eufyMake E1 UV printing system review – News 4 Social

eufyMake E1 UV printing system review – News 4 Social

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REVIEW – If you’re familiar with my past reviews, I recently wrote up a piece on the CZUR ET Max book digitizer. My exploits with digitizing and crafting have long led me down the winding road of at-home printing solutions. We had a dot matrix printer when I was a kid, and I remember learning about laser technology and thinking it was the coolest thing ever.

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While I’ve never worked in a professional print shop, I’ve learned a whole lot about modern printing (e.g. from digital, not analog, sources), and I am still on a mission to find the best at-home printing solution that offers durability and longevity. How does the eufyMake UV printing system fit in, and what can it do that existing solutions can’t?

⬇︎ Jump to summary (pros/cons)
Price: $1699.00
Where to buy: Kickstarter

The short version: this thing is amazing for printing directly on flat, solid surfaces. This comes with some caveats, but overall, the print capabilities of this system are unlike anything else currently available in the consumer marketplace. UV printing has been around for awhile; eufyMake has figured out a way to miniaturize this technology and make it accessible to regular people with a little income to invest in something that can turn quite a profit, if you have the mind and talent for it.

But first, let’s (quickly) cover the basics of printers. This will help you understand what UV printing is and is not, so you can decide if it’s the best fit for your needs and interests.

This review is longer than a postgrad thesis, so here’s a handy table of contents, in case you want to jump straight to a specific section.

A Primer on Printing

There are two types of printers typically used by consumers today: inkjet and laser. Inkjet printers use liquid ink, which is generally (but not always) water-based. The ink is forced through tiny nozzles onto the substrate (the target surface onto which you are printing). Regular home inkjet ink is water-based, which means two things: it absorbs and bleeds into absorbent substrates (including paper and wood), and it runs and splotches if any liquid comes into contact with it. This means that anything you print on a regular home inkjet printer needs to be laminated or sealed if it’s to be durable, and you need to use glossy photo paper to get really crisp prints. Glossy photo prints from a quality inkjet printer can look amazing, but they’re fragile and require protection immediately after the ink has dried, or you run the risk of damaging the print, because the ink is sitting on the plasticized glossy layer.

In contrast, laser printers use a different technology, invented at Xerox in 1969. Dry, pigmented toner is applied to the substrate using heat, which activates the toner and makes it sticky. The toner adheres to the substrate as it rapidly cools. This is why documents coming out of a laser printer are nice and warm, and it’s why anything printed with either a laser printer or a modern photocopier will transfer onto plastic and vinyl over time (especially if left in a hot car – ask me how I know!). Unlike water-based inkjet ink, laser toner only ever sits on the surface of the substrate, and can easily rub off if it doesn’t bond well. Really cheap sticker paper tends to not work well with laser printers for this reason – the paper is too rough, and the toner just doesn’t bond. It can be difficult to get good results with plasticized substrates, and the finished print still has to be laminated to be durable.

So, neither of these home printing options is very good for professional production. A high quality inkjet photo printer can absolutely produce stunning images, but you’ll need to invest big bucks if you want capable hardware. I’ve noticed a real decline in the general quality of consumer-grade home printers over the last couple of decades. It’s just how the market has gone, because so much stuff is paperless today. The average consumer doesn’t need a printer at all. OEMs are cutting corners in a big way, with some opting for aggressive DRM schemes which lock consumers into overpriced first-party consumables (cartridges).

If you’re looking for home printing solutions that allow you to produce quality durable goods with your own artistic creations, you have a few options, all of which require a pretty sizeable up-front investment.

A high-end inkjet printer from an OEM like Epson, who is still a leader in professional printers, will run you at least $600. The price jumps quickly for larger formats and the ability to print on a continuous roll of material, and with these printers, you’re still limited to just printing on paper and paper-like substrates. These professional inkjet printers are much higher resolution that consumer models, and generally use additional inks beyond the basic CMYK, which results in richer, brigher colors and a wider grayscale band.

Sublimation printing has become very popular more recently, and several companies manufacture retrofit kits for a variety of compatible home inkjet printers, which enable larger volume production. Sublimation ink is a special synthetic formulation of liquid ink which, when heat and pressure are applied, transfers to and instantly bonds with synthetic substrates. This is how “put your photo on it” type services do what they do. Sublimation has been around for a long time, and as the DIY and maker consumer markets have expanded, at-home sublimation is now very popular.

Like a regular inkjet printer, sublimation printing requires a white substrate, or the colors will not look right, since there is no white base layer under the colored inks. On the plus side, when it comes to metal, glass, and stoneware, sublimation treatments are baked enamels, which makes for a very durable, lasting, high-gloss finish. We have a photo mug from a family member that’s almost two decades old now, and it’s still in amazing condition after many cycles through automatic dishwashing with heated drying.

Sublimation printing on paper-thin PET plastic is also very durable. I made a mini version of one of my favorite tarot decks, the Chakra Wisdom Tarot, using a pack of sublimation business card blanks, and the result is stunning in both the color and durability.

Sublimated plastic is impervious to pretty much anything except aggressive physical damage. The majority of printed gadget folio cases are printed using sublimation on plastic substrates, because it’s inexpensive and rapid at commercial scale.

