16 UV Printer Jig Ideas and How to Make Your Own
A jig holds your blanks in the same spot on the print bed every time you load a job.
You drop each piece into a pocket or against a printed outline, and the art lands where you placed it in the software.
Below you will find 16 useful jig ideas from eufyMake E1 users, plus the six steps we use to design a jig from scratch.
What a Jig Does for Your Printer
Woodworkers have used jigs for a century, and the idea travels well. Any helper that keeps a tool and a workpiece in a fixed relationship saves you from measuring twice.
On a UV printer, the jig sits on the bed and does the measuring for you, with pockets, walls, or printed outlines sized to your blanks.
The payoff shows up the first time you run a batch. Each blank seats in a known position, so alignment stops being a guessing game.
Golf Ball Jig for Rotary Attachment
We would put this jig first because we think it is a genius idea!
Out of the box, the rotary attachment only understands cylinders, and a golf ball is a sphere, so wrapping art around a ball is simply not on the menu.
This jig bends that rule by cradling the balls in saddles that mount on the rotary, which lets the printer treat the row as one cylinder and wrap art up to about 65 by 18 mm around each ball.
The saddles also space the balls evenly and keep them spinning straight, so every wrap lands at the same height.
Saddle count and spacing scale to your batch, and pairing the jig with a printed design template helps you place art, since snapshot does not work on rotary jobs.
Read to learn more about golf ball printing.
source:@3DbyP
Golf Ball Jig for Flatbed
Rotary wraps look great and run slow, and plenty of shops just want the crown of the ball printed in volume.
A plate of cone shaped seats handles that job with zero moving parts, because each dimple centers a ball and holds its crown at a consistent height.
The orange rail along the front carries numbered holes, and that small detail is the reason the plate returns to the exact same bed position run after run.
Source: @mikemikkelson
Brick Minifigure Jig
Minifigure parts are small, double sided, and easy to load flipped, which is how a perfect print ends up on the wrong side of a torso.
This plate gives each part type its own recess and molds orientation labels right into the surface, so whoever loads the plate late at night still puts every face up correctly.
Source: @Mirkosa
Business Card Jig
Cards feel like the easiest blank in the shop until one slides a fraction of an inch during loading.
Shallow bays with thin rails stop that slide, and the half moon finger notches at the plate edges let you lift a finished card without digging at a corner or smudging wet ink.
Bay count and size follow your card stock, and the notch trick works on almost any flat blank you handle daily.
Our business card printing guide covers card stock, thickness, and raised effects.
Source: @Pumpkin_Project
Pen / Pencil Jigs
Pens and pencils are a steady order all year, from back to school bundles to logo pens for local shops to holiday gift sets.
The catch is that round barrels roll, and a dozen hand placed pens always ends with a few twisted prints. This tray fixes that with long grooves that hold each barrel parallel and keep the print side up at one height.
The grooves take different barrels side by side, so pencils and pens can share a run. The tray is modular as well, so you can print as many copies as your bed fits.
A pre split version covers smaller printers, and a divided version with a middle wall helps when one order needs two groups in a single run.
Source: @ID_Tag
Magnet Jig
Fridge magnets are one of the easiest sells in UV printing, working as small gifts and as the souvenirs tourists grab by the register.
The tricky part is borderless printing, because stray ink loves the outer edges of the blank and ruins the clean side look.
This jig seats up to four 7 by 5 cm ceramic magnets on the mini bed and shields those edges while the art runs full bleed. A PETG separation layer keeps the finished magnets easy to lift out.
Source: @mh3dprints
Keychain/NFC tag Jig
Keychains and NFC tags are some of the easiest items to sell, whether from a shop counter or an online store, and the NFC ones double as tap to share business cards for vendors.
The annoying part is that they come in mixed shapes, and every shape usually wants its layout and its run. This kit fixes that with one jig that seats all three blank shapes, square, rectangle, and circle, so a mixed order prints in a single pass.
It also includes printable blanks, plain ones and ones with a recess for an NFC chip, plus a cut-down plate version for smaller beds.
Our keychain ideas roundup is a good place to find designs worth printing.
Source: @ID_Tag
Lighter Jig
Custom lighters are an easy add on order for smoke shops and bars, and they make cheap party favors with a logo on them.
The bodies are curved on every side except the one you print, so hand placing a row of them means tilted art and wasted blanks.
This tray holds 13 lighters at one level with the print side up, sized around a common 25 by 83 mm body.
Source: @Dark88Printer
Jig for Balloon Prints
Printed balloons show up at birthdays, weddings, and store openings, and decorators pay well for them.
The tricky part is that a deflated balloon wrinkles the moment you lay it down, and every crease turns into blurry or misplaced art.
This two part jig fixes that with a base table and a frame that slides over the balloon and stretches it smooth before the print starts. The frame only fits one way, so the setup stays foolproof even on a tight event schedule.
Pair the jig with our balloon printing guide for print settings.
Source: @madsci1016
Chopsticks Jig
Branded chopsticks sell steadily to restaurants, wedding planners, and kitchen gift brands.
