Micro Swiss Direct Drive Extruder for Creality CR-10 / Ender 3 Printers

Takes a while to get the hang of the direct drive but works well.

Id already taken my Creality-10s as far as I could. Bearings, timing gears, belt tensioners... A/C heating blanket, BL-Touch, 32-bit board. It printed as well as expected with PLA+, on plain glass. But every few weeks it would clog, and Id have to clean the hot end up again. I tried printing ABS (otherwise good with lots of warping) and TPU (through a bowden tube!) with no success. I knew an all-metal hotend would eliminate the clogging problem and Micro Swiss was popular. I liked their all metal construction and it looked like it should be reliable. And it has been. Print quality has never been better I can reach higher temperatures to reliably print other filaments, and the direct drive lets me run flexible filaments.

I have a ender 3, 2 CR-10S Pros, Prusa MK2.5, and a CR-10S. I installed this hotend on my CR-10S its been collecting dust, I use my pros most of the time. Installing this hotend on my CR-10S has now turned my CR-10S into my printer of choice to run. Now my CR-10S pros are collecting dust going to have to get them upgraded soon.

retracting hot filament causes the filament to cool in the throat which immediately clogs it. some people online suggest seasoning it like a cast iron skillet, but I have seen no instructions from microswiss on doing this. If there is a solution microswiss, please let me know, I would love to find out that this is user error so I can change this review, I want, so badly, to love this product, but currently, it is absolutely unusable.

This thing rocks. 10/10 would recommend. You dont need to do this to make your printer print better if everything is running fine stock, but it is absolutely worth it if your printer is messed up and needs replacement parts anyway.

Looked like a logical upgrade. Dont know, because I never got it to work, turning the whole printer into junk.

Followed setup instructions to the tee. Heated to 220 literally went to snug a loose nozzle and it sheared off in the hotend. Out 100 bucks. This is garbage!

The main issue I had with this was changing the X & Y offsets. I tried with changing settings in Cura with no avail. I went into the Marlin Code and edited it in there myself. Theres YouTube videos on how to do that, but the manufacturers website will tell where to go. I have included it with this review. Since it is smaller form factor than the Ender 3s factory model you will need to change it.

I tried other hotends and setups prior to this unit to keep the upgrades cheap. I spent more in the end taking that route though I learned a lot. This kit is the best though for out of the box upgrade and print improvement. Dont forget to adjust your steps though.

Great addition to my modified Ender 3 Pro. Not a single jam, no slipping, and helps reduce the tuning required between material changes compared to the original hot end setup. Would buy again in a heartbeat.