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

I ordered this upgrade for my CR-10 after I had some sort of failure of the factory extrusion head that caused my heating block, heat sink, and fans to become a giant, fist sized ball of plastic. I had been wanting to go to direct drive for a while, based on experience with some other printers with it, and this failure was the push I needed to order the Micro-Swiss kit.The Micro-Swiss kit is exceptionally well made, the base bracket is machined aluminum, and it all fit together very easily following the video that is linked from their website. They include a small business card with a QR code that takes you to the video, which is nice.I did have one small issue, the countersink for the shoulder screw for the lever arm wasn’t quite deep enough, and as a result, the screw would pinch the lever arm tight against the base bracket when tightened down, rather than the lever arm floating on the screw shoulder. I fixed that with some very light filing of the back side of the lever arm pivot boss to effectively make it thinner, it took only a few passes of a fine tooth file to get it to fit as intended, so, I consider this within the regular fit and finish of installing something like this, but could be fixed at the factory by cutting the screw countersink jsut a hair deeper.I calibrated the steps on my CR-10 following a few videos off YouTube, and I settled on 139.25 steps per mm as optimal. One other thing that must be done is offsetting the X and Y home, as the true, limit switch driven home now hangs off the build plate a bit.I am getting beautiful extrusion with this direct drive kit; the dual mesh drive rollers really bite hard into the filament, and the heat brake works amazing. You can heat the head up, unload the filament drive lever, and pull the filament back out of the hot end no problem, and the end that comes out looks like it’s been clipped by a pair of scissors! No swelling of the end in the brake like some hot ends, no stringy tail, just a clean square end. The first time I pulled the filament back when doing the step calibration I thought it broke off in the extruder, but, 3 more tails exactly the same has me convinced The heat brake just works that good!I’m running a .8mm nozzle in my CR-10 at 70mm/s speed and this extruder kit has absolutely no issue keeping up!

Very solid product, made me very happy to print!Easily my best upgrade so far, solid quality. Spare parts are cheap enough that I am confident that any part that wears out faster than others is not an issue for me.Machined parts are good quality, durable and easy to fix if something comes loose. My only issue is that one of the screws for the fan shroud got chewed up pretty bad, but that was my fault more than anything. (screw was at a bad angle in a printed shroud)The heat block got chewed up on one corner when my hand slipped and the heater cartridge was damaged, but can be easily replaced.

The Good: Comes with all hardware needed for installation. Excellent look and quality. Vastly improved the quality of my prints. The all metal hot end and direct drive extruder work flawlessly together.The Bad: While it isn't difficult to install and setup, It requires a heavy teardown of your printer. If you run a print farm, take your down time into account.Overall: 5/5, You will see vast improvements when it comes to print quality. Beware: YOU MUST CALIBRATE YOUR E-STEPS PROPERLY AFTER INSTALLING!! There are many long form videos on installation and setup on YouTube. I highly recommend watching a few before and during the process.

As Micro-Swiss is based in the USA, this is a high quality product.I have used other direct drives, and they do not match this one.I found an issue, after an "X" amount of prints with PLA... running 200/60, I have had a few failed prints, due to the grub screw coming loose after a while, causing a heat block... and the print fails.I have reached out to Micro-Swiss for a solution today... (I don't expect to hear back until after Thanksgiving) to see what type of revision/solution they offer.I would STILL recommend this direct drive, and hot end, over any other!(Just keep an eye on that grub screw.)**** UPDATE ****Changed from a 4, to 5 star due to the fact when I contacted Swiss, and explained the problem, they corrected it by providing the replacement part.The hot end is still running strong, and I am still a true supporter of them.

The media could not be loaded. Works great but might require some technical research/due diligence to avoid frustrating situations. If you are familiar with the "TypeA Machines" direct drive / filament feed system this one will be very intuitive to understandSetup guide seemed daunting at first but ended up being a breeze. All required hardware is included except for the concentric nuts which you will need from your existing setupWhen installed properly it works a charm, this is both a direct drive upgrade as well as a hotend upgrade (all metal microswiss)Works better for extruding PETG filament compared to the stock setup. No more clickingHolds temp better too and less heat creep compared to the stock hotendHad to modify my S3d profile starting scriptsI am not using auto bed levelingOverall I'm impressed and will update my other CR-10 as well. Might check back in after a few hundred hours of printsWould have 5 stared this product if it only cost $40-60 in its current state. Product itself seems well built and thought out. Support seems like it's there but still needs to be better