First impression after receiving Artisan - Notes

Hi everyone,

Just received yesterday my two boxes, after some issue with UPS delivery.

It’s a very good thing that the boxes are well padded in multiple layers for delivery. My two boxes were damaged externally.

So, I did the construction, took me around 4–5 hours. What’s left is attaching the exhaust fan to my homemade filter.

Overall, I’m super impressed with the quality of everything.

When I first booted the controller, everything was in Chinese. I could not understand it, so after pressing a few places on the touch screen, it somehow rebooted and asked me for the language and initial setup, like indicated in the book.

I had some issue inserting the black filament, I had to remove the tube, force the filament in and reinsert the tube. After that, I did the initial calibrations, that went well. Did the firmware update.

Then I installed Luban, and sent the pen holder to the Artisan.

The first print, did not stick to the plate after a few minutes, so I stopped the print, redid the bed level with 9x9 @ 60°C. I’m printing now a second time, while typing this, seems to be going ok.

Some observations:

  1. The light inside are nice, but the printing area under the heads are quite dark. I think I will find some LED I can focus on on the plate at an angle.

  2. The cables are hard to install and manage, I found the Y axis very long, I had to wrap them outside the sleeve.

  3. The controller fan thermostat need to be adjusted with a bigger hysteresis, it’s always going from high to low to high, quite annoying.

So I’m still learning this new machine, so far, quite impressive.

I will post my progress here, maybe it can help someone.

Thanks!

I’m trying to use the laser now. I cannot get the set origin to work. I will post a separate thread on the issue.

My impression is the hardware build quality is very impressive…
Software / hardware interaction needs to catch up a bit though.
After I upgraded my Artisan’s firmware the x-offset went off and the nozzle stated scratching the PIE coated sheet. I had to manually increase the x-offset for both printheads. Now things seem ok…
Started the laser yesterday. I changed the tool head using the console and it was ok, but could actually start laser if until I physically restart the machine, only then it went to the laser unlock screen and continued well.
Now is the material / laser learning curve, and I’m not sure where to learn that unfortunately…

So far I’m happy with the machine.