UV printer UK 2026: which one to buy for phone cases, tumblers and UV DTF stickers, and what each print costs in ink
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A UV printer cures its ink with ultraviolet light as it lands, so it prints on metal, wood, acrylic, leather and glass. What decides whether it pays is the ink per piece: a 10 × 15 cm logo takes 1.4 ml, which is 34p with eufyMake's cartridge at its UK price and 8p with bulk ink (23 September 2026).
UV printer ink cost calculator: the cost of each print and the payback per £1,000 of machine
UV printer ink cost calculator: cost per print and payback
What a UV print costs is decided by the millilitres of ink in the design, the film if you go by transfer and the blank you print on, not by the machine. Pick what you print, its size, how much ink the design carries and how many pieces a month. With what it opens on, a phone case with a logo up to 10 × 15 cm at 100 a month, that is 1.38 ml of ink: 34p with the maker's cartridge and 8p with bulk ink, and 83p a piece above cost pays back each £1,000 of machine in a year. A tool from m8d.io, free, with no account and no adverts.
It lies on the bed and the head passes over it. The cheapest route, because it uses no film: only ink.
That is 1.38 ml of ink for 1.5 dm². The same piece costs 4.5 times as much in ink if the printer only takes its maker's cartridge. Plus the blank item, which you buy yourself and which usually costs more than the ink.
At 100 pieces a month that is 1,200 a year. Multiply by the thousands of pounds the printer you are looking at costs.
At 100 pieces a month, ink takes £7.67 a month with bulk ink and £34.49 with the maker's cartridge. At this volume the gap does not decide yet: what decides is what the blank costs you.
The millilitres per square decimetre come from the cost table eufyMake publishes on its own product page, read on its European store on 9 September 2026, with two of its jobs as anchors: a 3 × 3 inch cap patch and a ceramic magnet. The cartridge is eufyMake's 100 ml cartridge on its UK store, £24.99 on 23 September 2026, on offer from £34.99. Bulk ink is the median of three complete CMYK and white sets at UK shops that day, from 5.2p to 9.1p a millilitre; the median is used, not the cheapest, so as not to pick the number that most favours this sum. Film is a 30 cm × 100 m AB roll at £118.80 with VAT, the price at three UK shops. Power is Ofgem's price cap for October to December 2026, 26.32p per kWh, on the 66 W the maker declares.
Cartridge or bulk ink for a UV printer: the choice you pay for on every piece, not once
Almost every printer in this guide carries an XP600 or L800 printhead: two Epson inkjet heads built for office printers and adapted to UV ink. That has a consequence that decides the business. There is an open market of bulk UV ink for those heads, sold in sets of five 500 ml bottles with the white included, and on 23 September 2026 three complete sets at UK shops cost £129 (247.ink), £139 (an eBay UK seller, sold for ACHI A3 and A4 printers) and £273.60 for three litres (InkTec's colours and white): from 5.2p to 9.1p a millilitre, with a median of 5.6p.
eufyMake's printer takes only its own 100 ml cartridge: £24.99 on its UK store that day, on offer from £34.99, and £27.50 at 3DJake UK. That is 25p to 35p a millilitre, from four and a half to over six times the bulk median, and it is paid on every piece, every day.
CNCZONE ACHI A4 L800 view ›
If you are going to sell pieces every day, we recommend starting here, and not because of what the machine costs: what decides a personalisation business is the cost per unit, and this one takes bulk ink sets for its L800 head, at around a fifth of what a maker's cartridge costs per millilitre. It also comes with the cylinder attachment, which is the difference between being able to print a tumbler or not. On the other side, its listing states neither watts nor ink use per job, so the sum is yours to do, and that is what the calculator on this page is for.
- It is flatbed and cylindrical at once: the same machine prints on a plate lying on the bed and on a tumbler that turns. That covers the two most requested jobs of a personalisation stall without buying two machines.
- It carries an L800 head, the format the five-bottle 500 ml bulk ink sets are made for. That is where the real saving is, not in the price of the machine: in the UK, bulk ink for these heads costs around a fifth of what the maker's cartridge costs per millilitre, with the figures and their dates just above.
- Its listing states neither watts nor ink use per job, which is the case of every machine in this guide.
