Tattoo Machine Tuning

[dan1chris2]

Hello,

I was wondering if anyone had any tips on tuning a tattoo machine. I am having a little trouble tuning my machines. When I bought them they did not come already tuned. It seems like they keep sputtering or worse they just do not move. The contact screw is set at the 1 o'clock position and the gap varies between the width of a dime to a width of a nickel. When I run the machine it says i am running at 9 volts. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks,
Dan

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[Lucy Locket]

Hello,

I was wondering if anyone had any tips on tuning a tattoo machine. I am having a little trouble tuning my machines. When I bought them they did not come already tuned. It seems like they keep sputtering or worse they just do not move. The contact screw is set at the 1 o'clock position and the gap varies between the width of a dime to a width of a nickel. When I run the machine it says i am running at 9 volts. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks,
Dan

It could be a number of things.
Here is what i would try first:
Shimming your coils

First, in order to check to see if your coils need to be shimmed you should hold your tattoo machine in front of you at eye level...then press the armature bar down and check to see if the top of the front coils center core hits the bottom of the armature bar before the rear coil does... it they both hit at the same time, or if the rear coil hits first, then its time to shim the coils. What you want is for the front coil to hit the armature bar and the back coil to be just a hair short from hitting the armature bar.

Now in order to shim the coil you first must determine what coil you are going to shim... If the back coil is hitting the armature bar then unscrew the front coil from the bottom of the frame and lift the coil up enough to slide a shim under the coil and put the screw back in and tighten. Now press the armature bar down again and recheck the distance between the armature bar and the top of both of the coils center core.

Again the front coil should hit first and the rear coil should be just a hair short from hitting the armature bar. If the front coil hits first but you have a lot of space between the rear coil and the armature bar then you should shim the rear coil so that the rear coil is just a hair short of hitting the armature bar. Now you may ask yourself "what is a shim?".....well a shim is a flat washer that comes in many shim sizes from most tattoo supply companies....or do like I do and just go to your local hardware or
electronics store.

After you adjust your shims make sure that you check the distance between the armature bar and the coil.

It could also be that you have got a bad contact somewhere.

Have a look and make sure that where your rear binding post connects to the frame that the little plastic spacer washer is in tact, and the same with the front binding post.

If these two items are touching the frame in any way, you are going to have major problems.

Here is an image with the parts list if you are not sure.

Have you seen the tuning guide in our downloads section. It is quite good. Just make sure for starters that evrything tallies up.