Hotend HQ
A working reference for people who run 3D printers and fix them themselves. Everything here exists because someone needed the answer and could not find a straight one.
What this site is
Three things, and deliberately nothing else:
- A troubleshooting reference that names the cause, the check that confirms it, and the fix — ordered by how often each one turns out to be the real problem.
- Tools that do the arithmetic: flow limits, calibration, shrinkage, material reference, and a parametric generator that produces printable STLs in the browser.
- Hardware opinions that say who a part is not for as clearly as who it is for.
How the site makes money
What that does not buy: placement, rankings, or a good review. Nothing on the gear page is sponsored, no manufacturer sees an article before it goes up, and where the honest answer is "the cheap one is fine", the page says so.
Privacy
No advertising trackers and no third-party analytics that follow you off this site. If you subscribe to the newsletter we store your email address and nothing else, and one click removes it. Calculators and the model generator run entirely in your browser — the numbers you type and the models you generate are never sent anywhere.
Affiliate links go to the retailer with a tracking tag attached. The retailer knows you arrived from here; they do not learn anything else about you from us.
Corrections
If something here is wrong, say so and it gets fixed and credited. A reference that quietly keeps its mistakes is not worth reading.
Contact
Email . Corrections, questions, and "this fixed it for me" reports are all welcome.