Glossary
Stringing
Stringing is thin hairs of plastic left between parts of a print, usually caused by oozing during travel moves.
Stringing shows up as thin, hair-like strands of plastic stretched between separate parts of a model, left behind when the nozzle oozes a little filament while moving from one printed section to another instead of stopping cleanly. It is one of the most common cosmetic problems in FDM printing and is almost always fixable through settings rather than a hardware fault.
The usual causes are printing too hot for the filament, retraction settings that are too weak or too slow, or filament that has absorbed moisture and is bubbling slightly inside the nozzle. PETG and other slightly tacky filaments string more easily than PLA by nature, which is normal and expected rather than a sign something is broken.
Fixing stringing usually starts with small, one-at-a-time changes: lowering nozzle temperature in 5 degree steps, increasing retraction distance and speed slightly, and drying the filament if it has been sitting exposed to humid air. A common mistake is changing several settings at once, which makes it impossible to tell which change actually solved the problem.