DEVASTATING ARTIFACTS OF DOOM

[Embolism]

At the moment most handheld artifacts are far more useful to the average crewman than large ones. One of the reasons for this is the fact that large artifacts activate immediately and cannot be turned off, whereas you can "control" the output of handheld artifacts.

My suggestion is instead of most large artifacts activating immediately, make it so that fulfilling their activation condition "primes" them (and maybe give you a clue to their function, although ArtLab readings may or may not already do this), and can then unleash their effects with a touch; or perhaps even a signaller/proximity/timer/whatever assembly of some sort. That way instead of spacing that bomb or gravity artifact you just activated, you can pull it to an optimal location (risking a random assistant rushing over and touching it on the way) and then activate it.

[UmmonTL]

While it's true that they can't be turned off for the most part, you can easily determine the type of the artifact just from the xray values. And for a lot of them triggering does indeed just prime the artifact allowing you to use it whenever you need it. The notable exception are of course the "bad" artifacts like noisemakers, gravity artifacts and bombs. But I'd say it does make sense that handling artifacts carries sort of a risk.
Most importantly hobo artscience is really dangerous because a lot of the time you'll end up in a prison, a forcecage, darkness, borged or with a primed bomb in your hand, sometimes all at once. In the artlab you can avid that and you can also determine what the trigger is without activating the artifact right away if you're lucky and a bit careful.
Nevertheless, some sort of device you can attach to artifacts (and maybe other things) to trigger them remotely would be neat. You can do this with impact activated artifacts by putting a small bomb next to them but being able to attach an igniter (for heat) or an electropack (for electricity) seems like a cool idea to me. Make something for radiation as well and you're golden.
As for giving better control over artifacts, I once suggested giving them a second trigger to deactivate them.