Guide: Fitting the Official Creality Direct Drive Upgrade to the Ender 3 - How well does it work?

i installed this thing, i printed out 2 benchys then i printed something I made with the same G code parameters and it jammed again. fuck this i wanan throw the ender 3 off a cliff

god i hate the ender 3 i wish wish i just got the flsun v400 but i started out buying the cheap pos one and ive been regretting it ever since

the V2 does support this mod. did mine before i saw this video

on a random sale on the webside "idea????" I cannot figure out what your saying.

Can I use my CR Touch when upgrading to direct drive?

I was thinking of getting a direct drive but i have a filement runout sensor and the cr touch, the cr touch might not be to much of a problem but the runout sensor i would not be able to use 🤥 as i use it has been a god send a few times.

As an electrician , you should nip the tinned end off of the wires you are not using. The reason I say this is because those wires that you tucked away could potentially back themselves out from vibrations created by the printer due to the stepper motors and then possibly touching the motherboard and causing arcing, and then destroying stuff !

Does this extruder uses the same heatbreak as the original hotend or does it use a metallic one?

You didn't leave a link below to any electricians we could watch do that wiring job.

I am in absolute love with my Ender 3. I have printed atleast 5 upgrades for it. WITH it. Lol. I love how I can buy and install upgrades to it. I recently bought the led light bar, the dual z axis upgrade, and the direct drive upgrade. I got a glass bed too. Its just awesome.

loosen the lower wheel on the x-travel head & it comes off without fuss. Much easier than detaching the end of the rail rom bracket.

Hello. Do you know if the hot end on this unit is all metal and can handle the high temp materials such as nylon? Or would I need to
Change out the hot end?
Thank you.

"Won" a "free" one...just $2.99 shipping.

Would you still recommend doing this or should i just buy duel geared extruded and keep using Bowden because duel geared extruded on Neptune 2s review printed TPU so well

I'm done with bowden tubes.. Don't know it always popping from both sides(extruder&hotend), I use glue, make housing bigger but it's not solve my problem. Lastly I'll try direct drive extruder. Now I'm looking for stl of dd..

Thank you for the video.

Do we know how to install the BLTouch with this?

I just upgrade my ender 3 from bowden tube to direct drive as show in this video. But ihave problem on retraction. I try to calibate so many time but no luck for me. Can you provide the magic number for me? Thanks

Bang good have some cracking offers, I got the Creality Sprite 30 quid cheaper than Amazon

this DD unit fixed a number of my issues as my Ender3 had declined a lot since new (when it was nigh on perfect). However be sure to check every nut and bolt on it! My extruder feed wheel came loose today and was banging against the assembly leading to an overcurrent shut down! also the extruder motor was loose and cockeyed today. Took me about 10 hours of retries and Cura settings and investigations to get it printing acceptably today. So many variables affecting 3D printing!

I got the unitak 18 dollar kit. wortks great same methods. allowed me to put a metal fan shroud on too as it was ender 3 / pro / v2 compatible it needed ALL the holes. so it was a double boon.

fantastic video thanks!

This was my favorite upgrade I have added to my Ender3V2. Truly a great addition to the good ol dependable WORKHORSE!!!

Its better to make your Ender 3 with dual Z rods before you set a direct drive kit on.

This not only doesn’t solve the cheap plastic extruder arm from breaking but it makes it a lot more difficult to replace.

The new cheap plastic extruder is half way behind the mounting plate. Bowden tube length also become critical since it removes any margin of error you have with a traditional bowden tube setup. Also with soft filaments if the filament gets pushed out after the spur gear from printing too fast or a clogged nozzle it’s a bigger pita to fix.

Point is, the product is only decent but far more cons than pros. Definitely get what you pay for here. Those were only the issues I had there are a host of other minor things like the bowden tube still limiting your print temp, it’s weight, part cooling fan setup. It’s marketing should say “Pretend to have a direct drive like your friends!” so you at least know this is the worst possible approach.

Are you going to make the update video? I'm still waiting....

I did the Micro Swiss direct drive and hotend. Was worth it.