- Flatbed and cylindrical in the same machine, with automatic rotation
- L800 head: takes the five-bottle bulk ink sets
- Touch screen and software included, according to its listing
- Its listing states neither watts nor ink use per job
- Sold under more than one brand name: compare it by model, A4 L800
Bulk UV ink for the ACHI A4 L800: its L800 head takes five-bottle sets such as the Ovsuqu CMYKW set of five 500 ml bottles view ›. A printer that only accepts its maker's closed cartridge cannot use them, so check the head before buying the ink.
eufyMake E1 or a bulk-ink UV printer: what the E1's own UK cost table shows
The eufyMake E1 is sold in the UK by its maker and by resellers such as 3DJake UK, and it does something no other machine in this guide does: its maker publishes what each job costs. Its UK product page prices two objects in pounds, flat and with raised texture. A ceramic fridge magnet takes £0.48 of ink flat and £1.16 textured, and a tumbler £0.23 flat and £2.73 textured, on blanks of £0.49 and £6.79. The same page declares 66 W, a 330 × 420 mm bed, 1,440 dpi and relief up to 5 mm (read on 23 September 2026).
Two things follow from its own figures. Texture is priced job by job: the ink of a textured tumbler costs almost twelve times the flat one. And the blank decides the margin more than the ink: on the flat tumbler the ink is 3% of what ink and blank cost together, on the flat magnet almost half. The E1 runs only on its own cartridges, and that is where the bulk-ink printers above win on cost per piece. Where the E1 wins is texture and a published consumables range, prep pads included.
If raised texture is what you want to sell, we would look at the E1 first all the same: it is the only printer here that declares its relief height and prices it in its own table.
What a UV printer prints on, and which materials need a prep pad before the ink
The difference from an ordinary inkjet is the ink, not the printhead. Office ink dries because paper soaks it up, which is why an office printer cannot print on a mug. UV ink does not soak in or evaporate: it sets where it lands when a UV lamp on the carriage passes over it. It needs nothing to absorb it, and that is where the list on every box comes from: metal, wood, acrylic, ceramic, stone, glass, canvas, leather, fabric and film.
The list is true and incomplete. Putting ink on a surface and having it stay there are different things. On porous wood or leather the cured layer grips by itself; on smooth, non-porous metal, acrylic or glass it needs a layer underneath to hold on to. That is a prep pad or a primer, sold separately, and it appears in no listing's headline.
The quickest way to know which materials need preparing is not the list on the box: it is which prep pads the maker sells, because a pad with a material's name on the label says that material needs an extra step.
m8d rule: In UV printing, a material list says what ink can be put on, not what it stays on. If the maker sells a prep pad with a material's name on it, that material takes an extra step and an extra cost per piece that the listing does not show.
If your job is T-shirts, this is not the machine, and it is worth knowing before you pay. UV ink cures into a layer that sits on the fabric instead of going into it; eufyMake sells a flexible white ink for soft materials, and one European reseller of the E1 still writes that it is not a dedicated garment printer. For shirts that are worn and washed the machine is a textile DTF printer, with its own guide: the best DTF printer in the UK and what each shirt costs.
Flatbed UV printer or UV DTF: printing on the object or printing a transfer
Both use the same ink and the same lamp; the shape of the object decides. A flatbed prints straight onto the item lying on the bed, and a cylinder needs the rotary attachment that turns it under the head. A UV DTF printer prints onto an adhesive film, and that transfer is then pressed onto the object, so anything goes: a helmet, a tool, a curved bottle, something that will not lie flat or turn.
The practical difference is money per piece. A flatbed spends only ink. UV DTF spends ink and film, and the film is a consumable on every unit: at the UK price of a 30 cm × 100 m AB roll, £118.80 with VAT on 23 September 2026, it is about 4p per square decimetre. The table is what each machine's listing declares.
| Printer | Print area | Cylinder | UV DTF | Printhead | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CNCZONE ACHI A4 L800 view › | A4 | Included | Not stated | L800 | View › |
 EXPLUX A4 UV DTF XP600 view › | A4 | Bottle holder | Yes | XP600 | View › |
 CNCZONE ACHI A5 L800 view › | A5 | Not stated | Not stated | L800 | View › |
 Sihao A3 UV LED view › | A3 | Included | Not stated | Not stated | View › |
 Ovsuqu A3 UV DTF kit view › | A3 | Not stated | Yes, with film | Dual XP600 | View › |
What each listing declares, read on 9 September 2026 in the Amazon Spain catalogue that m8d follows; availability changes by country. "Not stated" is literal: it does not mean the machine cannot, it means the listing does not say, and in this category that is half the cells.
