A clogging nozzle announces itself: clicking or skipping from the extruder, extrusion getting thinner mid-print, or filament curling up against the nozzle instead of flowing down.
Try these in order
- Hot pull: heat 10–15°C above your normal print temp and push filament through by hand. Partial clogs often clear with pressure alone.
- Cold pull: heat to ~200°C, push filament in, cool to ~90°C, then pull firmly. The plug drags debris out with it. Repeat until the tip comes out clean and nozzle-shaped.
- Needle from below: at full temperature, insert the cleaning needle that came with your printer into the nozzle tip. Eye protection on.
- Nozzle swap: nozzles are consumables. If the clog survives all of the above, a new nozzle costs a few dollars and takes minutes.
Why it keeps happening
- Dust: filament drags dust into the melt zone — a cheap foam dust filter clipped on the filament pays for itself.
- Temperature too low for the filament, especially silk and wood-fill blends.
- Heat creep: clogs forming above the melt zone mid-print point at hotend cooling — check the heatsink fan.
- Abrasive filaments through brass: carbon-fiber and glow blends eat brass nozzles fast; use hardened steel.
Still stuck? The diagnosis is free.
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