If you don’t already have a compatible printer (Epson in particular uses the right kind of inkjet printhead for sublimation ink), you’ll spend at least several hundred dollars on a printer (closer to $800 if you want a really quality photo printer), plus another $50-100 on sublimation ink, and you’ll need both a heat press and an oven if you want to produce durable goods in volume – which together might run you another $500-600. Sublimation also uses a number of consumables – shrink wrap, sublimation paper, and heatproof tape are all requirements for an efficient sublimation setup. If you use shrink wrap, you’ll want to invest in a decent heat gun – we picked up this Makita model for about $140.

As you can see, what starts out as a simple inkjet printer conversion quickly compounds, and you’ll find yourself spending close to a thousand dollars on additional hardware, tools, and supplies, just to get started.

Direct-to-film (DTF) printing is another option available which can be achieved with compatible consumer inkjet printers (with limitations). Like sublimation, DTF requires heat and pressure to activate and set the powder adhesive, which is applied after printing. This is important to note, because traditional DTF printing is not equivalent to UV DTF printing, which is part of the eufyMake system and will be covered in a separate review.

DTF printing with a regular consumer inkjet printer is limited to white substrates. Printer hardware designed for DTF printing includes white ink, which makes it possible to print a white base layer under the colored ink, allowing for bright colors on dark substrates. Dedicated DTF printers are still restricted to the commercial market, which means prices start at well over a thousand dollars for generic Chinese hardware and jump fast when you start looking at high-end hardware from reputable brands, which is worth the extra expense for the improved print quality.

Commercial hardware is also designed for use in commercial environments, which means maintenance can get costly, and you might waste a lot of productive hours struggling with color profile issues.

Both sublimation and DTF printing are at an advantage, because they make it easy to put images on textiles of all kinds. Both are also at a disadvantage, because they require the application of both heat and pressure, and not all substrates are friendly to these requirements. Additionally, if you end up putting together a mass production outfit, energy costs are something to keep in mind, since anything requiring heat necessarily uses more energy.

The Star of Our Show: UV Printing

Ultra-violet (UV) printing is a newer technology, enabled by the invention of polymer resins which set very rapidly when exposed to UV light. Like DTF, UV printing enables printing white underneath the color inks, because the resin can be formulated to be opaque. Unlike DTF, UV can also include transparent resin as a top coat, and unlike DTF, UV printing doesn’t require heat or pressure.

This opens up direct printing in a huge way. UV resins are liquid before curing, so they bond well to substrates like wood, canvas, unglazed stoneware, and powdercoated metals, while retaining the texture of the substrate.

There are a handful of UV printers currently available under $5,000, but all are designed for printing on flat substrates. These are great for making large stickers for application elsewhere (think vehicles, skateboards, surfboards, signage, and other large format applications), but they totally lack the ability to direct print on much of anything.

Enter the eufyMake E1, an all-new product from Chinese consumer electronics OEM Anker. You may already be familiar with Anker products – they have a pretty sizeable catalog of power products (chargers, cables, adapters, and battery packs) on Amazon. I’ve purchased a few of their power products over the years, which has left me with the impression that Anker puts thought into their engineering, and uses higher quality components than what you might find in competing generic products. I’m happy to say that, thus far, the eufyMake E1 is no exception.

What Makes the eufyMake E1 Unique

Unlike standard inkjet UV printers, which mechanically work like a consumer printer in many ways, the eufyMake E1 works a bit more like a 3D printer (but it is not a 3D printer), in that it can adjust the position of the substrate and the printhead across the Z-axis, as well as X and Y. This enables some pretty remarkable technology that has previously only been accessible to commercial producers with industrial equipment. Most obviously, this enables printing directly on physical objects with flat surfaces, like boxes, gadgets, gadget cases, mounted canvas, cutout wood shapes…the possibilities are very expansive.

Beyond this, though, Anker has developed a suite of AI-backed features in their existing eufyMake software, which was originally developed for their 3D printer. While the eufyMake E1 is not a 3D printer, it is capable of printing 3D textures on flat surfaces, and then covering that 3D relief with ink. The detail afforded by this feature, which relies on AI to achieve its stellar results, is truly remarkable. A similar feature allows printing an image on a canvas substrate with a texture applied, to make the finished product look like it’s real paint on canvas.

The hardware is well-designed. Polymer resins (which are generally hydrocarbon-based) of all kinds do weird things (like becoming sticky and messy) if left exposed to oxygen in particular, so regular printer maintenance is essential to proper mechnical function, and goes beyond what your inkjet printer has built into its firmware. I’m not particularly well-read on the nuances of commercial UV printing, but I suspect maintenance becomes a bear over time, especially given the concerns with microplastics in wastewater entering our water supplies. Anker thought this one through pretty thoroughly. A cleaning cartridge installs on the side of the printer, connecting to three ports.

One note here: the eufyMake E1 ships with a set of small rubber caps installed over the three ports on the cleaning cartridge slot. You need to remove these before installing the cartridge, and it’s a good idea to hold onto them, so you can put them back if you ever need to store the printer for an extended period of time. It’s important to keep the cleaning ports dust-free.

The printer has three different cleaning modes, and runs automatic maintenance routines if left idle. I haven’t unplugged my printer or powered it off when it’s not in use, and it wakes itself and clicks and whirrs intermittently throughout the day. Checking the app lets me know what it’s doing, and it’s possible to run all the maintenance tasks manually through the app.