UV DTF transfers by the metre in the UK: when ordering sheets beats owning the printer
In the UK the question before buying a UV DTF printer is whether to buy one at all. Print shops sell UV DTF transfers ready to press: Ink Experts prices a 55 × 100 cm gang sheet at £19.95 with VAT, and a 55 × 50 cm one at £13.95 (read on 23 September 2026). That is about 36p per square decimetre, with the ink, the white, the varnish and the lamination included.
Printed at home with bulk ink, the same square decimetre costs about 4p of film plus the ink of the design, at the calculator's rates: 5p for a logo and 33p for a full-colour print with white underneath and varnish on top. So a logo comes to about 9p against 36p ordered in, and a full-colour print to about 37p against the same 36p.
- Logos and text: about 27p saved per square decimetre, so each £1,000 of printer needs some 3,700 dm² printed to pay back, around 2,450 phone-case-sized transfers.
- Full-colour designs with white and varnish: printing at home costs about what ordering costs, so on those alone the printer never pays back.
- With the maker's cartridge instead of bulk ink, a full-colour square decimetre is about £1.50 of ink before the film: there, ordering sheets wins.
A UV DTF printer for odd shapes and an A5 UV printer for small pieces: the other two picks
A note before comparing: most of these printers come out of a handful of factories and each seller lists them under its own brand, so the model is what to compare. A4 L800, A5 L800 and the XP600 head describe the machine and its printhead; the brand on the listing is often the seller. Search the model in quotes and compare every listing that comes up before paying.
EXPLUX A4 UV DTF XP600 view ›
This is the one for the UV DTF route: instead of printing onto the object, you print onto a film that is then pressed on, so any shape that cannot lie flat or turn will take it. It carries an XP600 head, so it shares the same bulk ink market, and it comes with a bottle holder. It pays when your designs are light: for full-colour transfers with white and varnish, ordering sheets from a UK print shop costs about the same, as the section on transfers by the metre works out.
- The UV DTF route adds a consumable that direct printing does not have: AB film. A 30 cm × 100 m roll is 30 m² of transfer, and its UK price per square decimetre, with its date, is in the UV DTF section above: a cost every piece carries.
- With an XP600 head it shares the bulk ink market with almost every desktop UV printer in this category.
- The bottle holder widens what it can print directly without going through film, which is what makes cylindrical pieces cheaper.
- Does both: straight onto the object and UV DTF transfers
- XP600 head, the most widespread, with bulk ink available
- Bottle holder included, according to its listing
- AB film is a consumable that direct printing does not use
- Its listing states neither watts nor ink use per job
CNCZONE ACHI A5 L800 view ›
It prints the smallest area in the guide: A5, half an A4. For phone cases, keyrings and magnets that is plenty, and those are exactly the small pieces where the cost per unit is lowest and the margin highest. For a big plate or an A3 it falls short, and nothing fixes that.
- A5 is 14.8 × 21 cm. In the calculator on this page that is the small size, 1.5 square decimetres, where the ink per piece is at its smallest.
- It comes with software and ink according to its listing, which is the difference between printing on day one and having to buy two more things.
- Same L800 head as its A4 sister: it shares the bulk ink market.
- The smallest print area in the guide, sized for small pieces
- Software and ink included, according to its listing
- L800 head, with bulk ink available
- A5 leaves out any piece of A4 or larger
- Its listing states neither watts nor ink use per job
UV printers for bigger work: an A3 in one pass or the kit with the film in the box
Two A3 machines cover what the podium does not: a sign or a panel that cannot be printed in two passes without the join showing, and UV DTF stickers in volume from the first day. At A3 each piece carries up to twice the ink of an A4, so the calculator's large size is the one to run before choosing either.
Sihao A3 UV LED view ›
It prints an A3 in one pass, and that is the whole reason to buy it: a sign, a tray or a panel cannot be split into two passes without the join showing. It declares 1,440 × 1,440 dots per inch and bottle rotation. If your pieces fit on an A4, this machine is money standing still.
- An A3 is 12.5 printable square decimetres against 6.2 for an A4: at twice the surface, twice the ink per piece with the same coverage.
