Ink on paper.
Written by machine.
AI can research and write every letter. It cannot hold the pen. Plan the machines, the room and the people with numbers from our own production room in Hamburg, then build it yourself or have us set it up remotely.
Rendered from the same pen paths our machine writes. Example text, not a customer letter.
Plan your setup
Tell us what you want to send. You get machines, staff time, output, a shopping list and the cost per letter, worked out from what our own machine measures.
3D plan of the production room we are moving into in Hamburg (one machine runs today). The shelf shows the machines your plan needs, up to four per room.
- Machines
- 1
- Pieces per day
- 48
- Staff time needed, h/day
- 2.0
- Material + postage per piece
- 2.05 €
Room for up to 103 pieces a day with this setup.
Equipment
- 1 × UUNA TEK iAuto handwriting machine
- 1 × Mac or Windows PC beside the machines (the vendor software needs one; more than one machine per computer is not tested yet)
- 1 × Packing table and post boxes
Machine: UUNA TEK iAuto (affiliate link, we earn a commission).
Every month
- Envelopes: 1,030 per month
- Letter paper A4: 1,030 sheets per month
- Stamps or franking: 1,000 per month
- Quick-drying gel refills: refill life not measured yet; we count from now
Add the value of a customer and your reply and close rates to see the return.
Timings measured on our UUNA TEK iAuto (A4 letter 510 s median over 262 runs, DIN long envelope 63 s over 197 runs, booklet 96 s). Packing time is an assumption of 2.5 minutes. We do not predict reply rates.
What a pen on a machine can do
Each example uses the same pen paths as our production, at real paper size.
Novak & Partner · Prague
Dear Ms Novak,
please find our proposal for the spring exhibition enclosed. The figures on page two reflect the volumes we discussed on the phone, including the second location.
What it does not do well
- Long texts are slow: about a minute for an envelope, far more for a full page.
- Ballpoint and gel ink only. Fountain-pen ink smears before it dries.
- Thick or textured envelopes need hand feeding and a lower pen.
Choosing a handwriting machine
What we would check before buying, with what our own machine, a UUNA TEK iAuto-01, actually does in daily use.
Buying one? The iAuto at UUNA TEK. Affiliate link: we earn a commission if you buy there. It does not change a single number on this page.
| Check | What we see on ours | Ask the seller |
|---|---|---|
| Throughput | Maker states about 145 characters a minute. We measure 47 to 50 seconds per addressed envelope. | A timed video of your format, not a brochure number. |
| Feeding | About 80 sheets or 30 envelopes per load. DIN long is not on the format list; it writes fine when fed one by one. | Your exact envelope, in a stack, with flap. |
| Software | Windows or macOS only, and the vendor software must run beside the machine. No Linux, so a Mac mini sits next to ours. | Can it run unattended for a day? |
| Interface | The API is not published. We recovered it from the software. “Accepted” does not always mean written. | Documentation, and how it reports a finished job. |
| Handwriting | We send finished single-stroke paths. Outline fonts traced by a pen look hollow. | Can you load your own single-stroke paths? |
| Pen | Spring-loaded holder. Pen pressure is set by trial on real paper. Quick-drying gel pens only. | Which refills, how long one lasts. |
| Setup | 22 kg and a jerky arm: it needs a heavy table, or the lines wobble. | Footprint, and room in front for paper. |
| Support | WhatsApp to Hong Kong, which is 3 am to noon in Central Europe. | Hours in your time zone, and in your language. |
Not sure it pays off? Running a machine is a job: feeding, pens, failed runs, the computer beside it. Put your numbers into the planner before you buy.
Our handwriting styles
Fourteen hands digitised from real pen strokes, each letter in several genuine forms. Each one passed an independent reading test.
The same line in all fourteen hands
- No. 0210
- No. 0360
- No. 0530
- No. 0663
- No. 0705
- No. 0773
- No. 0841
- No. 0206
- No. 0344
- No. 0528
- No. 0625
- No. 0683
- No. 0719
- No. 0858
Source strokes: ScaDS.AI German Line- and Word-Level Handwriting Dataset, Thomas Burghardt and Ahmad Alzin, Leipzig University / ScaDS.AI, doi:10.5281/zenodo.18301532, licensed CC BY 4.0. Single-stroke extraction and missing characters composed from the same hand by Deimann Com GmbH. Font files of these styles for your own plotter are in preparation.
Three ways to get there
- Build it yourself Take the shopping list from the planner and the machine guide above. Setup guides, font files and a setup kit for your own machine are in preparation.
- Have us set it up remotely We set up the software, the handwriting, the materials and the daily routine on your machines, the way we run our own room. Fixed-price packages are in preparation; the planner result is the starting point.
- Have us write for you No machine yet? We write and post from Hamburg across Europe at handschriftpost.de.
Questions
Is it really ink?
Yes. A pen held by the machine moves over the paper. Nothing is printed: the ink sits in the paper like in any handwritten note.
Do you send outside Germany?
Yes, we post from Hamburg to addresses across Europe. For other countries, tell us where your letters need to go and we will look at the options with you.
Can you use my own handwriting?
Yes. You fill in a writing template, we digitise it and write in your hand. It stays yours and is used only for your post.
Where do the handwriting styles come from?
From a public research dataset of German handwriting (credit above). We extracted the pen strokes and completed missing letters from the same writer's strokes. The styles are numbered and not tied to any person.
Can I buy the handwriting styles for my own machine?
Font files for pen plotters are in preparation. They will carry the dataset credit, and they cannot be exclusive, because the source strokes are public.