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

Hard to assemble

Upgraded my CR-10 to a CR-10s with a BTT board and this Micro Swiss Direct Drive Extruder and a hardened steel nozzle about 2 years ago. It has been working great and I ended up building my son an Iron Man suit. Micro Swiss has high end upgrades and I'd recommend them to anybody!

This is the best upgrade for my CR-10S Pro, also made an upgrade to the filament sensor block, I have threaded and installed push lock fittings on its both sides, so I can fit the Capricorn tube from the sensor to the extruder and fit a little piece of tube on the entrance of the sensor, this help a lot with the drag between the filament and the bare aluminum, as now the filament won’t touch the aluminum in its entrance to the sensor but it goes through the Capricorn tube.

All in all, I give it a 95% score. Three issues i've encountered however.

One - During assembly when mounting the cooling block to the bracket, the cooling block is able to rotate slightly both clockwise and counter clockwise. As the cooling block has no locating pins or a form fitting mounting surface, the block is able to be tightened down and secured in a non-vertical position that is several degrees from 90 in either direction. I had to use a precision level to to alleviate and align the block during the tightening process. This seems very suboptimal for what is is supposed to be a component of a precision manufacturing device.

Two - The included extruder extension cable failed after I attempted to straighten the packaging kinks out of it. The extension cable wires seem to be of similar durability to thermistor wires (aka broken by a stiff breeze), and thus need to be treated with extreme care, and with spares on hand. Without spares, you have a dead machine until they are replaced.

Three - For others upgrading their Voxelab Aquilas, the stock fan housing will require "creativity" in attachment. Only one bolt holds it on, and at a severe angle at that. I had to trim the housing in a few places, and use a modified paper clip to hold the housing from dropping past the nozzle end. Not doing this would allow the housing to hit the print. I strongly recommend upgrading to a better fan housing assembly like a PETSFANG instead.

Use divers direct drive gras si ce several years on ender 3. Switch recently to micro swiss… the BEST