What’s included?

Anker built a really nice package for the E1. I dislike how consumer hobbyist products often no longer include basic accessories and material, so you can hit the ground running. Everything listed below is included with the basic system.

• eufyMake E1 printer
• AC power adapter (a brick with a standard computer AC cord)
• Standard and mini flatbeds
• Standard and mini adhesive grip mats
• Air filter
• Yellow tinted protective goggles
• Four 2×3″ (50x70mm) ceramic magnets
• Hex key

The E1 Kickstarter bundle will ship with an ink kit, which includes six 100mL cartridges and a 380mL cleaning cartridge.

Additional Accessories and Materials

Anker also sent some other products for evaluation, which will be available for sale in the future.

• Rotary attachment
• DTF laminator for making permanent stickers (review coming soon!)
• Ink accessory kit:
  • Three white ink cartridges
  • One glossy finish cartridge
  • Cleaning cartridge
  • Mechanical maintenance kit
• The mechanical maintenance kit includes:
  • 20 foam cleaning swabs
  • 50 lint-free cleaning patches
  • 15 disposable nitrile gloves
  • Two silicone ink scrapers
  • Anti-rust lubrication oil
  • Ink cleaning solution

Anker also included a variety of interesting materials, which are covered later in this review. No MSRP information is available yet for these products.

• iPhone 16 cases (cases are also available for the 16 Max)
• Ceramic magnets (2×2″ and 2×3″)
• Ceramic coasters (3.5″ round)
• USB-powered light box
• 12×16″ metal posters
• 12×16″ wood panels
• 12×16″ wood-framed canvases
• 12 oz. handled double-walled stainless travel mugs with sealing lid
• 16 oz. stainless double-walled tumblers with lid for straw
• 18 oz. stainless double-walled water bottle with integrated straw

The Hardware: Design and Features

Behold, the eufyMake E1. This powerhouse is beefy. It’s heavy and large, requiring a stable work surface and, at minimum, a 55″ deep, 40″ wide footprint. The printer itself is fairly compact in depth, but the standard printbed can extend quite a bit outside the bounds of the printer. Since everything is controlled by motors and servos, you need to ensure there are no obstructions that might hinder the movement of the print bed during use, or you might risk mechanical damage. Motors and movement cause vibrations, so I recommend choosing a workspace that is very solid and stable. Any jostling of the unit while it’s in operation runs the risk of causing a print failure. My hardware is set up on a heavy-duty table we overbuilt from plywood and 2x4s.

The printer ships in a pallet-style box. The box lifts off the base from the top, which makes it much easier to extract the printer from its packaging. Everything is secured with high-density foam, and the box closes up with two velcro straps. You’ll want to hang onto all the packaging for future transport of the hardware, which will take up a bit of space, but the cavity inside the empty box is big enough to hold the product boxes for the other components.

If you’re familiar with either 3D printers or hobby plotters from brands like Silhouette and Cricut, the eufyMake E1 operates on similar mechanical principles. The inkjet printhead moves on the X axis, while the print bed moves on both the Y and Z axes.

It’s important to note here that, unlike a 3D printer or hobby plotter, the eufyMake E1 does not output vector paths directly. This is a raster printer – it prints horizontal lines of pixels as the printhead moves across the X axis, rather than moving the printhead and substrate along a vector path. The software rasterizes vectors when uploading, so for best results, you should export your vector projects as high-resolution raster images (make sure to use the physical dimensions of your project) before uploading.

Anker currently offers three print beds for the eufyMake E1, and two are included with the basic kit. The mini bed has a maximum print area of 3 1/2 x 13 1/8″, while the standard bed is a much larger 16 1/2 x 13 1/8″. There is also a rotary attachment available, which enables printing directly on drinkware (and other similarly-shaped objects).

The print beds slot into a docking port of sorts inside the main print area of the E1, and a large, easy-to-handle slider locks the bed into place. The data connection enables the E1 to identify the attached accessory immediately, and no user configuration is required. This has been reliable for me – I’ve been swapping between the two flat beds repeatedly for the last week, and I’ve never had any errors or failures in the E1’s recognition of the installed print bed.

The substrate (your target material) is securely attached to the print bed before you begin a project. The E1 includes grip mats (very similar to those used with hobby and commercial plotters), but I have discovered that it’s much easier to put down a piece of clear plastic, onto which I secure a project with double-sided tape. When printing on anything with a rough surface (like the cork underside of a coaster, or unfinished wood), tiny bits of material are left behind on the adhesive grip mat. Anyone who’s used a hobby plotter knows how useless grip mats can become over time, depending on the materials used. Protecting the grip mat with plastic will extend the longevity of the mat pretty much indefinitely, and you can find inexpensive plastic cover material (used for binding) on Amazon.

The grip mats are not printed with an alignment grid. I asked my Anker contact about this, and he explained that the advanced camera-based logic for accurate alignment doesn’t work with a printed grid. Using clear plastic adds another advantage here – you can lay it over a grid (for example, a cutting mat) to align your material so it’s straight, then transfer your clear plastic to the grip mat for printing.