- It declares 1,440 × 1,440 dots per inch, the same resolution eufyMake declares for the E1.
- It includes rotation for bottles, so it covers cylinders as well as the large surface.
- Prints an A3 in one pass
- Declared resolution of 1,440 × 1,440 dots per inch
- Bottle rotation included
- Twice the surface is twice the ink per piece at the same coverage
- Only worth it if you really print large
Ovsuqu A3 UV DTF kit view ›
It is the only listing in the guide that puts a hundred metres of film and the ink inside, and that is worth more than it seems: on the UV DTF route film is a recurring consumable, and starting with the roll loaded removes the step where most people stall. It has dual XP600 heads and reaches A3.
- The kit includes 100 m of AB film. At the usual 30 cm width that is 30 m² of transfer, or 3,000 square decimetres of pieces; what a roll like it costs in UK shops is in the UV DTF section above.
- Dual XP600 heads: two heads instead of one is what separates a production machine from a desktop one in this category.
- It is the only listing in this guide that puts the film and the ink in the box, which removes the step where most people stall.
- The AB film and the ink come in the kit
- Dual XP600 heads and an A3 surface
- Covers the whole UV DTF route without buying anything else on day one
- Its listing states neither watts nor ink use per job
- At A3 size, film and ink per piece add up faster
UV printer questions from UK buyers: is it worth it, how long the ink lasts, fabric and profit
What does a UV printer do?›
It prints with ink that sets instantly under ultraviolet light from a lamp on the carriage. The ink does not need to soak in, so it prints on metal, wood, acrylic, leather, glass or ceramic, which an office printer cannot do. Smooth surfaces such as metal, acrylic and glass may need a prep pad or primer first.
Is a UV printer worth it?›
It depends on what you print and how much. The ink of a logo on a phone case costs pennies, 8p with bulk ink and 34p with eufyMake's cartridge at UK prices on 23 September 2026, and the blank usually costs more. At 100 pieces a month you need 83p a piece above cost for each £1,000 of printer to pay back in a year. For full-colour UV DTF stickers, ordering sheets from a UK print shop costs about the same as printing them.
What are the downsides of UV printing?›
Smooth materials such as metal, acrylic and glass need preparing first, and the prep pads do not say how many pieces each one treats. A maker's own cartridges cost four and a half to over six times bulk ink per millilitre. The ink has a shelf life, 12 to 15 months from production according to eufyMake. And a T-shirt that is worn and washed is the job of a DTF printer.
How long does UV printer ink last?›
eufyMake says UV ink typically lasts 12 to 15 months from its production date, and asks for it to be stored at room temperature, away from light and upright. Since its update of 20 September 2026 the E1's software warns when ink has expired and lets you choose whether to carry on, with 14 days to replace it.
Is UV printing profitable?›
In eufyMake's own example in pounds, a flat ceramic magnet sells at £4.50 with £0.49 of blank and £0.48 of ink, a £3.53 margin before your time and the machine. The calculator on this page does the same sum for your piece and says what to charge per piece to pay the printer back in a year.
Can a UV printer print on fabric?›
It can put ink on fabric, and eufyMake sells a flexible white ink for soft materials, but the cured layer sits on top of the fibres. For T-shirts that are worn and washed the machine is a textile DTF printer, which uses transfer film and adhesive powder pressed on with heat.
What printer do I need to print UV DTF?›
One sold for UV DTF, such as the EXPLUX A4 UV DTF XP600 in this guide, plus AB film (the printed A layer and the laminating B layer) and, for rolls, a laminator. In the UK a 30 cm × 100 m AB roll cost £118.80 with VAT at three shops on 23 September 2026.
Is it worth buying a UV DTF printer instead of ordering transfers?›
Only if your designs are light. A 55 × 100 cm sheet ordered from a UK print shop works out at about 36p per square decimetre; printing a logo at home with bulk ink costs about 9p, and a full-colour design with white and varnish about 37p. On logos each £1,000 of printer pays back after some 3,700 dm²; on full-colour designs it does not.
How these UV printers were chosen and where every UK figure comes from
The starting point was the category's whole catalogue in the Amazon Spain listings that m8d follows, read with our API on 9 September 2026: ten distinct UV printer listings from A5 to A3, plus the full consumables range of the only brand with its own store in Europe and in the UK. From each machine we took what its listing declares and noted what it does not, which in this category is half the cells. Availability changes by country: the buttons take you to Amazon's store for yours.
