21 Oct 2026 · 3D Printing · UV Printing · BuildHeyGears G1X: I Reprinted a Prosthetic Eye in Full Colour at Home

Years ago at university I helped make a 3D printed prosthetic eye on a printer that cost as much as a Ferrari. It went on to human trials, but every print stayed locked in that lab and I was never allowed to keep one. So when a full-colour desktop printer showed up at my door, I had to try it again. Here’s how I set up a pre-production HeyGears G1X, what the three print modes are like, and how the eye turned out. HeyGears sponsored this video and provided the prototype.

The eye I was never allowed to keep

At university I worked on a 3D printed prosthetic eye in a biomedical lab. The printer we used cost as much as a Ferrari, and the project went on to reach human trials. By then I’d had to walk away, and none of those prints came with me. So when I came across a desktop machine that claimed true full-colour 3D prints, I was straight back in that lab, wondering if this was the one.

I put a deposit down as soon as the early Kickstarter deposit opened, and started making videos about what a machine like this could mean. A lot of people watched. HeyGears then reached out and asked if I’d test a prototype, give them honest feedback and make some content. They were clear that it wasn’t finished: I might hit issues, and it would print slower than the retail machine. I said yes.

How much space the G1X needs

This thing is big. Here’s what I measured on my prototype:

What	Size (W x H x D)	Notes
G1X printer	58 x 66 x 51 cm	The front and rear doors fold out in open bed mode, so allow 85 cm of depth.
Resin station	37 x 34 x 45 cm	Sits beside the printer. Cables come out the back, so allow about 60 cm of depth.

Leave room above the printer too. On my prototype you top up the ink from above by squeezing the bottle in until a green light comes on, which is easy, but HeyGears says that part is changing on the retail machine. My unit runs the i3200 print head in the full 3D pack configuration, which is the version with the resin station attached. Setup was mostly standard: unboxing, a few cables and some calibration.

2D UV Printing and 3D Texture Printing

Before going for the eye I started easy, with a UV printed burger coaster (I’m on a diet, so this is as close as I get to a burger). Then I printed the same coaster with 3D Texture Printing, which builds up real depth you can feel with your fingers. On my prototype the max object height is 150 mm. It does stickers too, but I’m saving those for a proper UV printing video.

Switching to Full-Color 3D Printing

Full-colour 3D printing is a different beast. To switch modes you physically swap parts over from the 2D side to the 3D side, which takes me about 30 minutes now that I’m used to it:

1. Swap the ink reservoir that feeds the print head for an empty one used only for the 3D resins. This stops the UV ink and the UV resins cross-contaminating. (HeyGears says this swap is also changing on the retail machine.)
2. Run the calibration.
3. Connect the resin station with a couple of cables.

3D mode uses a lot more resin, so the resin station holds a litre of each colour and the support, and double the white. The white is the core of every model: the printer builds the body in white and only prints colour on the outside layer you can see. The model also sits fully surrounded by support while it prints.

Water-soluble supports: no support marks

I started small, with a pizza and a little character, and the detail and colour at that size are really good. Once a print is done you take it off the build plate and drop it in water. About a day later the support has fully dissolved. Because there’s nothing attached to the model in the first place, there are no support scars like you get with normal resin or FDM printing, so the finished model looks good from every angle.

Are the colours washed out?

A little, yes. Because the colour is only on the outside of a white core, the finished prints come out a bit lighter than you might expect. They still look good, but they won’t look hand painted, and I think that’s a trade-off you have to live with. I’ve been trying a spray gloss varnish as a finishing step: it seals and protects the surface, and to my eye it pulls the colour back out a bit. Watch the video and tell me if you can see the difference.

I also pushed the size up with a goblin and a dagger. Bigger models mean longer print times on the prototype; HeyGears tells me the retail machine will be much faster, which is a big part of why I’m still buying my Kickstarter unit.

Reprinting the prosthetic eye

I recreated the eye model as close as I could to the original file from all those years ago, loaded it into Blueprint (the HeyGears software for this machine), sliced it and sent it to print. The next morning I could just make it out, suspended in the support. Into the water it went, another wait, and there it was. It worked.

What’s missing is the clear sclera and the lens. My prototype doesn’t have transparent resin yet, so this is the base eye model, and that’s the compromise I had to make. It isn’t the biomedical lab I remember, but holding a full-colour print of my own eye model in my own workshop after all these years is a dream come true.

HeyGears printed the same models

After I sent HeyGears the video, they printed the same eye file in their own lab to show what the G1X does with their team running it. One pair had their finishing step, a light coat of gloss, which is the same idea as the spray I tried. They also printed the goblin and the dagger. You can see all of them in the video.

What’s next

The eye was just the start. Next I want to try 3D scanning an object and printing it, running an AI image-to-3D model through it, and printing something fully articulated, like a dragon. Tell me in the YouTube comments what you’d like me to print next.

The Kickstarter campaign has ended, but at the time of writing late pledges are still open on the HeyGears G1X Kickstarter page. HeyGears’ own store also had $50 off with code DRAFTID when this went up: HeyGears store.

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