The E1 is equipped with a camera and an array of lasers, which together are used to register the dimensions and position of substrates, for precise placement of images. My efforts with this have been mixed. I’m still experimenting with how to get the best results when trying to precisely align prints, especially when doing anything other than a full-bleed print. I made a set of tokens using illustrations from The Tarot of the Alchemical Magnum Opus, and it was difficult to get the images to print perfectly centered on the round tokens.

I have enough experience working with sublimation prints to know how valuable bleeds are with edge-to-edge printing, and the eufyMake E1 is similar. For best results, full print coverage needs a bleed of at least 1mm, if not a bit more. The plastic I use under my projects catches the overspray, and I can reuse a bit of plastic repeatedly until there’s enough overspray to interfere with new projects.

Along with clear plastic sheets, double-sided tape will be your best friend with the eufyMake E1, and since the printhead never comes into physical contact with your material, you can use inexpensive tape that just offers enough adhesion to keep materials from shifting as they’re printed. Anker included some 3M double-sided tape with the materials, but you can get away with using whatever you have handy. I found that wood tokens started slipping a bit after reusing tape half a dozen times, so you can get a little mileage out of your tape choice, depending on what you’re making.

For anything made with paper or paper-like material, stick with the adhesive on the grip mat. This is a low-tack adhesive printed in a pattern that reduces the total surface area of the adhesive and breaks it apart, making it much easier to remove paper damage-free. 3M also makes a double-sided tape featuring the same low-tack adhesive found on Post-It notes.

I also inquired about potential alternatives to grip mats, mostly because I dislike this solution as used with my Cricuts. My Anker contact explained that the company trialed various alternatives to grip mats, and found that the grip mat was the only solution that met all the requirements of the whole system. Since this machine doesn’t cut anything, your mats will stay in really good shape, as long as you take care of them.

The eufyMake E1 has no onboard display. There is a multicolor LED ring around the large start-stop button on the top of the machine, and a built-in speaker plays different musical sounds to indicate certain things, like when it boots, or when a print has been successfully queued for printing. It has built-in networking – both wifi and wired, which is great for situations where your wifi may be spotty in your maker space, or you just prefer the reliability of wired connections for your equipment. It also has Bluetooth for the initial configuration of the hardware, which is accomplished in either the iOS or Android app. I didn’t try the initial setup experience with the desktop software, but I did notice I was directed in the Windows application to complete the initial setup in the iOS app before it would do anything with the printer.

Unlike some consumer maker devices, the eufyMake does not need to remain connected to software (computer or mobile/tablet app) to run a print job. This is really great, because it means you can smoothly move between devices while it’s in use and easily keep track of what it’s doing. I have the eufyMake app installed on both my iPhone 12 and 9th generation iPad, along with the desktop application on three computers running Windows 10. Some prints take awhile, so I can leave the printer whirring away in the basement, go upstairs to watch a baseball game, and get notified on my phone when my print is done and ready for inspection (and astonishment, because let me tell you all something – this thing is really cool).

The top of the machine has ports for the six ink cartridges. I asked about the possibility of a CISS system for this hardware, and my Anker contact told me such a product is currently in development, so I’m going to stay tuned to what the latest is on that.

CISS refers to “continuous ink supply system” – this is what commerical print shops use to do large volume inkjet printing. Rather than churn through cartridges, which are expensive to produce and generate a lot of garbage, commercial shops use large containers of ink with hoses that feed into the printhead. On a much smaller scale, sublimation printing with consumer inkjet printers has really taken off, and there are a number of CISS options for a wide range of printers from manufacturers like Canon and Epson.

The announced MSRP of the ink kit sits at a cool $299. If you just look at the cost of the ink and don’t factor in consumption of the cleaning cartridge (which is part of the kit), this comes out to fifty cents per milliliter, per cartridge. If this sounds expensive, it’s useful to look to the eufyMake ink consumption estimate, which displays in the software before sending your final project to the machine. I printed a full-bleed 6×8 image for use with the light box, and it only consumed about $0.25 in CMYK ink. At least one layer of white ink was also required for this project, and that added quite a bit to the total ink consumption, but it still kept the total expense at only $1.47.

Note: the ink estimate is available after sending a job to the printer. You can cancel the print job from the software if you’re unhappy with the consumption estimate and want to make adjustments to your project. I’ve used this spreadsheet to provide an estimated cost for the total ink consumption of a given project. The prices do not include the cost of the substrate.

What this means is a few important things: this system is not priced for hobbyists, at least not in this first generation of the technology. The required consumables will add up if you endlessly print random stuff that ends up in the garbage. It is, however, excellent for professional users who are looking for a way to make really innovative products with original artwork and high-resolution photography. The total cost of operating this printer is relatively low, even when restricted to the expensive disposable cartridges.

I am not an artist, unfortunately. I am very creative and love crafting, but I’ve never been one for making something from nothing at all. Luckily, I’m acquaintances with one of my favorite tarot artists, Robert M. Place, who has graciously allowed me to use his artwork in my projects with the eufyMake E1 system. I also think showcasing original art will really highlight the novel product opportunities available with this system.

All About eufyMake’s UV Resin Ink

As explained thus far, this printer uses a type of polymer resin which rapidly cures when exposed to UV light. The details of Anker’s specific formulation are unavailable, so some experimentation will be necessary to determine what materials will work best for your creations.

