Anyone else break the spring in a neotat?

[bretttattoos]

I had my vivace rebuilt by Ray about four or five months ago and went from the old style 4.2 cam to a 3.5 magic drive. I absolutely love the machine. It's capable of anything and super smooth and quiet.

Well Friday I was lining with a 7rl ttech at 10.2v on a critical cx1 and it started making a rattle sound after about a half hour of lining and then became a full on rattle trap shortly after. I just setup another machine to finish the tattoo and then when I had time to mess with the neotat I noticed the spring was broke. Took it apart and it broke into three pieces. I had the red spring which from what I gather is best for regular needles or for lining because of the higher tensile strength. I've noticed that the machine gets warm when I run it over 10 volts or so with carts, and I've messaged ray about it and got no response. Now that I have a broke spring I messaged him again but I will call neotat tomorrow and talk with someone.

I was just curious if anyone else had broken a spring in these machines ?
Also, how do you like the silver spring versus the red ?

[artoftatt2]

If your running carts you have to take the spring out

[slicksteel]

I have found the lowest tension spring works great on them and provides just a bit of return up pressure to make them not rattle and run smoother-you can even get softer then the neotat one. The softer one was stock for years and then they found out that the harder one worked better with stock needle setup.Especially when using higher volts for line or bigger groups. The sound your getting is from lash-the amount that the slide is sling back and forth against the cam bearing. Of course you have to have a small amount of lash or it will bind up and the motor would not have the power to turn. A spring provides pressure against the upswing of the slide as with out it your actually putting more strain on the motor to completely pull the slide up and the needle out of the skin. But the key is to get the right tension spring(pressure) to allow and easy down swing with out putting to much slamming force on the upstoke .Which leads to the spring getting broke. So if you combine your harder spring and the return tension of the cart-it is just to much.
So if you see a direct drive orbital it has a easier time running a cart because it does not have to pull up a slide nor does it have to work against its shelf by being not allowed to spin naturally.So sure you can make a slider direct drive work with carts-but they were really never designed to. They were made to drive a rigid bar in a straight line.
Of course this is just my opinion on having tons of slider/direct drives and trying different needle/spring setups with them. Paired with information we all ready know. Slides and cams have been around a very long time.

[bretttattoos]

Yea the vivace sounds like shit with no spring , but I think I'm going to order some springs from unimax or whoever sells them

[cagelavey]

Yeah defiantly don't run carts on red spring, but the lightest spring they have works great with carts. Been using mine that way for bout a year and a half without any adverse effects. Starts at five volts and no heat at all. Ray even recommended the light spring to me for using carts, best way to go.😁