The JGMaker Artist-D: An IDEX Printer for $389?

A fully-fledged IDEX printer at less than half the price you'd usually pay for one. Unfortunately, some design issues prevent it from greatness.

Budget 3D printers have flooded the market in recent years. Some provide cheap alternatives to mainstream brands. Others put their own spin on the technology.

The JGMaker Artist-D falls into the second camp. It is an Independent Dual Extruder (IDEX) printer capable of large dual color prints and dual printing—simultaneously printing two models.

Launched initially on Kickstarter, the Artist D can currently be ordered directly from JGMaker for just less than $600. Be prepared for a wait though as the first backers still haven't received their units at the time of writing.

With so many underwhelming 3D printers appearing via Kickstarter these days, what does the Artist-D do to stand out?

It turns out, quite a bit.

The JGMaker Artist-D in Brief

The general frame of the Artist-D is similar to most other printers, except for the X-axis belt. Since this is an IDEX printer, two separate belts work independently, moving the direct-drive extruders along linear rails. The Z-axis features dual screws giving a claimed movement accuracy of 0.001mm.

The build area is a generous 310 x 310 x 350 mm, and the composite build plate is removable, attached to the hotbed via magnets in the base. Each extruder/nozzle combination has its own home location with wire cleaning brushes to automatically clear filament from the nozzles, which runs straight from the spools to the extruders via a runout sensor – no clogged Bowden tubes here!

The single-color backlit LCD is controlled via a rotary encoder and uses Marlin Firmware version bugfix 2.0.x. During the Kickstarter, JGMaker revealed a "pro" edition of the Artist-D featuring a color touch screen along with a few upgrades, none of which were present for this review.

The Artist-D can print various materials, including PLA, TPU, PETG, and ABS, along with composites and PVA for soluble support structures.

• Extruder system: Direct drive
• Print head: Dual Single nozzle
• Nozzle size: 0.4 mm
• Max. hot end temperature: 245 °C
• Max. heated bed temperature: 90 °C
• Print bed material: FA platform
• Bed leveling: Manual
• Connectivity: SD card
• Filament sensor: Yes
• Filament diameter: 1.75 mm
• Third-party filament: Yes
• Filament materials: Consumer materials (PLA, ABS, PETG, TPU)
• Recommended slicer: Cura
• Operating system: Windows 7/10/XP
• File types: STL, OBJ, G-code

What Makes IDEX Printers So Special?

Before moving on, a quick primer on the pros and cons of IDEX printing. In short, IDEX printers can give true dual-color printing, with sharp differences between the two colors and no need for the separate tower that dual extruder single nozzle printers need to avoid color blending. On the other hand, color gradient printing is not possible with IDEX printers.

While the two extruders on an IDEX printer are technically independent, this only means independence along the X-axis in most printers. This still allows for some interesting use cases, though. Dual heads can print two identical models simultaneously. If you load both filament spools with the same color, you can print models up to 111 mm wide in batches of two.

Perhaps more exciting to hobby roboticists will be the mirror function. When you are manufacturing symmetrical parts, the ability to load a single model to an SD card and receive two mirrored prints saves time at almost every step.

Artist-D Initial Setup

The setup for the Artist-D is relatively simple. It comes mostly assembled, requiring only the top arch to be attached to the base via four screws. It's a little fiddly to do alone, but even taking my time, the printer was fully assembled within half an hour.

Wiring up the Artist-D is also very easy thanks to the full-color manual and numbered cables/sockets. The flex cables are fairly robust and designed to not get in the way no matter what the printer is doing. Both extruders come with nozzles pre-fitted, but one of the Artist-D's key features is the smart system for fitting and replacing nozzles via a push-button on the side of each hot end housing.

JGMaker provides all the tools required to build and use the Artist-D, and the quality of these tools appears to be a little higher than the average. The wood-handled bed-scraper is a nice touch. The Artist-D also comes with a replacement nozzle and two full small filament rolls, more than the usual "just enough for the test print" amount you get with many other printers.

The print bed has four spring-mounted hand screws for leveling, which uses the primary extruder head nozzle as a reference point. A menu option cycles the nozzle between the center and all four corners for easy leveling – a feature of the Marlin firmware more than anything specific to this printer.

After setting up and leveling, you are ready to start your first print. Feeding in the filament is very simple, after using the Preheat PLA menu setting, feed the filament through the hole in the extruder until it comes out of the nozzle.