They are also long, round, and impossible to keep parallel by hand, and one drifting tip throws the art off line.
Two small notched blocks solve it by holding the pair at the exact spacing your design expects. They take up almost no bed either, so you can squeeze a second job into the same run.
Source: @DavidKrammer
Keycap Jig
Try placing thirty keycaps on a bed by hand and you will understand this jig fast.
Each cap is a small target, you nudge one while setting the next, and a single cap a hair off center puts the art on a bevel and breaks the matched set.
A printed sheet of circle outlines ends all of that, giving every cap its own seat so thirty tops land in the same spot in one pass.
Source: @DuckyPrints
Configurable Bottle Rotary Jig
Custom drinkware is one of the biggest UV printing categories, and some bottles simply refuse to sit level on a rotary.
The Thermos Funtainer that inspired this jig is a perfect example, since its molded base will not come off and holds one end higher than the other. Lay a bottle like that on the rollers and your wrap prints as a spiral, or the job will not run at all.
The fix is a printed collar that slips over the bottle mouth at the same diameter as the base, so both ends match and the bottle lies parallel to the print head.
The download is configurable too, so you can type in your bottle's measurements and print a collar that fits whatever is in your cupboard.
Our mug and tumbler printing guide covers the cylindrical side of the job.
Source: @anselor
Poker Chip jig
Forty eight poker chips in one pass is the kind of batch that turns a casino night order from a week of work into an afternoon.
Without a jig you would be hand placing every disc, fighting to keep them level and evenly spaced, then flipping each one and hoping side B lines up with side A.
These interlocking plates seat every chip flush in its own recess, and the crosshair marks in each pocket line the second side up with the first when you flip.
The pockets double as golf ball seats too, so the same plates cover two very different product lines.
Source: @HellerCreative
Baseball/Pickleball Jig
A regulation baseball sits just over the height where the E1's snapshot mode stops helping, so ball jobs like this run on zero point alignment instead.
That makes a steady cradle even more important, because there is no camera preview nudging you back on center.
This laser cut plywood cradle mounts on the rotary accessory and holds the ball with curved arms that keep the spin true, and one size covers baseballs, softballs, and most pickleballs without swapping inserts.
Wood is the right material here too, since it stays rigid under the UV lamps and treats the ball surface gently.
Source: @ThoughtfulCrea8ions
Guitar Picks Jig
How many guitar picks can you line up by hand before one flips over or slides out of row?
For most of us the answer is under ten, and band merch orders rarely stop at ten.
This plate seats standard picks in pockets shaped like the pick itself, so every one faces the same way and sits at the same height, 22 at a time on the small bed and up to 98 on the big one. The plate splits in half too, so a small order only takes half the bed and the whole jig stores in a drawer.
A surface treatment makes wiped off overspray easy as well, which matters when picks are your whole product line.
Source: @Creative3dengraving
Wham Bam ULTIM8 JIG
Most jigs hold one product, and this one went after the bigger annoyance, switching setups between products.
The heart of the system is a silicone mat with a grid of small holes, and tiny pegs and cam locks plug into those holes to build a custom stop for whatever you are printing today.
Thin stock gets clamped flat with magnets and a steel backing plate, and cured overspray peels right off the silicone instead of building up on your bed.
Source: Wham Bam
How to Get One of These Jigs
Many creators in this list post their model files on 3D print file sites, where you can download and print the jig on any FDM printer for the cost of a little filament.
Some also keep finished jigs, setup notes, and version history in an Etsy shop. A direct message to the creator is the fastest route to the right file version for your printer, and a good way to ask which blanks the pockets were sized for.
Three Ways to Build a Jig
3D printing produces the most common jigs in the community. A printer can make curved cradles, deep pockets, and walls that hug odd shapes, and many makers share these files for free.
Flat blanks point toward laser cutting. A sheet of acrylic, MDF, or plywood yields crisp pockets and a rigid plate that survives hundreds of load cycles, and the cut takes minutes once the file is ready.
Then there is the route that needs no extra machine. The E1 can lay contour lines onto a flat board, flat as a placement guide or with a little height so items seat against a low wall, and the whole jig appears in a single session.
How to Make Your Own Jig
The desktop software, Anker Make Studio, builds jig creation right into the editor, and the whole flow fits in six short steps.
- Calibrate the zero point on your adhesive mat, since jig printing places art by absolute coordinates.
- Click Create New Jig in the New Project panel, give it a name, and pick your substrate from the menu or upload an SVG or STL outline.
- Set the count, arrangement, alignment, spacing, margins, and clearance, and the software lays out the pockets for you.
- Click Make Jig and pick your route, UV print the contour onto a board, export an SVG for a laser cutter, or export an STL for a 3D printer.
- Open the saved layout from My Saved, drop your design into one contour, and choose Batch Fill to fill them all.
- Load your blanks into the jig, set the jig on the alignment point, and print in zero point alignment mode.
Every step above carries a few settings worth understanding before your first run, so head to our full jig guide for the details and screenshots.
