Creality Original Ender 3 Direct Drive Upgrade Kit, Comes with 42-40 Stepper Motor Hotend Kit, 1.75mm Direct Drive Extruder Fan and Cables Support Flexible TPU Filament

So I’ve waited to review this product until I had a good amount of time to test and determine its reliability and performance. I’ve had it installed and running for a week now and run through about 6-8 prints. The Sprite SE kit is actually pretty good for a budget inspired upgrade. Remember this is NOT the Sprite PRO. Note: This was installed and running on an Ender 3 V2. I wanted to upgrade to a direct drive extruder because I wanted to print more TPU 95A. As you know pushing TPU through a Bowden tube is like pushing wet spaghetti in a straight line. Even though I have had some success with TPU in a Bowden tube before, it caused some issues I’d really like to avoid in the future, hence the upgrade to direct drive. Installation: The instructions, as limited as they are, give sufficient enough information to be able to install the Sprite SE within 30 minutes or so (may take longer if you are not very experienced with the machine). I did run into a small hiccup while installing where the bottom roller on the extruder frame got lop-sided and became loose and wiggly causing all sorts of problems off the get go. I went through the set up again and finally discovered that somehow, the offset spacer on the bottom roller was opposite of what it should be. After fixing the offset spacer, by rotating into its correct upright position, the roller frame finally sat snug and tight against the X-Axis rail. I continued the installation steps and got to the part where you have to “write and save” your own G-Code to recalibrate the firmware extrusion E-Steps. Default is 93 in the Extrusion e-step settings. The change needs to be made to Esteps/mm value to 424.9. **Newbies don’t get scared at this point! Just open a blank notepad on Windows or Mac and copy/type in the text exactly as they have it on the instructions. Then you insert your micro SD card into your printer and run the g-code as if you were going to print that file. Nothing happens, it just configures the esteps and temporary saves it in the firmware. Another issue I ran into was that the Ender 3 V2 firmware DOES NOT save the new estep setting if you turn off or disconnect power. You will need to run that file each time you start up the machine. That’s when I learned that if you flash the firmware and install Jyers firmware you can run that estep reconfig once and it saves it indefinitely. Nice, plus installing Jyers is easy and really awesome, wish I would have done that a year ago. It has great features that really should be in the default Creality firmware. Now after all that, the direct drive works great and does what I wanted it to do in the first place. It runs all sorts of filament types and makes changing filaments easy and fast. I have been using it to do color changes mid print as an alternative to buying a multi-color printer (for now). Filament color changing is easy enough to do and setup in Cura Slicer via change filament or pause at height script. I hope this long winded review helps some of you looking to upgrade. I wanted it to sound simple enough and intuitive, that new users wouldn’t be afraid to go for it. It was a minor pain to get running perfectly but after some time and tuning, it’s working great now. I do recommend this Sprite Extruder SE kit if you’re looking for a modest and budget friendly upgrade. Happy printing folks.

I've had my Ender 3 for about 5 years. It has gone through a lot of phases. For the last few years, I've had a BMG clone geared extruder and a direct drive conversion with a pancake stepper and 5215 cooling fan, and the stock hotend. Even with a 4020 heatsink fan, I was getting heat creep that caused clogs pretty regularly. I also like to print a lot of PETG at 230C, so my short bits of bowden tube running from the extruder to the hotend (~3", give or take), would degrade after a few months and need replacing. Finally got tired of it and just bought this. It's all metal and has an exceptionally well-engineered heat break. So no more replacing PTFE tube segments, no more worrying about heat creep, no more clogs. That's what I expected from this extruder, and it has come through perfectly on those fronts. What I didn't expect was for the cable management to be so well-thought-out and simple, for the install to be super easy (as long as you know how to find the right plugs for stuff on your main board), for the parts cooling fan to be so effective, for the hotend to get up to temp so much faster than the stock hotend, for the filament path to be so short that I need almost no retraction or pressure advance to get incredible quality prints... the list goes on. My singular complaint is that the heat break cooling fan is rather loud. But if that's the price I have to pay to get incredible quality, no heat creep, and "probably never have to mess with it again" reliability, then I can deal with a loud fan.

The best upgrade for my Ender 3 V2!!! I’ve always wanted a direct drive extruder but thought it would be too much work to upgrade. I should have done this years ago, it was so easy and took maybe 20 minutes to fully install and get back to printing. This solved so many issues I was having with my prints that it’s already payed for itself in previous wasted filament.

Fue bastante rápido instalarlo , me tomo aproximadamente media hora, al momento de configurarlo con klipper solo hay que seleccionar el extrusor Sprite en las configuraciones avanzadas y hacer una prueba de retracciones. P.s si tienes duda de si funciona en una E3 Max Neo sin la Sonic pad..... Si, si funciona Solo tengan en cuenta que no viene con la herramienta necesaria para montarlo, y las que vienen con el montaje de la impresora no son suficientes, así que si no cuentas con ellas tocará conseguirlas por separado

The box was pretty beat up, but the parts are good,

Lo instale en mi impresora Ender 5 plus y no tengo ningún problema de atasco en el materia

el producto es muy bueno sin embargo el termistor de el que me llego venía dañado y generaba corto, dando temperatura de 300 en el hortend cuando estaba frío, tuve que remplazar esa pieza, realmente no es un gasto conciderable pero si es una inconveniencia, fuera de esa inconveniencia me pareció fácil de instalar y muy buena mejora para mi impresora por eso si le di las 4 estrellas saludos