Cheyenne Hawk Pen Failure

[tnglc]

I got my Hawk Pen in Wednesday. Ran it about half an hour that day. Was off yesterday but put about 6 hours on it today grinding out work with the quickness. Started my last tattoo of the night on the apprentice, ran two lines and the Pen went down. Could tell the motor was still running, but the drive bar was staying retracted 100% of the time.
So, I have 15+ years machinist and maintenance experience prior to my tattoo career, mostly working with tolerances of +/- .0005 inches. I also run a small CNC shop here at the house. Figured I would take the guy apart and see what happened. SO here's the deal:

The drive bar mechanism is wonderful. I am astonished at the engineering of it, and with my past experience I would not change a thing about it.
But obviously the problem is deeper than that.
The working mechanism is three pieces, I will call them disc, bearing and offset shaft. The offset shaft is essentially a piece of rod with a hole drilled at an angle through it to set it at an angle to the motor's spindle. It is pressed into the bearing and the two of them into the disc. This assembly is also nice and I would not change a thing about it.
Now the issue, the offset shaft is simply pressed onto the motor spindle. When put under any duress it will spin freely on the spindle as there is no set screw, breaching, keys or anything to prevent it from slipping. After measuring the motor's spindle and the hole in the offset shaft it is apparent that the tolerance is not tight enough to hold up over time and pressure. There are a couple solutions to this problem, one of which I am going to test tomorrow and see how well it holds up. This is something any user can do given the correct instructions which I will post if it is effective enough to put my name on. The other option will require some machining on my end and would not be possible for most users as it is micro machining.

I will update you all as I experiment a little in solving this issue permanently. I personally feel Cheyenne engineers dropped the ball on this one. It is a great machine, lines and handles well, but if it doesn't hold up, well....its trash.

[asA]

I've seen a handful of people complaining of similar issues.

[Patrick]

Considering how freaking expensive this machine is, this seems like an issue that should have been addressed and fixed during the r&d stage of development. Don't get me wrong, I love my Thunder. But this machine seems a bit rushed and not much of an improvement on previous Cheyenne models.
Lame.
I'll stick with my stylus.

[tnglc]

I will say that the over all engineering is nice quality, and the machine runs very nice. I was almost able to line as fast with it as with the same groupings in a coil. The ability to change the angle of the mag groups without affecting the balance of the machine also speeds things up (shading off of left hand lines being a righty feels and looks much smoother).

I ordered expecting a little trouble, but something IMO that is this stupid was unexpected. Friction based attachment does work, but in this instance it is not the appropriate form of attachment. After a little more thought last night I believe they wanted to avoid a balancing issue caused by putting a set screw in the offset shaft. If that is the case, I mark it in my book as plain lazy. If they just didn't think about it, plain ignorant. I just have a hard time accepting that they made such a huge mistake.

[tnglc]

I used an adhesive for tool and die making that is similar to JB Weld, only thinner and removable on the motor spindle. Works fine now. Given the strength of the adhesive, I would say I will no longer have this issue as it is technically a chemical weld. While I used Masterbond EP21AR which is not the easiest stuff to source, I would suggest using plain old super glue if you encounter this issue. I intend on writing a walk through on machine dis-assembly and this repair soon.

[needlemaniak]

Thank you tnglc for these informations, very precise and helpful ! I now know that I won't buy an Hawk pen 😉


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[OwlsDen]

Hope you do make the walk thru.

[nivek]

Hope you do make the walk thru.

Or better yet the fix a pretty basic design flaw.. I wonder if the patent includes the flaw...

[MR-NME]

I bought the pen and a brand new version criticaltattoo power supply with kickstart feature and when I load a cheyenne cart of any size - it don't kick on until 11.5volts- and t-tech at 9.8 volts- this also is an issue and I know I'm not the only one this has happened to- I've heard it does the same with the cheyenne psu2- this should have been addressed before sales release wtf?

[darkness]

by a coworker its stopping working after 10min with cheyenne needles ,any was solving inside and the carts dont run -but you hear the motor running