Eli5 why do tattoo machines not cut your skin?

Question

I see it all the time in videos. The tattoo artist pulls a line on the skin, but the needle part needs to be deep into the skin to deposit the ink, so how does it keep pulling the line without cutting the skin?

In: 12

Answer 1

You can barely see as it’s too fast but the needle goes in not that deep and pulls out quite far so it stabs in and as you move pulls out, there’s a speed that you do it that allows it to move fairly smoothly, if you did it really fast it probably would damage the skin maybe ripping.