Micro Swiss Direct Drive Extruder for Creality Ender 5

I received an Ender 5 pro for Christmas and have printed off a lot of thingverse items.
Downloading Fusion 360 allowed me to even design and print my own items.

I read about this upgrade and resisting spending the dollars and looking back I shouldn't have. The print quality is soo much better and there appears to be no stringing.

I don't know why Creality sell the bouden tube design when this direct drive is soooo much better.

Pretty much plug and play and two adjustments in the settings.

Out.

I installed my direct drive upgrade and immediately started having issues. I emailed support - and 48 emails later - I am printing happy! So much customer support! And not just the basic kind either, Paul really went all out and was very detailed with helping me. It wasn't just your copy paste responses that I get from other companies. I had such a pleasant experience that I will be ordering from Micro Swiss again. I did a lot of research on nozzles and wanted to switch my brass nozzle, and now I'll be buying it from here.

I've swapped out so many stock parts from my Ender-5 Plus that it now resembles a totally different printer - New build surface, new Bowden tube, Creality metal extruder, quiet fans, etc. But the Bowden extruder with the default hotend was way underpowered and fiddly. I spent way too much time "fixing" it.

Now that I've upgraded to the Micro Swiss direct drive and all metal extruder, it's a completely different beast. This is the printer that I set out to have when I first ordered it. My prints are flawless and I can print in PETG without any compromises. It now prints as good as, if not better, than my Prusa Mk3.

Recommended.

I recently purchased an Ender 5 plus and before I received it I ordered a Direct Drive kit including the Hot End from Micro-Swiss. Most YouTube reviews of the Ender 5 Plus tell you not to order upgrade parts until you have setup and tested your new machine to see what it needs. I ignored this advice and the direct drive kit arrived before the machine. While setting up my machine I removed the stock extruder and installed the Micro-Swiss direct drive kit. It was a perfect fit and easy to install. 5 Star rating up to that point.

When I was ready to try my first print I set my slicer to use 1.5mm retraction at 30mm/s. I read that somewhere but don’t remember where. I was reluctant to use such a small amount of retraction because of a long (and loosing) battle with stringing on my other printers. Rather than print a standard Benchie, I decided to just go for it and threaded some PETG and started printing 32 copies of a small cylinder that I needed right away. Using standard temps and quality settings for PETG, I clicked the print button hoping for the best but not really expecting a stellar result. Much to my surprise, all 32 pieces came out absolutely perfect with absolutely zero stringing. If there were 10 stars available I would give the Micro-Swiss direct drive assembly all 10.

Installation is quick and easy, kit is of excellent quality.
I just have the following remarks:
- On Ender 5, BLTouch cannot be mounted on the new plate, because the belt gets in the way. Better be prepared with an adapter before starting (for example: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4607774)
- In my kit the 2xM3 Nuts were missing, no big deal, but could cause problems for someone
- The 3d printed ptfe-tube locking pins are useless and ruin the otherwise excellent impression.