The white and black inks are formulated differently from the three colors (cyan, magenta, and yellow). The result is that the cured white and black inks have a glossy finish, while the colored inks are flat. It also means that if you print on a glossy white substrate, the whitest parts of the image will show the gloss of the substrate more noticeably than darker printed areas. Hilariously, this makes Larry David’s bald head shiny on this coaster I made for a friend.

One of the downsides of resin printing is that it sits on the surface of the substrate, so very glossy substrates with no friction are susceptible to surface damage. I have a sizeable stock of materials for sublimation projects, so I’ve been using those products as well as what Anker sent with the printer. Sublimation printing does not use white ink, which means most non-textile blanks are bright white. This can save quite a bit of money over needing to use white ink with every project and product.

Metal is the most difficult substrate to deal with, because metal with no texture just doesn’t have enough friction for most inks, paints, and pigments to remain really permanent. This is why enamel paints are often used with metal, and why baked-on finishes are the best option for durability. I found with my metal sublimation blanks, the very glossy surface of the baked-on sublimation treatment is not friendly to edge damage at all, and the edges of full-bleed prints are susceptible to chipping. This is less of an issue with wall art and other things that won’t be handled often, but it might be a problem with keychains and jewelry. I plan on experimenting with different sealers and enamels to figure out what I can use with the resin ink to make it more permanent on glossy metal.

The very glossy surface of my sublimation tags also helps illustrate very well how the finished print looks: it feels similar to silkscreening done with a very fine mesh. The effect is very nice, and makes for a sharp, detailed image with a slightly textured surface. This is different from sublimation, which bonds with the substrate so that the glossy texture and finish of the substrate remains unchanged.

Contrasted with the chipping I’ve experienced with both metal tags and acrylic keychains designed for sublimation, I’ve successfully done some beautiful prints on MDF laminated with a white sublimation substrate, and the print seems to be more durable, although I did find a few small surface scratches on a coaster I made. So, when it comes to determining what sort of products you want to produce for resale, it’s important to do your own durability tests with friends and family before selling products to the general public.

The stainless steel drinkware Anker sent with the eufyMake E1 is all treated with white powder coating. I suspect this is primarily to facilitate better ink adhesion. The coating is bright white, which means it’s possible to print a full color design without using any white ink. This makes for a reasonably inexpensive product that can be sold at a higher markup, but I will note that Anker’s product designs in this area leave a little room for improvement.

The 12 oz. handled travel mug uses a pretty standard lid, so it’s easy to find replacements of different types online. The 16 oz. tumbler uses a slightly smaller lid, which means it’s an odd diameter, making replacement lids harder to find. The 18 oz. water bottle has an integrated spout and straw, which are vectors for bacteria and mold. All three models sport an exposed stainless steel band around the rim, but this design makes it harder to do a full-bleed print with perfect coverage, particularly if print alignment is off by even a tenth of a millimeter. Additionally, the 12 oz. handled travel mug doesn’t feature a removable handle, which means it’s impossible to get full 360-degree coverage with a design. I recently purchased some 40 oz. tumblers for a sublimation project, and they have removable handles, mostly because the plastic handle won’t hold up to a sublimation oven. A similar design would be useful for handled drinkware designed for the eufyMake E1.

Since laser engraving has become a pretty sizeable sector of the home maker market, there are a plethora of powder-coated stainless steel drinkware options available on Amazon and elsewhere. While I appreciate that Anker is looking to offer a wide range of materials to get artists off to a strong start with this system, I’ll probably source additional products from other vendors.

Both unfinished stoneware (ceramic, fired clay, etc.) and wood take UV ink very well. The porous nature of these substrates means the ink holds on tightly to all the microscopic peaks and valleys, making for a secure bond that should be reasonably durable through normal wear and tear. If you’re like me, and you cringe at the feel of unglazed ceramic (just thinking about it makes my skin crawl), keep a pair of gloves handy! In most cases, you’ll want to print a white base layer so your colors are nice and rich. Depending on your project, though, you can just print with CMYK, and the color and texture of your substrate will remain visible.

When working with wood substrates, the depth of the grain and color of the wood dramatically influence the appearance of the final project. I picked up an assortment of laser cut wood blanks designed for use with a laser cutter or engraver, and the neutral tone of the wood, combined with the unobtrusive grain, allows for printing without a white base layer. Notably, the smaller the image, the more detail will be lost in the pattern of the woodgrain. Small images with a lot of bold outines and blocky colors look great, though!

The eufyMake E1 system includes a cartridge filled with transparent glossy UV resin, but I think this might become rather expensive when producing a large volume of product. I’ve had very good success using regular gloss Mod Podge, and any similar acrylic sealer should work without issue with E1’s ink formulation.

Polymer resins can do funny things when they come into contact with certain solvents and chemicals, so when it comes to finishing wood, you’ll need to do some testing to make sure your sealer of choice is compatible with the resin.

Although this system is using a polymer that essentially cures into a layer of hard resin, it’s a very thin layer, which means any imperfections in your substrate are easily visible through a printed image. You can mitigate this different ways, depending on your project and needs. It’s possible to build a resin base for your print by choosing the “flat raised” print option, but because the machine doesn’t know to use extra resin in any depressions in the substrate to level out the material, any imperfections will still show through. This token was originally printed with no raised white resin base, and then reprinted with half a millimeter of white resin. The pits in the wood are still very visible, even through a thick layer of resin.

