On our website, there are traditional needles and cartridge needles. Also, it is easy to distinguish them. A traditional tattoo needle comes with a long bar. Some ones come with a blue dot, which means sterilized. Traditional tattoo needles are designed for coil tattoo gun and traditional rotary tattoo machines.
A cartridge needle comes with a tattoo tip. In other words, a cartridge needle is something that combines tattoo needles and tattoo tip. Cartridge needles are designed for pen-style tattoo machines and cartridge tattoo machines.
Understand tattoo needles
1 Tattoo needle taper
1.1 Types of needle taper
A taper is the head part of a needle, calculating from where it gets sharpened to the tip. Tapers from 3 to 5mm are medium tapers. Shorter than 3mm are short taper, but no shorter than 1.5mm. A Long taper is a taper whose distance is 5 to 6 mm. Those with more than 6mm tapers, for example, 8mm, are called extra-long taper needles.
1.2 The difference between medium tapers and long tapers
The taper length influences how much ink is distributed from the needles. The longer the tapers are, the less ink comes out. Therefore, tattoo artists depend on this characteristic to choose appropriate types for different purposes. Medium taper needles allow a moderate amount of ink to come out, so tattooists often use them for thick lines or outside layers. More ink distribution means they can do the job more quickly. Moreover, more ink distributed also means less precision, which is suitable for medium or thick lines. On the other hand, long taper needles dispense a small amount of ink while working, appropriate for thin lines and details requiring extremely high precision and concentration. Therefore, tattoo artists need a long time for meticulous detail.
In my previous blog there are many posts about tattoo needle knowledge. Go there and learn more.