this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2026
16 points (94.4% liked)

3DPrinting

22969 readers
12 users here now

3DPrinting is a place where makers of all skill levels and walks of life can learn about and discuss 3D printing and development of 3D printed parts and devices.

The r/functionalprint community is now located at: or !functionalprint@fedia.io

There are CAD communities available at: !cad@lemmy.world or !freecad@lemmy.ml

Rules

If you need an easy way to host pictures, https://catbox.moe/ may be an option. Be ethical about what you post and donate if you are able or use this a lot. It is just an individual hosting content, not a company. The image embedding syntax for Lemmy is ![](URL)

Moderation policy: Light, mostly invisible

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Started printing this filament shrinkage test and had to leave the house. When I came back, the whole upper half of the part had shifted after the first few layers, and it left two solid blobs attached and one ball of spaghetti. The magnetic bed doesn't appear to have moved. Part is still solidly adhered to the print bed. How did this happen, and how can I keep it from happening again?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] natecox@programming.dev 1 points 19 hours ago

Cold pulling is where you heat the hot end up to just past the melting point of your filament and push a bit of filament through it by hand until an inch or so comes through, then you cut the heat and let the nozzle cool down a bit, then pull the filament back through the extruder side.

This basically traps all the little bits of semi-melted plastic left behind from previous prints, and pulls them out as one big glob.

Different guides will give different advice about the temp to cool to, but basically you want it cool enough that it puts up meaningful resistance pulling the filament back out by hand but isn't impossible.

You should probably do this on some routine, but at the very least after any clog and when you get print errors that you can't immediately diagnose. Partial clogs are responsible for way more issues than you might think.