finger, no matter what you do, this thing won't stop and you know that it will tattoo someone, but the problem is that you are scarring that person, you are causing too much damage, you are warming up your machine to run it even more to compensate for the fact that your machine is not tuned properly. you increase the voltage that's not the way to tattoo you want to tattoo correctly it's easy to tattoo it's difficult to tattoo correctly start with a small amount of voltage and just turn it up until you hear it working get the sweet spot you just want you have to be careful if you want to shade, leave it there, but if you want to make a continuous line, let's be a little more careful, let's give it another point, five volts or maybe one volt, but don't turn it all the way up. eight or just don't turn this knob up as high as you can because you know that's going to tattoo someone but it's going to hurt, you're going to go too deep, they're not going to look at your tattoos, it's going to look bad, so don't do it. do not do it