ET-2720, Sublimation, and UV Printer Software: What I Learned the Hard Way

Last March, I got a batch of 500 tags back from a print vendor that were so far off spec they might as well have been printed in another universe. The customer's logo was teal. What we got was... sort of greenish-blue. Maybe green with a hint of blue. I rejected the whole batch on the spot, and the vendor wasn't happy. "It's within industry tolerance," they said. No, it wasn't. And that single incident cost us a rush reorder, a $22,000 account that nearly walked, and whatever faith I had left in outsourcing.

I manage quality and brand compliance for a small print-on-demand shop. Every month, I review roughly 200 unique items before they go out—shirts, mugs, tags, samples, one-off prototypes. In 2024, I rejected 15% of first deliveries because of color drift, finish issues, or just plain sloppy quality control. To be fair, some vendors are excellent. But when a third-party messes up, the client doesn't blame the vendor. They blame us. So that day I told my business partner we needed to bring at least a chunk of our printing in-house.

The $200 diversion

My first search for "Epson printers sublimation" pulled up the usual mix of forum threads and YouTube videos. "Convert your EcoTank for under $200!" one title screamed. I watched a few, and the idea lodged in my head: buy the Epson ET-2720 printer, swap the standard EcoTank ink for sublimation ink, and you've got yourself a cheap sublimation machine. It sounded too good to be true, and you know the rest.

I didn't check whether the printhead was rated for sublimation inks. I figured, "It's an Epson with a MicroPiezo printhead—it'll be fine." It wasn't fine. The sublimation ink clogged the head within two weeks. We lost a week of production trying to unclog it, then couldn't source a reliable replacement printhead, then paid about $300 for a used one. Total damage: roughly $500 and a lot of embarrassment. Put another way, that "budget" printer ended up costing way more than a dedicated sublimation printer would have.

Saved $200 on the setup, spent $500 on repairs. Classic penny-wise, pound-foolish. I review specs for a living, and I skipped the most important one. That's the kind of overconfidence I warn my team about.

Sublimation vs. UV: not a simple either/or

After the ET-2720 mess, I sat down and mapped out what we actually produce. We have two main workflows: soft substrates like polyester fabric and mugs—that's sublimation—and hard surfaces like phone cases, metal nameplates, and some plastics—that's UV. Both can look gorgeous. Both have their quirks. But they're not interchangeable, and the printer that does one usually doesn't do the other.

I started looking for a dedicated sublimation printer, and pretty quickly landed on Epson's SureColor F-series. The F170 was the right size for us, and it came with a proper manufacturer ink system and color profiles. But I also had to consider UV printing because we were losing jobs on custom hard goods. That's when the Eufymake UV Printer E1 showed up in nearly every search.

Here's my honest take on the Eufymake E1. It's one of the more affordable desktop UV printers on the market, and its price tag is seriously tempting. We even brought in a demo unit. The print quality on coated surfaces was surprisingly good for the price. But the UV printer software was a different story. It required a separate RIP program, and the learning curve was steeper than we had time for. We're a two-person operation; we don't have a dedicated color engineer. So even though the E1 wasn't a bad machine, it wasn't the right fit for our workflow.

That experience actually made me appreciate Epson's dedicated sublimation models even more. The F170's driver, ICC profiles, and support are designed for people who just want to print. The total cost of ownership is more predictable, and when something goes wrong there's a real support team that understands the workflow. We bought the F170 as part of a sublimation printer set—printer, ink, a heat press, and a stack of polyester blanks—and haven't looked back.

What changed for our clients

The biggest shift wasn't operational; it was philosophical. We can now print single proofs and tiny batches without worrying about setup fees or minimum order quantities. I remember when a commercial printer quoted us $90 for 500 business cards, plus a $45 setup fee. According to online printer price comparisons from January 2025, 500 business cards typically run $35–60 before setup. When you're making 50 cards for a new client, that per-unit cost is absurd. With our sublimation setup, the marginal cost is a sheet of transfer paper and a few minutes of heat pressing.

Setup fees in commercial printing—die cutting, custom Pantone colors, plate making—can add $50–200 to a job depending on complexity (based on online printer fee structures, 2025). That's a real burden for small businesses that just want to test a product idea. It's also why I respect any vendor who treats a $100 order as seriously as a $10,000 order. Small doesn't mean unimportant; it means potential.

A few weeks after we set up the F170, a solo consultant needed 40 branded notebooks for a workshop. We printed 40 sublimation transfers in an afternoon, heat pressed them, and delivered by the end of the week. The previous vendor would have charged a $75 setup fee alone. That client now has us on retainer for all their swag.

The printhead disaster: three lessons

If you're tempted to try the same ET-2720 hack, learn from my mistake:

1. Don't convert a standard EcoTank printer into a sublimation machine. The Epson ET-2720 printer is a perfectly good office printer, but it is not a sublimation printer. Check Epson's official specifications before trusting a forum post. There's a reason the company builds dedicated printers for that ink chemistry—the printhead, tubing, and firmware are all tuned for it.
2. Software matters as much as hardware. The Eufymake UV Printer E1 is a legitimate option for a shop that needs UV and has time to master its software. For us, the color-management headache wasn't worth it. It's not a bad product; it just didn't make sense for our team.
3. Total cost beats upfront price. We saved $200 on a converted ET-2720 and spent about $500 fixing it. The dedicated sublimation printer felt expensive until we accounted for reliability, support, and our own labor.

Oh, and one more thing: keep records. I now track every job we print in-house—material, ink usage, problems, run times. The spreadsheet caught a recurring clog pattern before it became a client complaint. That's the kind of small-account love I can get behind.

If you're standing at the same crossroads, comparing UV printer software, wondering whether you need a separate sublimation printer set, do the spec check first. Read the official pages, look at the total cost of ownership, and if a printer company says "this is for dye-sublimation" or "this is for UV," believe them. It's a lot cheaper than a printhead replacement.