Priming the surface of your substrate so it’s smooth and level will go a long way toward getting the best results from the machine with the least amount of ink. If you are unfamiliar with the world of artistic media and how to prepare a surface to take ink, check out a book or website on the basics – there are different compounds, tools, and techniques you can use for priming pretty much anything, and since this resin is polymer-based, anything designed for use with synthetic polymers should be compatible with eufyMake’s ink.

Do note something important along the way, here: this printer cannot print on textiles that are meant to be left loose and unmounted. While the resin layer remains flexible, it is not infinitely so, and will crack when put under the demands of loose fabric. If your needs include printing on things like t-shirts and bags, you’ll need to take this into consideration, and investing in sublimation equipment might be something you should research further.

I haven’t tried yet, but I do think this printer could be used for printing template designs on substrates for needlework and embroidery, since it’s possible to carefully align the position of the print on the substrate.

Another important detail on the resin ink: while this machine does not use any heat, which minimizes platic vapors during use, the resin does have a plastic chemical odor that might be noticeable. I did not notice much of an odor unless I was right next to the machine while it was printing, while my husband has a much more sensitive sniffer. He eventually asked me to open the basement windows for ventilation when I was printing a complex project, which took more than an hour to complete. If you have multiple machines set up in a workshop running simultaneously, you should probably make sure you have adequate ventilation, but there are no warnings or MSDS details from Anker which suggest the chemical vapors from the ink are of any particular concern.

Now that you’ve got a good idea of what this machine can do, let’s dive into the creative stuff!

Artists Rejoice!

Those who are creative, artistic, and already familiar with the various means by which art is created on all manner of physical materials will likely find endless possibilities with the eufyMake E1 system. This whole setup is still in its infancy, so some innovation and creative problem-solving on the part of you, as the user, will contribute mightily to getting the most out of it.

This example is a dog tag I printed using the Nine of Coins from the Alchemical Tarot. I created a multi-layered print, opting to use color without white for the coins, to add a metallic shine to those parts of the illustration. This multi-stage print technique makes it possible to take advantage of the features of your substrate to enhance your design.

In my experiments, I was very happy to discover that the eufyMake E1 does not change its homing position between prints, so if you don’t move the print bed or your object between print jobs, you can print on top of the previous print job in exactly the right location. This is how I produced the tag pictured above.

Notably, the left edge of the printed image is misaligned – the card border from the original illustration is visible. I’ve continued to have minor alignment issues with my eufyMake E1 throughout my evaluation of the system, but it’s consistent enough that I can properly mitigate it by measuring the offset and adjusting the position of my prints accordingly. Fortunately, this sort of flaw can be fixed in a future firmware update.

In this print test on scrap plastic, I added a solid white layer on top of the swords in the background of the image, and then put a copy of just the boat on top of the white layer. This resulted in a perfect multilayer print with a really interesting color effect, and the raised print of the black outlines is still tactile under the white background.

This multi-layer print technique is used with the lightbox project feature in the software. The light box itself is a black, anodized aluminum frame, which contains a USB powered LED board and plastic diffuser. The boxed product includes five 6×8″ transparent acrylic panels, which can easily be swapped by removing the magnetic part of the frame.

The lightbox project type ensures that enough white is printed to fully obfuscate the part of the image that’s only visible when illuminated. I haven’t yet figured out the minimum amount of white required to achieve this effect manually, but it should just be a matter of trial and error.

The eufyMake software includes a light box project, which is limited in functionality, but offers consistent results with little effort. The basic idea uses a layered image, taking advantage of how light filters through the white resin, even though the white layer looks opaque unless illuminated.

The software includes an AI-backed feature to knock out part of the image, so a particular feature of the illustration is visible when the light box is turned off. When the box is on, the additional print layer for the featured element enhances the richness of that element’s color. This makes for a really cool effect, but the AI wasn’t perfect, and there was no way to fix its mistake – this toad’s right eye is a bit wonky, because the AI didn’t mask the image properly.

This is the project I used for understanding the cost of production involved with this system. Most of the consumption was the white ink. Multiple layers of white are necessary to completely obfuscate the bottom printed layer when the box is not illuminated.

My experiments with layering prints suggest it should be possible to produce a custom light box design that doesn’t depend on the software’s AI features, but it will take some trial and error to figure out what works best. Transparent acrylic sheets are a bit pricey, so I recommend starting with a pack of very inexpensive transparent binding covers (the same plastic I use to catch overspray from full-bleed prints), and printing small proofs as you work out the kinks in your design process.

There are some great projects that can be done with this machine’s ability to print transparent colors on transparent materials. Both polished acrylic and glass are very slick with little to no friction, so whatever you print should be printed on the inside of the finished product when possible, or otherwise protected. It would be easy to make an acrylic window sign, for example, with a double-sided or transparent print covered with an acrylic plate so it’s completely protected. And, because the eufyMake E1 prints high-resolution illustrations rather than just solid colors, you can do some incredible stained glass effects on regular panes of glass or acrylic.

The Third Dimension: Breathing Life Into Art

One of the best features of the eufyMake system is its AI-powered 3D relief capabilities. I’ve tried this feature with several different photographs and illustrations, and it does an incredible job of accurately determining how to emboss the image, down to the tiniest detail.

