'A piece of tattoo history': Greensburg shop owner earns patent for machine design

Greensburg tattoo shop owner Nick Christofano has inked himself into the industry history books.

After 28 years in the business, Christofano received a patent late last year for a tattoo machine he designed.

“Tattooing has been such a huge part of my life. I’ve been doing it nearly 30 years,” said Christofano, owner of Unique Ink in Greensburg. “It makes me feel like I own a piece of tattoo history, and that means a lot to me.”

A native of Greensburg’s Hilltop neighborhood, Christofano started teaching himself how to tattoo after graduating from Greensburg Salem High School. The tattoo culture caught his eye.

“The music, the artwork, the tattoos, I’m a motorcycle enthusiast — so that whole culture kind of went hand-in-hand,” said Christofano, 46, of Hempfield.

A lifelong artist, Christofano has always been drawn to tattoo designs — even those sketched on paper.

“It’s kind of hard to explain, but I like tattoo art — the things that look like tattoos regardless of being a tattoo,” he said. “You can see tattoo designs on T-shirts, coffee mugs, whatever, but to me, they always just say ‘tattoo.’ ”

Opening his own shop — which celebrated its 25th birthday last year — felt like a no-brainer.

“It’s difficult for artists to kind of pursue careers and actually make a living,” Christofano said. “I think it’s a hard field to be in — the art field.

“Tattooing kind of lends itself to making a living and doing art.”

Patented tattoo gun

At the same time Christofano was teaching himself tattoo design, he was learning metalworking, manufacturing and welding — the skills that would earn him a patent decades later.

“I always tell people a large portion of my customers are industry guys” working as welders, machinists and manufacturers, Christofano said.

“I’ve become friends with them over the years, and when they’re sitting here for three hours getting tattooed, I get to pick their brain and talk to them about their industry job. I’ve learned a lot from that.”

And since better equipment equals a better tattoo, Christofano set out in 2019 to perfect the tools in his West Pittsburgh Street shop.

After a year and a half of developing prototypes, Christofano began sharing models of a new tattoo machine with fellow artists across the country — gathering their feedback as he went.

Among them was Brian Corley, who has worked with Christofano nearly 15 years.

“I know he wanted me to try it, and I’m always leary about new stuff, because I have machines that did my job for years,” said Corley, who has been in the field three decades.

“But I still had to give it a try, and it just blew me away how good it is,” he said. “Seriously, once I started using it more and more and more, it became almost like a game-changer for me. The ease of how it works is just so nice. It just makes my job easier.”

With the help of an attorney, Christofano filed his patent request in 2022. Two years later, it was approved.

Creating clearer tattoos

As tattoo needles puncture the skin, Christofano said, they create thousands of tiny wounds. In the body’s instinctual effort to heal, the affected skin can become inflamed.

Christofano’s machine design features a reworked armature bar, a component that helps stabilize and control needle movements. Though the recipient can’t feel any difference during application, the machine reduces trauma to the skin and results in a clearer tattoo, Christofano said.

“It lets the tattoo heal nicely so you get nice, beautiful, clear, bright, saturated tattoos with little to no trauma to it,” he said.

Deviating from the traditional tools is rare in the local tattoo scene, said Corley — who spent a decade running his own tattoo shop in Pittsburgh’s Oakland neighborhood before taking an artist slot at Unique Ink.

“There’s not too many machine builders doing anything different,” said Corley, of West Mifflin, “so it is a bit rare. I could probably count on one hand the people (I know) who use something different and, as far as I know, they don’t have a patent.”

In Christofano’s eyes, manufacturing and art go hand-in-hand. His parents often joke he was meant to become an engineer.

“I feel like it was a contribution,” Christofano said of his tattoo machine.

“People tell you to find something and leave it better than you found it. That’s what it makes me feel with tattooing — like I had something to offer back to it.”