HM adjustable Direct Drive review.

[MickWrath]

Ok as promised here is my review of Roman's new HM Adjustable Direct Drive Rotary. First let me start by saying Roman, aside from being one of the nicest guys you will ever meet, is very close to his customers. This not only applies to his amazing customer service but his willingness to make special runs of machines for those of us that need little adjustments to suit how we tattoo and what works for us. Seriously one of this industries best builders in every aspect. Now on to the machines...I've been running these guys with Ttechs and 1" tapered easy grips with amazing success in all fields. The fit, finish, and quality of the machines is top tier. The size of these machines actually surprised me a little as I expected a bigger and heavier machine than what it actually is. The balance is beautiful with a stainless grip and still very nice with disposables. The vice is very strong and secure and locks up very positive with no play. It's perfect. The RCA connection fits even cheap radio shack cords snug and secure and almost clicks in. The adjustability is very ingenious and very easy to use. The brass excenter has 4 notch lines on the base and 1 on the top dovetailed piece that simply slides to your stroke length, held in place by a case hardened Allen screw. The screw joins the pieces as one and locks very securely and there is no worry of play believe me. The powerful 22mm Maxon engine drives the machine very smooth, consistent, and almost silently. I use silicone tubing for grommets as it provides a very slight organic type cushion that takes that nail driving edge off of a direct drive machine. When paired with ttechs you get a beautiful coupling of a no give machine that is very forgiving. I'm running smaller groupings between 7-7.5 volts and larger groupings between 7.5-8 volts. When you set the stroke to 2.5mm the machine performs black and grey tasks with such forgiveness and smooth gradients it makes it almost effortless. Many black and grey machines set at 2.5 still require proper hand speed and hand technique to achieve powder smooth gradients but this is not the case with this machine set up with the silicone grommet and ttechs. My hand speed and technique had very little to do with how smooth the greys came out with Fusion premix. It was almost harder to not achieve smooth gradients than it was to achieve them which makes it very user friendly. It truly allows you to focus just on your artwork and less on application technicalities. The same was true for soft color blending when set from 2.5-3.5mm. Beautifully smooth, and opaque without complete saturation is very achievable within this stroke range and IMHO one of the hardest effects to achieve on skin. You move from 3.5-4.5 and you have yourself an amazing color workhorse. From solids to colorbomb, blended to complete saturation it can do it all. Larger mags from 15-27 work amazing in this stroke length range and the highest voltage I used was a solid 8 volts with a 27 #10 curved bugpin mag. Still beautifully consistent and smooth and very quiet with almost no vibration. Finally you move along to the 4.5-5.5 and you have yourself a solid color packer able to saturate the skin very quickly with very minimal trauma. I found my setup did not have the typical "very red" irritated skin look normally associated with DD machines, it was not red in any stroke length for any style. The machine works very quickly and even with multiple passes on blended b&g the irritation greyed out very quickly and had very little root beer type coloration. The skin had very little trauma. The 4.5-5.5 also makes for an amazing power liner able to push larger liner groupings and even my ttech 14 round shader in with no issues. This would be ideal for larger bold lines for newskool, bio, foreground/background seperation and back piece applications. Honestly this machine is the closest thing to an all arounder I have used. I didn't experiment with lining much as I like give with my standard 3,5,7 liners however those of you who like no give liners like the neo 4.2mm for lining I'm sure will have great success with this DD. Many of us know that DD's are notorious for eating elastics during a tattoo due to the pivotal motion the needlebar or pushbar have towards the back and middle section, however I still haven't broken a single one using standard black elastics. I would not change a single thing that Roman did on this machine, he quite literally got it perfect for a DD. It is IMHO the best DD made to date and I'm sure it will quickly become the new standard that all DD's are measured against. Mick-

[MickWrath]

Apparently I don't believe in paragraphs lol, sorry I wrote this on my iPhone haha.

[tattood]

damn all that on an Iphone.. thats dedication

[MickWrath]

Haha the dedication belongs to Roman I just typed, he did all the work. Oh and for the record I don't receive free machines or discounts from HM for a positive review. It's unbiased and honest. Just had to say that. Mick-

[Sage Oz]

I believe that it would be that good, his other machines are quite nicely made indeed!

[Nedz]

Haha the dedication belongs to Roman I just typed, he did all the work. Oh and for the record I don't receive free machines or discounts from HM for a positive review. It's unbiased and honest. Just had to say that. Mick-

Like it.

[peter clements]

I have mine set at 2.5 at the moment and like it so much for B&G it's making me reluctant to try out the other options. I agree with Micks' review ,this is a damn nice machine.

[peter clements]

P.S ,if I were to give T Techs a try, what options would you guys recommend?

[directDRIVE]

That's a neat little cam doo-hickey right there!

[MickWrath]

Peter buy an ez grip a long push bar and a short push bar, make sure you buy the correct size ball at the end of the rod. (It's the new smaller size) then since you have yours set up for black and grey I would suggest a box of #10 bugpin mags in the size you like. This would be a good way to test ttechs out. They are amazing with Halos, Inkjectas, Hyper V3's, but it's almost like they were made for this Adjustable DD.