Creality Ender User manual

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Creality Ender / CR-10
direct drive kit installation
by the Alchemist’s Pantry
thealchemistspantry.com
License
This document is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
license, for more information on this license please visit https://creativecommons.org.
Disclaimer
The information contained in this document is provided as is, with absolutely no warranty expressed
or implied. Any use is at your own risk.

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Introduction
Greetings! Since you are reading this document you are probably about to convert a 3D printer from
a Bowden setup to direct drive – or you are considering doing it in the near future. We have used
this approach to convert many 3D printers to direct drive with great success – you will see that we
are using a Creality Ender 2 printer in this guide:
The Ender 2 is one of the cheapest and simplest Creality 3D printers, and it is consequently one of
the most accessible 3D printers while providing great value-for money. Since many Creality 3D
printers uses the same extruder and hotend carriage, this modification can be performed on a wide
range of Creality 3D printers, including Ender 3, Ender 3 pro, CR-10, CR-10S, CR-10 S4 with small
changes to the method, for example to allow for differences in the controlboard housings.
The direct drive kit contains the following parts:
1 x NEMA motor cable, 1m long
1 x PETG direct drive adapter
1 x short PTFE tube
1 x wire wrap, 1m long
6 x zip ties

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Installation
1
Start by making sure the printer hotend and heated bed are cold, the printer has been powered off
and power has been disconnected, then cut off the zip ties which hold the Bowden tube and hotend
wires together – make sure you do not damage the wires or the Bowden tube. When this is done
disconnect the Bowden tube from the extruder motor assembly by pulling it out while pressing on
the press fitting.
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Now unscrew the screw holding the tension arm and spring in place.

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3
Now unscrew the other three screws which keep the extruder motor in place. Make sure you hold
the extruder motor while unscrewing the screws, as otherwise it can fall down and get damaged or
damage other things when you unscrew the last screw.
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You should now have these parts on your table. Extruder motor, tension arm, tension spring,
adapter with push-fitting and four screws.

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5
Gently unplug the cable from the extruder motor.
6
Now unscrew these two screws from the hotend carriage and loosen the hotend shroud. Note that
the fan is still connected to the hotend shroud and the wire bundle, so you should not try to pull the
shroud off completely, we just need to have the screws removed for now.

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7
Unscrew the bolt keeping the left carriage wheel in place, and place the wheel together with the
bolt, nut and spacer.
8
Now unplug the other end of the Bowden tube by pulling on it while you push on the top of the push
fitting. Depending on the quality of the press fitting and hotend assembly used in your specific
printer (Creality makes changes to their printers without announcing it, so two Ender 2 printers may
not look 100% identical) it may be difficult to remove the Bowden tube, make sure you do not
damage the Bowden tube or other parts, to ensure you can put it back together again in case you
want to use a Bowden setup again.

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9
Insert the short PFTE tube included in the kit while pressing the press fitting, make sure it goes all
the way in (to the nozzle) as otherwise it will be difficult to connect the PETG adaptor and extruder
motor to the carriage – and it can give you problems with your extrusion. If your printer has been
used to print before you make this modification and the Bowden tube was not properly in place, then
there can be filament stuck inside the red heat sink which should be cleaned out before attempting
this modification. This is a crucial step and proper cleaning should not be neglected.
10
Now find the PETG adaptor and gently insert the two short screws you unscrewed in step 6 as show
below. Do not use force to avoid breaking the PETG adaptor.

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11
Now place the hotend shroud back on the carriage and align the PETG adaptor as shown below –
screw the two short screws into the holes you unscrewed them from in step 6. You may want to
have someone help you hold the pieces in place while you screw them in. Tighten the bolts gently,
making sure you do not crack the plastic.
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Insert the big bolt as shown here.

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13
Put the spacer, wheel and bolt back on the big bolt.
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Tighten the big bolt gently, making sure that the carriage can move freely, while at the same time
not being too loose. Assuming your printer was working fine before you made this modification,
then you can use one of the other big wheel bolts as a reference for getting the tightness right.

