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

The world of 3D Printing Components is certainly complex, with so many new models, designs and entirely new ideas being presented on a near-constant basis as the industry develops, grows and matures. However, despite the incredible number of different options available for specific components, design styles and even entire models of 3D Printers, the truth is that there is no real perfect setup, and your ideal 3D Printer setup will be defined by what you actually want from the machine – and this is exactly what makes Hobbyist 3D Printing and 3D Making so damn exciting!

This Micro Swiss Direct Drive Extruder for Creality CR-10 & Ender 3 Printers is a great example of an amazing upgrade that may not be ideal for everyone, but is without a doubt one of the coolest upgrades we’ve stocked so far. Crafted by the masters of the Swiss Lathe, Micro Swiss, and designed for one of the most impressive Hobbyist 3D Printer brands in the world, Creality 3D, this upgrade is designed to help you turn your Creality CR-10 Series or Ender 3 Series 3D Printer into a Direct Drive 3D Printer, to replace (and upgrade) the original Bowden setup that comes installed on these already-fantastic machines.

This direct drive upgrade is manufactured to an incredibly high quality standard, with absolutely breath-taking machining that really lets you know that it was crafted by industry experts. It is specially made to be as light as possible, while still catering to all of the necessary mounting points and form factors from the CR-10 Series and Ender 3 Series of hotend assemblies. This allows you to really sink your teeth into awesome 3D Printing materials such as Flexibles and other tricky Exotic Filaments, and gives your 3D Printer more control over those wily filaments that typically like to tangle, clog, and snake around drive gears when you least expect it.

It must be noted, however, that although we simply love this extruder upgrade, we also know that it’s not going to be for everyone, so be sure to check out the final paragraph of this description to get a better understanding of whether this upgrade is a good choice for you.

Please Note: This beautiful DDS Extruder and Hotend assembly is designed specifically for the original CR-10 Series and Ender Series of 3D Printers from Creality, but Is not compatible with all models. As such, it’s important to check the compatibility section in the table below to ensure that it will work on your particular 3D Printing setup.

Important Note Directly from Micro Swiss: We notice a recent extruder stepper motor update on Creality machines. Before ordering this kit, please check your extruder stepper motor. If your extruder motor gear is pressed in, you will need to purchase a new stepper motor to be able to complete the installation.

Please Note: This kit does not include a stepper motor or roller wheels for mounting this carriage onto the Y-Axis Gantry. Fortunately, you can simply use the stepper motor and roller wheels you currently have, which of course saves you from unnecessary extra cost.

Is this Micro Swiss Direct Drive Upgrade a Good Choice for You?

Here at DIYElectronics, we strive to stock a good selection of 3D Printer Upgrades and Kits for improving your 3D Printing experience, and the benefits of such upgrades are usually obvious from the outset. However, with this direct drive upgrade system, the benefits are not immediately obvious, and the value of these benefits will vary depending on your 3D Printer setup, as well as what you really want from your 3D Printer. This is because a direct drive setup is technically not better or worse than a Bowden setup, but instead just offers slightly different benefits while also having its own unique drawbacks – and this of course is why there are often debates going on within online forums about which is better, with passionate evangelists for both sides.

With this in mind, and as a means to provide some unbiased clarity on the topic (we like both Direct Drive and Bowden setups), we have found from personal experience that the key differences between the two styles is that a Bowden Setup focuses on low weight, high speed and good accuracy at high speeds, whilst Direct Drive Setups focus more on pinpoint precision, fine filament control and reduced power-loss through the various components. This is primarily why so many PLA-focused 3D Printers will utilise the Bowden setup, as it offers the best speeds for producing good quality prints at a rapid pace, but if you want to start venturing into trickier filaments such as Flexibles, you may start struggling due to the hysteresis (or lagging motion) and noise from the many Bowden components transferring power over a reasonably long distance.

Conversely, Direct Drive is the setup of choice for anyone who loves printing in Flexible Filaments or trickier filaments, as it has a much more constrained filament feed-path than Bowden setups, as well as a close proximity between the driving gear and the motor. This translates to much finer filament control, as the driving motor doesn’t have to push and pull the filament down a long pipe, and instead the driving motor can almost directly grip the filament, reducing potential noise between components, drastically reduced lag in motions, and what can be technically be considered faster retraction times. This kind of setup doesn’t give the filament much wiggle room (quite literally), meaning that flexibles and other tricky filaments can’t tangle, snake around gears or cause similar spaghetti-like problems.

So as you can see, choosing between direct drive and Bowden is really just a matter of what you want from your 3D Printer, and if you’ve always loved the capabilities of direct drive 3D Printers like our Prusa i3, but simply can’t resist the massive build volume of Bowden 3D Printers like the Creality CR-10 and Ender 3 series, then this direct drive upgrade kit is the ideal upgrade to give you the very best of both worlds.

Additional Resources:

• If you are interested in upgrading to a direct drive setup, but aren’t exactly sure if it would benefit you or not, check out this helpful MatterHackers Extruders 101 Crashcourse, as well as this Bowden vs Direct Drive Guide from Fargo3DPrinting, which both cover the benefits and drawbacks of both Direct Drive and Bowden setups, so as to help users understand which is better for their Making and fabrication applications.
  
  
• As per usual, Micro Swiss have done an excellent job at not only manufacturing a truly beautiful and functional 3D Printer Upgrade, but also at documenting everything in an easy to understand way. As such, this Micro Swiss CR-10/Ender 3 DDS Upgrade Installation Guide is a great tool for seeing what the installation process involves, and what steps you will need to take to upgrade your Creality 3D Printer with an awesome new direct drive extrusion setup. We have also included this in the downloads section above.

Finally, the following video from ModBot is an awesome demonstration of precisely what’s required when installing this DDS extruder system onto a Creality CR-10 (clone) 3D Printer. if you need further information before giving in to the urge to upgrade your already-awesome 3D Printer, or if you’re just eager to see what this installation process entails, be sure to check it out:

Within 3D Printing, there are a few brands whose hard work has made them stand out from the rest, with real innovation and the ability to not only refine old designs, but actually redesign from the ground up to offer more comprehensive upgrades for 3D printing enthusiasts and Makers throughout the world.

Micro Swiss is one such brand that perfectly fits this description, and since their founding back in 2015, the Micro Swiss brand has garnered world-wide attention for the quality, material composition and precision of their hotends, nozzles and other all-metal components. With a core focus on TwinClad XT Plated Brass Nozzles and All-Metal Hotend Upgrades for some of the most popular 3D Printers on the market, it’s no surprise that one of the easiest and most effective upgrades available to Makers are Micro Swiss Replacement Parts and Upgrade Kits.

In addition to the amazing 3D Printing components and upgrades that they produce, Micro Swiss also specialise in Swiss Turning, which is capable of precision CNC machining outer diameters as small as 0.0127mm, as well as CNC milling, tapping and post machining finishing for prototyping. These service offerings and correlating skillsets ensure that the Micro Swiss team is more than just capable of producing consistently high-quality parts, but also capable of identifying precisely where each part could use improvements.

As manufacturers and end-users of everything they produce, Micro Swiss is one of the most impressive brands we’ve had the pleasure of dealing with, and we look forward to all of the exciting refinements and developments that they are bound to bring out in the future.