Original Post: December 18th, 2017 In this latest installment I am elaborating on rotary stroke characteristics. What exactly is happening when the motor rotates the cam, which moves the yoke, which makes the needle go up and down. It may seem simple, but there are some characteristics to this movement which you may not realize but knowing these characteristics will help you chose a more appropriate machine and may even help you tattoo better.  Below is a diagram I drew of an offset cam. Any rotary tattoo machine that you can buy has an offset cam. It is how the...

Original Post: July, 20th, 2017 My previous posts have been describing the stroke characteristics of liners and shaders. Liners and shaders both have distinctly different ideal stroke characteristics to make them best suited for the job they are intended to do. With the liner being tuned to be snappy, strong but still respond to the skin and the shader being powerful, still responsive while having a stroke that eases in to the skin and slows down just a touch before the backstroke. As far back as the beginning of modern electric tattooing tattooers have used two different tools for lining...

Original Post: March 1st, 2017 The following is a conversation I had with an artist via e-mail where we discussed many of the questions that I'm frequently asked. i asked for permission to post it here to be resource for others looking for the same answers. Please enjoy! Hello joshuaIm a tattoo artist in France, I’ve been tattooing for 5 years andI've always worked with coils. I've only tried a rotary neotat and a Hawk Thunder machines for a time but I dont like it, the machines dont have force to penetrate solid ,i miss the slap of coils.I read...

Original Post: February 20, 2017 I've been asked countless times what the stroke length is on my machines, if I can do custom strokes for someone who currently uses a 3.5mm and loves it and ultimately, why I don't do custom stroke lengths on my machines. In short, the stroke length on my machines are right about 4.5mm, I don't manipulate this because it is directly responsible for the tune and stroke characteristics that I've designed into my machines. Let me explain.  Many people are mistaken that a shorter cam offset on a rotary makes for a faster machine. For example...