All clogged up

Quick Tip: Is your MakerBot (Replicator 2 in our case) starting to make stringy prints, missing parts of layers, or failing to extrude all together? It could be a lot of things, but it might be that the extruder nozzle is clogged. There are a lot of varying suggestions on how to get it unclogged ranging from easy to scary but almost always you need to at least get something into the nozzle to push out the block. Problem is that it’s 0.4mm and I had a crazy time finding something small enough to fit in there to clear it out. So I broke out my trusty digital calipers and started measuring wire, pins, and whatever else I could find around the shop. _Everything _was too big until I grabbed a 1/4W resistor… 0.35mm! Sure, not everyone with a MakerBot is an electronics geek as well but I bet a lot are. So next time you need to clean out the extruder, just find the nearest resistor.