This hacked 3D printer-turned-tattoo machine has a built-in panic lever, which I would be hammering furiously at every opportunity

pcgamer.com:

I have precisely one tattoo, which I paid a trained artist an exorbitant amount of money to ink into my pasty skin. YouTuber Emily The Engineer may have developed a more cost-effective solution, however, as she's cracked open a 3D printer, bypassed its firmware, equipped it with a tattoo gun—and even found a willing volunteer to test it out.

Don't worry about the test subject's safety, though—there's a handy machine-halting panic lever installed for when they inevitably realise they've made a terrible mistake.

As Emily points out, she's printed a «ton of stuff» over the years, not least this world's largest Benchy boat attempt (via Hackaday). However, «printing» on a human is a brave new frontier, and began with the merciless tearing apart of an old 3D printer frame capable of mapping out the X and Y axis of a 2D design.

Then began a process of convincing the printer to ignore things like temperature and medium variables, before a few 2D pen sketches were drawn on test paper and the back of Emily's hand.

A small amount of Z-hop was added in between strokes to prevent unintended lines, before the printer was deemed ready for the inclusion of a tattoo machine.

To add to the fear factor, Emily admits that the first time she ever touched a tattoo machine was for the purposes of this build. Still, it wasn't long before the machine was installed on the print head, and a rough design was inked onto practice material.

A problem soon became apparent, however. The machine can only «print» accurately on flat surfaces, whereas Emily's (somewhat) willing test subject, Dan, wanted a design on his leg. Legs are not flat. So rather than re-engineer the entire apparatus, a bracket was made to flatten out the top of Dan's thigh to squish it into a flat surface.

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A lever-controlled solenoid was also added, which lifts the entire tattoo machine vertically off the surface if something were