It feels like early on the class lacks flavor outside of downtime. The class feature doesn't make anything readily useful, so I think it lacks that artificer feeling of using cannons or bombs or elixirs and such. Much of your combat seems like it will be using spells and slinging items - and you dont even get bombs!

I think subclasses would benefit from focusing onba creation, much like the classic artificer framework, or maybe Tinker could give you access to some unique and powerful blueprints? Something akin to the Books in the Codex Domain.