r/UVprinting

Sharing a little macOS app I built called heightmap, since this is pretty much the crowd it was made for. It takes a photo and turns it into a grayscale height map on-device, white means high, which you can send at a UV printer for layered relief. There's controls to shape how the relief sits, gamma and contrast on the height, smoothing, background textures, and brushes to fix the spots the model reads wrong.

I built it around the eufyMake E1 workflow (5mm, white = high) but the output is just a grayscale, so it should drop into other UV setups too. If you'd rather go the model route it also exports a 3d mesh as stl, 3mf or obj with the photo baked on as a color texture. Everything stays local, no upload and no account.

It's on the Mac App Store here: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6778490403

Id like to hear from people actually running UV relief, whether the height response feels right or if you end up fighting it. Thats the part im least sure about.

In my own shop (garage 😄 ), I'd finish a job, look at the invoice, and still not really know if I actually made money on it once you factor in ink, the substrate, machine time, and my own hours. Spreadsheets helped but were a pain to keep up. For context, I'm using Eufymake E1.

I looked at the paid options out there and they were either overkill for a small shop or more than I wanted to pay every month just to price my own jobs — so I built what my studio actually needed, and I've decided to give it away free to the community.

Meet InkTracker. What it does:

• 🧮 Costs out a job properly — ink per channel (C/M/Y/K/W/Gloss/Flex White), materials, machine depreciation, labor, and overhead — then suggests a price and shows your margin (🟢 Strong / 🟡 Target / 🔴 Loss)
• 🩸 Tracks ink — what each color actually costs you and how much is left in each cartridge
• 📦 Inventory — materials and cartridge stock so you're not caught short mid-run
• 📈 Analytics — revenue, profit, and monthly ink usage so you can spot trends and plan reorders
• 🛠️ Service log — head cleans, cartridge swaps, maintenance history
• 🖨️ Printable job worksheets for the shop floor, plus CSV/PDF export

It runs on your own computer — free, no subscription, no account, your numbers stay yours — and you can even install it like an app on your phone or tablet.

👉 https://github.com/codebyit/inktracker

I'd love to hear what features would help your shop, or if anything's unclear. Happy to help anyone get it running. 🙌

Hi everyone,

I'm trying to track down a strange issue on my Flora PP2512UV (Konica Minolta 1024i 6pl heads).

As you can see in the attached photo, I'm getting horizontal bands (running in the same direction as the carriage movement, left to right). The bands are visible across multiple colors, but not equally on every color.

What's confusing is the inconsistency:

• Morning: prints were perfectly smooth with no visible banding.
• Later that same afternoon: the banding suddenly appeared.
• The next morning: the problem completely disappeared without changing any settings.

Nothing was intentionally changed between those prints.

Some additional information:

• Nozzle test looked normal.
• Bi-directional calibration had already been adjusted.
• The issue affects solid colors more than detailed graphics.
• It doesn't look like missing nozzles, but rather a density variation.
• The lines are perfectly parallel to the carriage travel direction.

Has anyone experienced something similar?

I'm wondering if this could be related to:

• Ink pressure fluctuations?
• Negative pressure instability?
• Head temperature?
• Encoder strip contamination?
• Carriage speed or servo issue?
• Static electricity?
• Something else entirely?

Since the issue disappeared by itself overnight, I'm leaning toward an environmental or mechanical cause rather than a permanent hardware failure.

Any ideas or troubleshooting suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Tengo esta máquina Hybrida marca China Baosiwei , 2 cabezales (White + CMYK) Rollo a Rollo, imprime hasta 14mts2 x hora , calidad de impresión, trabajo especialmente sobre Cuero sintético . Ya un año con ella y puedo decir Excelente máquina. Hablas escuchado de esta marca antes ??