Floss regularly

My printing this weekend ground to a halt. I think my nozzles are gunked up again. Searching through the old blog's archives it seems this last happened in March of last year, so I've been going for a year on these nozzles. But this time, instead of buying new nozzles I decided to clean the old ones out. I know from past readings that music store are the place to get narrow enough wire to floss your nozzle. It's kind of a trip to me that there exists a wire that is narrow enough to go through a 0.4mm nozzle... backwards.

In my case it's guitar wire, but apparently piano wire works too. I managed to get the left extruder working, but the right one still needs some work so I'm going to try again, maybe this time while the nozzle is still on the machine. But I'm in business enough that I can fill my etsy and MakeXYZ orders in the immediate. more fun stuff will have to wait.

It sucks that this happens. 3D printers are still things of regular maintenance. Maybe Makerbot's latest offerings will address this, or maybe they'll just sell you a new extruder head every year. Who knows.

EDIT: Forget it. Flossing only gives you a chance to get more frustrated while you wait for your new nozzles to come in. What's going to happen when those nozzles are no longer made? Better buy a lifetime supply.