Every UK figure carries its source and the date it was read, 23 September 2026: the cost table and the 100 ml cartridge on eufyMake's UK store, three bulk ink sets at UK shops, AB film rolls at three UK shops, the prep pads on eufyMake's UK store and Ofgem's price cap for October to December 2026. For bulk ink the median is used, not the cheapest, so as not to pick the number that most favours the conclusion. The calculator's ink rates, 0.92 ml per square decimetre for a logo and 4.1 ml for a full-colour print, come from eufyMake's cost table on its European store, read on 23 September 2026.
It takes bulk ink for its L800 head, at around a fifth of a maker's cartridge per millilitre
See it on Amazon ›The ones behind the specific figures on this page, with their link and the date they were read.
- eufyMake UKeufyMake E1: UK product page with its cost table in poundsRead on 23 September 2026: ink and blank cost of a magnet and a tumbler, flat and textured, 66 W, 330 × 420 mm bed, 1,440 dpi, relief up to 5 mm and more than 300 materials.
- eufyMakeeufyMake E1: cost table on the European storeRead on 9 September 2026: the ink cost of a 3 × 3 inch cap patch and a ceramic magnet, from which the calculator's millilitres per square decimetre are derived.
- eufyMake UKeufyMake ink and cleaning cartridge, 100 ml£24.99 on offer, £34.99 before, read on 23 September 2026.
- eufyMake UKeufyMake prep pads for metal50 pads of 1 g, £21.99, for metal only. Read on 23 September 2026.
- eufyMake UKeufyMake prep pads for acrylic50 pads of 1 g, £21.99, for acrylic only. Read on 23 September 2026.
- eufyMakeHow to improve UV ink adhesionGlass: primer or flame treatment; glazed ceramic may need a primer. Read on 23 September 2026.
- eufyMakeBidirectional printing and expired inkUV ink shelf life of 12 to 15 months from production, and the 14-day window for expired ink. Updated on 20 September 2026.
- 3DJake UKeufyMake consumables at 3DJake UK100 ml ink cartridge at £27.50 and acrylic prep pads, 50 pieces, at £23.00. Read on 23 September 2026.
- 247.inkUV DTF ink, 500 ml bottles, set of five£129 for five 500 ml bottles in white, black, cyan, magenta and yellow, tax included. Read on 23 September 2026.
- eBay UK, seller scotlelaserukUV ink set of five 500 ml bottles for ACHI A3 and A4 printers£139, read on Google Shopping UK on 23 September 2026.
- InkTec EuropeUV DTF ink in 500 ml bottles for Epson printheadsFrom £38.00 excluding VAT, £45.60 with VAT, per 500 ml colour; white in 1 litre. Read on 23 September 2026.
- DTF-PrintersUV DTF film A+B, 30 cm × 100 m£99.00 plus VAT, £118.80 with VAT; the same price at InkTec Europe and Longforte. Read on 23 September 2026.
- Ink ExpertsUV DTF print service55 × 100 cm sheet £19.95, 55 × 75 cm £16.95 and 55 × 50 cm £13.95, VAT included. Read on 23 September 2026.
- OfgemEnergy price cap unit rates and standing charges1 October to 31 December 2026: 26.32p per kWh, Great Britain average, Direct Debit.
- OpenELAB, European resellerCan the eufyMake E1 print on fabric?The E1 is not a dedicated direct-to-garment printer; for washable T-shirts, textile DTF or DTG is usually more appropriate. Read on 23 September 2026.
- our reading of the Amazon APIUV printer catalogue on Amazon Spain9 September 2026: ten distinct UV printer listings from A5 to A3 and what each declares.
If you ask us where to start, not with the machine: with what you will print on, because of the eight materials in the calculator three need a prep pad or a primer first, and raised texture multiplies the ink of the same piece by up to twelve. With that decided, the choice is short. To sell every day, the ACHI A4 L800 view ›, because its head takes bulk ink and that is where the margin is. For shapes that will not lie flat or turn, the EXPLUX A4 UV DTF XP600 view ›, which prints the transfer and presses it on. And for phone cases and keyrings only, the ACHI A5 L800 view ›, whose A5 bed is enough for pieces where the ink costs pence.
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