Test Prints and Print Modes

JGMaker provides a number of test prints as STLs, along with an Ultimaker Cura installer. The version provided with the Artist-D is a little out of date but functionally identical to recent Cura builds. After following a brief setup (as given in the user manual), you are ready to print.

The way the Artist-D approaches different types of print is quite intuitive. All single and dual-color prints work much as normal within Cura. Whether you are using a single color and extruder or merging two parts of a model and assigning to each extruder, the printer works using its Auto Park feature. This behavior is much like any other 3D printer.

For mirrored and duplicated prints, the manual instructs to simply move the print -80 mm in the X-axis and select the appropriate print type on the printer. Depending on your viewpoint, this could be seen as a good thing, a simple way to allow less computer-savvy people to use these features. Others might miss the ability to specify these things in software and communicate with the printer without relying on an SD card.

My initial test prints went well, with the "money-cat" model coming out perfectly. As with all 3D printers, there was a mixed bag here, and some problems are generic problems that anyone using a 3D printer will be familiar with. Unfortunately, there were some issues that were a little more severe, but we'll come on to those later.

JGMaker also provides a stacked block model for dual-color calibration. After an initial print, you can take manual measurements of the output and use a menu to offset the second extruder.

It seems a primitive way of calibrating something so precise, but then how else can you ensure nothing has slipped during shipping?

Familiar Problems, New Sources

Unfortunately, this is where the problems began. Single color printing worked fine, but duplication and mirror printing mostly didn't come out properly. After a lot of tweaking, it turned out that there was a fundamental height difference between the two nozzles.

This could be fixed by adding a thicker base to whatever model you wanted to duplicate, but then you need to choose between either one nozzle starting touching the build plate or one so high it might not adhere. This wouldn't be an issue if you could manually change the nozzle height, but you can't. The software offset only applies to Auto Park mode, and the clever 'quick release' nozzle system prevents precise height adjustment.

The easy to replace nozzles are a nice idea, though in practice, they are more trouble than they are worth. Early in testing the printer, I decided to swap the nozzles. The media for the Artist-D shows someone simply pressing the button and retrieving the nozzle with their fingers. In reality, it is not so simple.

Quick-Switch Nozzles: Convenience or Liability?

Removing the nozzle first requires freeing it of filament, therefore heating the hot end. You really do not want to try to remove a hot nozzle with your fingers! After clearing the filament, you can press the button and carefully remove the nozzle with pliers.

While still hot, you'll want to clean the extruder area fully, as any leftover filament can stop the nozzle seating properly. There's no tactile feedback when the nozzle is fully in - which is what caused the height discrepancy most likely.

After much testing and cleaning, and several extra nozzles, the main extruder clogged completely while in normal running.

Filament clogging problems are not unique to this printer, but in this case, it seems the cause of them is to do with the combination of directly feeding filament into the nozzle attachment. The clog pushed back from the nozzle right over the top of the hot end casing – something I've never seen happen before.

Build Plate Woes

The build plate itself is a composite material that grips prints very well and can be easily removed. It's flexible too, allowing you to bend it under prints to help loosen them. In fact, most prints ended up leaving residue on the plate, which needed scraping off with the provided scraper. This isn't necessarily a negative, though – I'd rather a too grippy build plate than too smooth.

Both the metal heated plate and the composite cover seem to be of excellent quality, so I was somewhat taken aback when I found it impossible to level the bed properly. The center of the print bed was several millimeters higher than the corners.

Warped print beds are common on cheap 3D printers, and there are various workarounds, but given the perceived quality of most other parts of this printer, it was a disappointment.

JGMaker Artist-D: Almost Great

The JGMaker Artist-D has so much potential. IDEX FDM printers with large build areas represent the best of both worlds – aesthetically pleasing multicolor prints and functional, fast part prototyping.

I don't want to be harsh on the Artist-D, there's clearly a lot of thought that has gone into this printer, and it offers a lot for less than half the cost of similarly specced printers. Unfortunately, the issues it exhibits seem to go beyond the normal quirks and headaches that all 3D printers share, into problems caused specifically by the well-meaning yet poorly implemented nozzle setup.

I'm sure workarounds will come, and this printer will eventually be good, but in its current iteration, the Artist-D is a tough printer to work with.

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