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15
Now push the adapter with push-fitting onto the exposed end of the short PFTE tube as shown
below, you may have to press the tip of the push-fitting while inserting the PTFE tube.
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Now it is time to decide how you want to run the cables from the extruder. On this Ender 2 we opt
for running the extruder cables to the left, and therefor we insert three ziplocks in the horizontal
piece of the PTFE adapter as shown below – if you want to run the cables upwards from the extruder
then you should insert the ziplocks into the vertical piece of the PTFE adapter (shown in the upper
left corner in the picture below).

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17
Place the extruder motor on the PFTE adapter, making sure that the wire connector faces in the
direction you want: if you are using the horizontal piece of the PTFE adapter, then let the white wire
connector face as shown below, if you are using the vertical piece of the PTFE adapter then the
white wire connector should face away from you when the printer is placed as shown below.
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Connect the extruder motor to the PTFE adapter and the adapter with the push-fitting using the
three screws you removed in step 3 as shown below – the screws go into the same holes as you
screwed them out of earlier.

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Step 19
Place the tension spring as shown below.
Step 20
Place the tension arm as shown here, make sure to align the hole shown in the upper left corner in
this picture.
21
Screw in the screw you removed in step 2 as shown below – it goes into the same holes as you
removed it from earlier.
Congratulations, that is the extruder assembeled!
The remaining steps detail wire management and connecting the extruder motor to the
motherboard. These steps will be different for different Creality printers, but the principles are the
same. Here we show the process on the Ender 2.

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22
Here we use the first zip tie to secure the heater and fan-hotend-wire bundle. Do not pull the wires
tight and make sure you do not damage them. Connect the NEMA motor cable supplied with the kit
to the motor – the connector at one end of the cable is wider than at the other end, use the widest
connector to connect to the motor. Do not force it in, the plug only fits in one orientation.
23
Use the next zip tie to secure the NEMA motor cable and the fan-hotend-wire bundle – again do not
pull the wires tight and make sure you do not damage them.

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24
Wrap the wire wrap around the NEMA motor cable, starting at the second zip tie.
25
Gently push the wire wrap towards the second zip tie, and tighten the third zip tie around the NEMA
motor cable and the fan-hotend-wire bundle, again making sure you do not damage and of the
wires. You can trim the ends of the three zip ties now.

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26
Unscrew the three small screws indicated in the image below.
27
Unplug the cable indicated below, it is the other end of the cable you unplugged in step 5, so if your
machine is using a different control board with a different layout, then you can identify which cable
to unplug by finding out where this cable plugs into the control board. This wire is no longer used,
you can store it with the Bowden tube in case you want to undo the direct drive modification.

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28
Plug in the other end of the NEMA motor cable supplied with the kit. Do not force it in, the plug only
fits in one orientation.
Some people choose to unplug the fan for the control board to make their printer quieter – if you
use your printer in hot surroundings or it generally runs hot, then this is probably not a good idea.
Regardless, if you do not also replace the hotend fan and use a more quiet PCU, then the overall
noise reduction will be minor. We recommend leaving the fan connected.
29
Put the control board cover back on, align the holes and screw in the screws you removed in step 26.
Now is a good time to do some cable management, making sure that the extruder can move freely
without pulling on any wires. Make sure to relevel your bed.

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30
You can now reconnect power, turn the printer on and start printing with your direct drive printer!
You should optimize a printing profile to the printers new configuration – you can usually get away
with a significantly reduced retraction compared to when you used the Bowden setup.
Troubleshooting
If temperature measurements are incorrect or if the hotend does not heat up then the thermistor
cable or heater cartridge cable may have been damaged or come unplugged. Examine the cables to
see if this is the case.
If the extruder motor does not move the extruder gear, then one, or both, ends of the NEMA motor
cable may not have been connected properly (see steps 22 and 28).
If you cannot get the extruder to push filament through the nozzle, then it is likely that the short
PTFE tube has not been inserted properly (see step 9), or that debris was not cleaned out of the
hotend heatsink when you removed the Bowden tube. This can also be due to the small PTFE tube
having been damaged during insertion, if this is the case you should cut a new piece of PTFE tubing
to the same length as the damaged tube ~61mm.

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