UNIVERSAL NEEDLES OR CUSTOMIZED NEEDLES?

While each PMU artist must find her/his own path and style, let’s clarify the differences between universal needles and customized needles for the dermograph or machine being used.

Universal needles have the significant advantage of generally being less expensive and can be used on dermographs produced by different companies. However, due to the intense price competition among various vendors, the quality of these needles has declined over time. They often use lower-priced stainless steel that releases large amounts of chromium and nickel, with rather approximate soldering and sharpening, which forces professionals to use more than one needle per treatment. Moreover, their cross-contamination protection systems (the famous membranes) have become less effective.

Fortunately, this “race to the bottom” has found its counterpoint in “custom” or “tailored” needles, which are permanent makeup needles designed to be installed exclusively on the machinery made by the same manufacturer. In this second category of dermopigmentation needles, we find established manufacturing companies that tend to offer superior quality, both in terms of raw materials and components used, the guarantee of sterilization, and their technical characteristic of forming a “ONE WITH” the micropigmentation machine.

It is technically and scientifically proven that universal needles, in order to be compatible with the highest number of tattoo machines from different manufacturers, are necessarily required to have significant dimensional tolerance. This results in the following issues during permanent makeup treatment:

– Vibrations
– Cartridge fluttering
– High noise levels

Additionally, these universal needles, having to fit many different dermographs, have variable lengths of plungers/transmission rods. As a result, the strokes of the machine cams are almost never respected, possibly working at a 2.5 mm stroke when the machine was bought to operate at a 3 mm stroke.

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