FLASHFORGE Artemis 3D Printer (Orange)

The printer is packed very well and looks great when all unboxed. Setup is easy. Leveling the build plate and loading the filament is simple. The touch screen is very sensitive but easy to use. A coworker commented about how quiet it is. I have had it running during my 1st grade and Kindergarten classes, and they haven’t noticed.
I have only used Makerbot in the past and always had trouble with the extruder or warping on the build plate, but this machine is slick. I did have a little trouble with an articulating file. The small pieces broke easily, but overall I am happy with the printer and the price. A lot less expensive than other brands, and is so far pretty solid.

Stopped working after a filament change. Despite lots of troubleshooting, the gears refused to grab the filaments and we could not figure it out. There is VERY little information on this model and changing the nozzle is a process. Kind of insulting to call this beginner friendly. Look elsewhere. Returning ours.

Man, I wanted to love this printer.

This is my first 3D printer. It was a replacement for a damaged Longer that I got for Christmas, and I selected this printer due to the form factor and Flashforge’s reputation for making solid, functional machines. For the first week I had it, I loved it. I had it running at least twelve hours a day.

Soon, though, I started experiencing issues. First, the nozzle clogged. I did a hot pull, which seemed to fix the issue for a few hours, but then it clogged again. I reached out to customer support, and they suggested I replace the nozzle. However, they informed me that it’s a proprietary nozzle, and that parts were not yet listed in the United States, so they would have to send me a new one. They did, I replaced it, and it worked for a few days.

Then the fan noise from the base became so loud we could hear it in another room. Back to customer support, who went back and forth via email (there’s no chat and no phone number, and no one ever signed the emails, so I don’t know who I was communicating with). Finally, they diagnosed it as a bad cooling fan, and shipped me a replacement, along with a few photos to show me how to replace it. When I opened the unit up, I discovered that one of the screws that held the old fan in place had fallen loose and was lying in the unit. I replaced the fan, along with the screws. The noise was gone. But when I tried to print again, the unit began freezing. Control panel was wholly nonresponsive, the unit wouldn’t do anything.

Back to emailing customer service. They suggested a firmware update would fix the problem. They walked me through the process, I updated the firmware, and it did nothing. The unit still locked up after a few minutes, no matter what. Back to customer service. They now decided that I had a bad motherboard, and shipped me a new one. They sent me two photos and the suggestion “make sure you take a picture so you know where all the cables go” for installation instructions. Gamely, I got the motherboard, and opened the unit back up. Part of their directions was to just chip of the quarter-sized glob of glue holding the antenna in place. It was only after I got the circuit board out that I realized they hadn’t sent one with the control panel attached, and I could find no way to remove the control panel from the faulty board.

At this point, I reached out to Amazon. They told me to return the unit for a refund, which I have. I’ll be ordering anything but a Flashforge in the future. I really wanted to like this unit. I understand 3D printing is a hobby that often requires maintenance and tweaking, and to be fair, I really did learn a lot about how 3D printers are constructed constantly repairing a wildly defective unit, but for $500, I expect a model that will function for more than eight days.

Didn’t work