xTool O1 Omni batch fill: 120 Santa hat ornaments UV printed in minutes

xTool O1 Omni Batch Fill: How I UV Print 120 Santa Hat Ornaments in 18 Minutes

If you're like me and getting ready for the Christmas season, and ornaments are your big seller, this right here might be the reason to get a UV printer.

I'm getting ready for an upcoming craft fair, and I usually make two to three hundred ornaments at a time. This batch is a Santa hat that sits on top of an alphabet letter. Normally I'd hand paint every one of them. This time I let the xTool O1 Omni do it with Batch Fill, and I'll show you exactly how I set it up in xTool Studio.

The Project: Santa Hat Alphabet Ornaments

I do about five of every letter, so that works out to roughly 120 Santa hats for this one show. Painting the red is no problem. Going back and filling in all the white trim by hand is what eats my time, and it never comes out as clean as I want.

Santa hat topper on a wooden alphabet letter ornament
The Santa hat topper that sits on each letter.

Setting Up Batch Fill in xTool Studio

I'd already scanned the bed, so all of the Santa hats show up in xTool Studio. My artwork is an SVG file with an individual layer for each color.

  1. Drop the design on top of one of the hats on the bed.
  2. Go to the side panel and select Useful Tools.
  3. Pick Batch Fill.
  4. Lay your design over one of the pieces and hit Fill.

Batch Fill automatically detects every other item on the bed that's the same shape. Mine filled all of them in less than 10 seconds. If you're working with an odd shape like a keychain, you can put a frame around it to help it out.

xTool Studio bed scan showing Santa hat ornaments on the xTool O1 Omni
The bed scan with every hat laid out.
xTool Studio batch fill placing the design on every Santa hat
Batch Fill found them all in under 10 seconds.

My Print Settings: Two White, One Color

I'm just using a standard print. There's no reason to go crazy on these. What I am doing is two layers of white and one layer of color.

With only one layer of white, it's not exactly transparent, but it just doesn't give good coverage over the wood. Two layers fixes that. You can still see the texture of the wood grain through it, which I actually like on these.

xTool O1 Omni print settings with two white layers and one color layer
Standard print: two white, one color.

Print Time and Cost

Once you hit process, xTool Studio takes a few seconds to estimate the job:

  • Print time: about 18 minutes for the batch
  • Ink cost: just about 10 cents for all of the Santa hats

I could paint all of the red with no problem, but filling in all of that white by hand would take me way longer than 18 minutes, and the quality from the printer comes out much better.

xTool Studio print time and ink cost estimate for a batch of ornaments
About 18 minutes and roughly 10 cents of ink.

Watching It Print (It Did Something I Didn't Expect)

This wasn't the most optimized print path I've seen. It started printing the back row first and did the two layers of white there. Normally it starts at the front and works its way back. My rows also weren't perfectly straight, so it worked its way across at an angle.

That's actually the nice part about Batch Fill: you don't have to lay everything out in a perfect row. It still hit every piece spot on. You may see a little overspray around the front edge while it's printing, but the finished pieces come out clean.

xTool O1 Omni UV printer printing white on the back row of Santa hats
It started on the back row this time.
Batch fill UV printing Santa hat ornaments laid out in angled rows
Rows don't have to be straight.

Finished Pieces: Rudolph Reindeer Letters

While the hats were printing, I pulled out another project: alphabet letters with reindeer shapes on a walnut backer. The noses are engraved, and the printed white dot lands right in the center of that engraving every time. Again, a perfect print.

Rudolph reindeer alphabet letter ornaments with walnut backer
Reindeer letters with a walnut backer.
Close-up of UV printed reindeer nose on an engraved ornament
The white dot lands right in the engraving.

Hand Painted vs. UV Printed

I zoomed in close on two of the same pieces side by side. The hand-painted one has a lot of spots that got missed. The UV-printed one has much cleaner lines and better detail. That's a better print than I could possibly paint, and it's not close.

Close-up of a hand painted wood ornament with missed spots
Hand painted.
Close-up of the same wood ornament UV printed with clean lines
UV printed.

Lessons From This Build

  • Use two layers of white on wood. One layer doesn't cover well enough.
  • Don't stress about perfect rows. Batch Fill found every hat, even with my rows at an angle.
  • Watch the print order. Mine printed back-to-front this time, which surprised me, but the results were still spot on.
  • Let the machine work while you work. I load the bed, hit print, and go cut more ornaments. That's the real time savings when you need 120 of something by the weekend.

Is Batch Fill Worth It?

For me, yes. It's a great feature that speeds up the whole process, and it works for just about anything you can put on the bed: keychains, dog tags, ornaments, whatever you're making. In my experience it's been very accurate, and it's been better than the camera systems I've seen on some other UV printers on the market right now.

Finished UV printed Santa hat ornaments from the xTool O1 Omni batch fill
The finished batch.

Coming soon: I'll be doing some videos on gold foiling with the O1 Omni, so stay tuned.

Watch the Full Build

Watch on YouTube

Shop the Ornaments

Want ornaments like these without making them yourself? Check out the Christmas Ornaments collection at My Simple Builds.

I'm Brad, this has been My Simple Builds. Now get out there and go make something.

Back to blog