This 4×4″ canvas was one of my first projects after I unboxed all the equipment and set everything up. The illustration is from the Forest of Enchantment Tarot kit, and the 3D relief does not disappoint. That tiny amanita mushroom has itty-bitty raised bumps for each white dot, and the precision of the ink placement over the relief is perfect.

This 3D feature works by first laying down the structure with white ink, then painting over that structure with colored ink. The 3D render can be minimally adjusted before printing. The maximum height of the total rendering can be adjusted by tenths of a millimeter from 0.3 to 5.0mm. There is also a “smoothness” property, which adjust both the height of the print’s base layer and the prominence of the relief.

Here, you can see the difference between the lowest and highest smoothness settings. This can be adjusted by whole numbers from 1 to 10.

I made a fun little 1.5″ Skyrim token from a high-resolution photograph of a handmade cosplay shield (found on Etsy), and the relief that was generated took into account every little detail, including the raised metal band around the shield and the separation of the individual wood pieces.

This AI relief feature is really where the eufyMake E1 shines brightest. There is nothing else on the market that does what the E1 does, unless you want to invest in very expensive industrial equipment. In an era when regular printed goods – like posters and decks of cards – are rapidly counterfeited and sold for pennies, this system makes it possible to create interesting, compelling products for sale from your original artwork, which can’t be easily counterfeited overseas.

Getting great results from this system might require some extra work on your part, depending on your chosen aesthetic and style. The AI uses the shapes, colors, and shading of your image to determine how to render it in 3D, so attention to these details will make a difference in the final relief.

The Implications and Considerations of AI

AI-assisted artwork is a very controversial topic among digital artists. After talking a bit with my Anker contact, I learned something that will interest many artists: although Anker uses an AI platform to intelligently determine the right 3D relief to apply to an image, their platform does not use your original art for its learning model. My Anker rep told me that in the future, the software will enable artists to share their art to train eufyMake’s AI engine, but this will be opt-in.

The generated relief is accurate, and doesn’t attempt to improperly adjust or edit the original image in any way. Photographs are rendered with detail and accuracy, which can be seen in these Curb Your Enthusiasm keychains I made for a buddy.

Illustrations with stark contrast and blocks of color also render nicely, although the left leg of the charioteer in The Chariot from the Alchemical Tarot is slightly wonky.

As of now, the eufyMake software does not include any ability to edit the 3D rendering before printing. It’s also not possible to upload your own 3D projects and textures. Hopefully, we’ll see these features added in the future.

These AI enhancements come at a price. Commodity AI platforms and services are expensive to operate, which is why all the really advanced, commercially-available options get expensive fast. Anker is planning a multi-tiered subscription model for the eufyMake ecosystem, which will include AI credits and discounts on consumables and materials. The full details and terms of these plans are yet to be announced. For the time being, it appears Anker intends on offering a limited number of AI credits to free accounts, but it’s unclear on how often those credits reset.

As of now, the eufyMake software indicates that free accounts have access to twenty credits, while both the $10 and $30 monthly plans offer 200 credits. A single 3D relief project costs two credits to render, and if you need to make any adjustments to the dimensions or crop region of your image, you’ll have to run another render and pay another two credits.

This is another recurring expense for artists, but if you’re using this hardware to produce durable goods for resale, it should be pretty easy to factor the cost of the AI credits into the final sale price of your wares.

Exploring the Software

As previously mentioned, Anker offers both desktop and mobile/tablet applications for working with the eufyMake E1. There are applications available for MacOS and Windows, as well as apps for iOS and Android. At present, there are no plans to offer Linux support, and my Anker rep told me the software doesn’t work with either WINE or Proton.

I haven’t tried the Android app, but I’ve used the iOS app quite a bit on my iPhone and iPad, both of which are running the latest version of their respective operating systems. My Anker contact advised that the iPad version of the iOS app is still under a lot of active development, and improvements are forthcoming. As of now, the iPad experience isn’t very good, because the app is just a scaled iPhone interface, and it’s tedious to use. That said, the entire initial setup workflow, which includes charging the ink, running maintance tasks, and printing a 3D ceramic magnet, was easy to complete from the iPad app, and I didn’t run into any failures.

The iOS app supports all the features of the hardware, but some of the AI options aren’t available (I was unable to find them, at least). The desktop software is more comprehensive. I primarily use the iOS app on my iPhone for notifications during a print job. It’s pretty cool when my Apple Watch buzzes me to let me know a print job is done.

eufyMake is a bit like slicer software used to make models for 3D printing. As a raster printer, the software functions as a RIP – a raster image processor. You create your images in separate software (such as Affinity and Adobe applications), export to a compatible format, and then upload through the software. The software converts your images to the correct format with the correct information to make use of the extra inks (white and glossy). Unlike professional RIP software, eufyMake does not make advanced color profiling available. Instead, there is a print job setting that configures the target substrate, selectable from an assortment of options. My Anker rep explained that this setting includes selecting the right ICC profile for the best color accuracy.

Without advanced hardware, software, and technical knowledge, color accuracy can be an absolute nightmare (ask me how I know). The color profiling built into the eufyMake E1’s software is good, but it’s imperfect, and if absolutely perfect color representation matters a lot to you, this is something to keep in mind, but not a blocker. It just means you might need to make some adjustments to your uploaded projects to counterbalance the built-in profiles.