Those Creality stepper motors are heavy, I would be tempted to fit a Nema pancake stepper, I have them on an Ender 5+ with the Micro Swiss DD kit and an Ender 3 with the same DD kit

That's just silly. An aluminium extruder will always be better than the shitty plastic one, even the worst that you can find.

hello, i have
upgraded to a metal extruder from creality, and it works great! i was wondering why the one you showed in the beginning og the video is a bad quality one?

hi there i have this direct drive but one issue i have found is that when i do bed leveling it crashes into right side an make a horrible sound it like the bolt to long i have duel z axis aswell

Just FYI, I'd gotten a direct drive kit (not this one) a couple years ago for my original ender 3. It also included a extender for the extruder stepper wires. After extrusion issues, tons of printing problems (including gaps, filament grinding), the original board blew the extruder driver, replaced with an SKR V1.4, blew the extruder driver again and replaced the individual driver, I finally tracked down the issue to the extruder extender cable. I'm guessing it was intermittent or bad crimps or something, as it was connected properly and firmly. Once I got rid of it, didn't ever have a problem again. As we say at work "Connectors... don't". I recommend not using extenders even if it means replacing the cable with a longer one. The less connectors, the less potential points of failure.

So you've spent 153 pounds, excluding the magnetic build plate, and still probably need some fans for quiet printing. That's damn good. OTOH, this direct drive extruder appears to be single-geared, 1:1 ratio. Am I seeing that right? If so, it seems a bit pointless.
That kind of half-arsed approach to everything is why I wouldn't recommend a Creality machine to a 3d printing newbie, but that's looking like a very cheap option, especially as a second printer (eg, a machine set up to only print flexibles) or the starting point for another specialised machine (eg, a circuit board mill).

For future reference - rubbing alcohol destroys the bond that hot glue makes with surfaces and makes it trivial to remove. And rubbing alcohol is more or less safe to swab around circuitry, so it might save someone the trouble of picking off the glue manually.

I did this to both my Ender 3 printers. I'm very glad I did.
The only thing I'd like to do is change out the stepper motors for pancake steppers to reduce weight.

I fitted this kit to my Ender 3 V2. It seemed to work great until I tried to print ABS.
I found my prints kept lifting in the corners and eventually detaching from the bed.
I never had this issue with my original Ender V2 hot end/bowden setup.
I messed around with all different hot end temps and bed temps but still couldn't it to print abs successfully.
Then I noticed that the airflow from the hot end fan (not the print cooling fan) was flowing over my print. To see if that was really the issue, I taped over the bottom of the fan shroud so it diverted the airflow away from the nozzle. This fixed the issue. I have since printed a plate that clips onto the bottom of the fan shroud for when I print ABS.

i printed the arm while i wated for a new one to arrive it lasted longer than the one creality sent with the printer.

btw you're supposed to cut off the tinned ends of the wires before putting on the ferrules or it's not really going to help with anything as the solder is still going to flow out under pressure and give you a loose connection with or without ferrules

This is the first kit I bought for my ender. Its really good to start with, and with all the stuff you get with it a real bargain. Only thing, as suggested, replace the arm with a metal one and you're good to go. It is kinda heavy tho, so in the end and installed an additional lead screw

You add both files for dual colour printing in to Prusa Slicer at the same time.
I have a Geeetech A10M Pruser Slicer profile if you want to have a look at it.
Would recommend changing the extruders as the tensioner arm idler bracket breaks almost instantly.
Great video Keep up the good work.

Sad that they still don't offer simar solution for the cr-6 se even after one year of existence 😢

I bought one of these a while back. Then i bought a proper hotend.

I printed a replacement extruder arm for my ender. It lasted about 9 months, and nearly constant printing. But the failure mode was brutal, as it slowly deformed over time and was a challenge to diagnose. Even when I removed it, it looked fine (though the replacement fixed my issues, so I have no doubt that was my issue).

Hi I am getting pretty desperate with this and you seem knowledgeable so.... do you have any idea how to prevent the bed on the sermoon D1 from shutting down when fillament runout is detected? I don’t see the point of the sensor when as soon as the filament runs out it turns the bed off not just the hot end ..... this makes the print detach from the bed unless you attend to it within 5 minutes..... any ideas ?

Good 👍👍👍

Is this compatible with the Voxelab Aquila?
It's a printer similar to the Ender 3, but the description and the comments only mention Ender 3 compatibility.

That price can easily be beaten: print a hydra direct drive toolhead off thingiverse? There's direct drive parts for Creality extruders and BMG style ones.