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

Installed this for my modded Ender 3 Pro. The extruder itself is fine but the hotend sucks. It has no supporting screws so it is free roaming, and also leaks filament constantly. For something that is nearly $100 Id expect much better. Update: Microswiss offered to send a replacement hotend and was very helpful when I contacted them. Everything works great!

It ruined me Ender 3.

Solid, worth the money.

Had to use my drill press and a thin wrench to press the old gear off my stock E motor, then ground a deep flat for the setscrew on the motor shaft, if you dont the grub screw for the motor gear will bind up the extruder. I had to trim my capricorn tube a mm shorter but otherwise easy upgrade. If you figure the price of great all metal hot end + good direct drive, you come out ahead (unless you use cheap knockoffs). I had to play with my E steps, 130 was too low, calibration put me closer to 145steps/mm, set retract to 1mm, some say 0.5-0.75mm I didnt have luck with that low.

This is just my experience and others may very bought February 15 by August 10 it was done for first started leaking from heat break down in between nozzle and threads then came out of top of heater block the entire time would not stay tight every print nozzle started moving or leaking tightened it up for the 9k time and came loose again but set screw stripped when backing out this has been a journey and I wanted to like it but definitely temporary. Maybe I got a bad one but I cant see buying another. Also all my prints had metal flakes in them from the coating came off during print

While this extruder looks high quality with beautifully machined and polished aluminum, I must say Im not impressed with the design. It consistently has TERRIBLE jamming problems when printing TPU, which is one of the filaments direct-drives are supposed to be better at. It also tends to conduct a lot of heat to the motor, as its mounted directly to the aluminum plate which gets quite hot. There really should be a thermal barrier. Overall I am not impressed given the very exuberant price. The OMG extruder is less than half the price, is more configurable, and performs much better.

Quick install. Just change your esteps and replace gcode on slicer for start offsets. If your current extruder has the pressed in gear you will need a new motor with a flat on the shaft for the drive gear. I went with a pancake stepper to save weight. And decided to not use a Bowden tube.

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.

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.

You really can’t go wrong with this extruder and hot end for its beautiful design, efficient extrusion, and no clog hot end because the filament passes through directly. And it also works best with the printable suggested cooking fan housing keeping everything tidy, cool, and out of the way of your print. I originally bought this to add next to a Hemera combo but after having issues with that, I ended up replacing three more with this combo. It’s very reliable and easy to keep running.