My projects all look really good when assessed independently of the source material. Some slight color balance issues are noticeable when comparing a project directly to the original printed source image, which is safe to assume is the desired result. In both the Tarot of the Hidden Realm and the Alchemical Tarot images, the E1’s color output lacks a bit of magenta, compared to the original cards, but on their own, both projects from the E1 still look great.

I haven’t done any investigation yet into how to work with different color profiles with this printer to have better control over output. It should theoretically be possible to use calibration hardware to make a profile for adjusting the color of your images before uploading.

Overall, skin tone in photographs is within the normal human range, color depth and richness are top notch, and you shouldn’t need to do any tedious color profiling and trial-and-error testing to end up with really great results. If you’re in marketing and want to use this hardware to produce things that must always exactly match the colors of a brand or logo, for example, it’s worth trying whatever existing color calibration hardware you own to tweak the E1’s output.

The desktop software is good, but it needs some finesse in the keyboard-and-mouse experience. Editing the dimensions and exact position of a print on the bed is really tedious, because the WebView (or Electron) UI doesn’t always respond as expected to input. Working on a laptop with a multitouch trackpad is much less tedious than using a regular mouse, mostly because zooming and panning is entirely gesture-driven. It’s not possible to scroll sideways with a normal scroll wheel – you have to first click the pan toolbar button, then drag around your image, then click againt to turn the pan tool off. With a touchpad, this can be done with two-finger panning. I also really hope to see shortcuts added for making the software behave a bit more like design software, with things like modifier keys to make it trivial to adjust X-Y placement and image dimensions by fractions of a millimeter.

One really annoying quirk: there is no way to override object snapping. This means that you can’t precisely place multiple images by dragging them around, because they’ll jump to snap to the closest neighboring object. I’ve successfully worked around this so far, but it’s made me say really mean things to my computer a few times.

It’s easy to upload your own files, and Anker appears to be actively adding support for additional formats. The current supported formats are:

• PNG
• JPG
• SVG
• WebP
• PDF
• PSD
• AI

It’s important to note that the software rasterizes and flattens (with transparency) all non-raster formats when uploaded. This means that uploading a PSD is equivalent to uploading the same content exported from Photoshop to PNG or JPG, and vector files are rasterized. It’s important to upload high-resolution files that are meant for high-resolution printing. The eufyMake E1 has a very high-resolution, 1440ppi printhead, so you can use very high-resolution files to print large artwork with no loss in quality. I’m unsure about the maximum allowed file size, but I’ve had no problems uploading multi-megabyte PNGs and JPGs.

I’d really like to see TIF support, since this is a very common lossless raster format used in the print world. The file upload and browsing interface is really kludgy. It lacks organization of any kind, and it takes a very long time to load the full gallery of uploaded files once you’ve uploaded more than a few dozen. I’m hoping Anker is currently working on a software update that will add organization to the user files section.

While the software does allow exporting projects as PNG or JPG, it doesn’t offer anything more advanced – this means that if you delete a project containing a 3D relief, you’ll have to spend more AI credits to regenerate the relief, and there’s no apparent way to back up those projects. This is another feature I hope Anker adds.

The ability to print multiple passes on the same item is really powerful, and it would be interesting to see the eufyMake software add better support for layered formats (PSD, AI, PDF, SVG, and TIF all support layers), with the ability to choose how – and when – to print each layer. Right now, it’s necessary to run multiple print jobs manually, toggling individual layers of a project to print them. The ability to queue this up, with different print settings for each job, would be really great.

The software also lacks support for locally-installed fonts. There are a handful of available fonts, but if you want to do anything more advanced, you’ll need to use separate graphic design software. I’d like to see local font support – this would make it easier to make quick, on-demand projects, which could be useful at conventions, trade shows, festivals, carnivals, and other such large gatherings.

The software is good enough to get going without the whole thing turning into a fiasco of cursing and regret, but it needs some work to really nail the desktop experience. I’m looking forward to the work Anker is putting in to improve the iPad app, but I’m most interested in improvements to the desktop software.

Like most electronics today, the desktop software requires an Internet connection to function. This means that if Anker ever decides to discontinue the services the software relies upon, the hardware becomes a big ol’ boat anchor. This is not a death sentence, however – only time will tell how open Anker will make this system, and whether they will ever make it possible to use it offline.

My biggest serious issue with the software at this point is the inability to recover from a partial print, after some kind of failure or issue. I ran out of white ink partway through a print job, and after replacing the cartridge, the printer was apparently unable to recover properly and inject the printhead with ink from the replacement cartridge. I had to reboot the printer, which resulted in a terminated print job – and since this was a 3D print, it cost me about $6 in white ink. I’d love to see some sort of intelligent recovery from a partial print job. This should be theoretically possible, but will probably require a sizeable engineering investment, so we’ll see if Anker can find a way to address this particular problem.

What I Like About the EufyMake E1 UV Printer

• It’s a totally novel means of artistic expression – and earning an income from your talents
• 3D relief feature is excellent
• Engineering and build quality are A+

What Needs Improvement

• Expensive, including consumables
• Proprietary
• Software is a bit kludgy and lacks certain features
• There’s no way to recover from a partial print job if there are any issues

Price: $1699.00
Where to buy: Kickstarter
Source: The sample for this review was provided by eufy. eufy did not have a final say on the review and did not preview the review before it was published.

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