How to Fix Stringing in Cura: Retraction/Temperature/Travel

Stringing shows up as thin, hair-like threads of filament stretched between separate features on your print. If you’re searching for how to fix stringing in Cura, the answer comes down to three knobs: retraction distance, print temperature, and travel behavior. All three live in Cura’s print settings panel and can be adjusted without reflashing firmware or modifying hardware. Get them dialed and stringing disappears on most materials — including notoriously difficult ones like PETG, which has its own full Cura settings walkthrough.

What causes stringing

Filament oozes during travel moves because the molten material inside the hotend is under pressure. When the extruder stops pushing and the nozzle moves across open air, residual pressure forces a small amount of plastic out of the tip. That plastic drags across the gap and solidifies as a string.

Two conditions amplify the problem: high print temperature (hotter plastic is less viscous and flows out more easily) and slow travel speed (longer transit time = more ooze per move). Retraction counters this by pulling the filament back before each travel move, relieving pressure in the melt zone. But retraction alone rarely eliminates stringing completely, especially on materials like PETG, nylon, or TPU that are inherently sticky and prone to long-range ooze. The rundown of material profiles for PLA, PETG, ABS and TPU covers why each behaves differently here.

Retraction settings: distance and speed

In Cura, retraction settings live under Travel in the print settings panel (enable “All” in the settings visibility dropdown if they’re hidden).

Retraction Distance

This is how far the extruder motor pulls the filament back before a travel move. The correct value depends entirely on your extruder type:

• Direct drive: 1–2 mm. Direct drive extruders sit close to the hotend, so a small retraction moves the filament clear of the melt zone quickly. Going above 3 mm on direct drive pulls the melt zone upward into the cold zone, which causes heat creep and jams.
• Bowden: 4–7 mm for standard tube lengths (300–400 mm). Some long-tube Bowden setups need up to 10 mm. The extra distance compensates for the compliance in the PTFE tube, which acts like a spring and absorbs some of the retraction stroke.

Start at the lower bound and increase in 0.5 mm increments. If you’ve added 3 mm without improvement, retraction distance is not the constraint — move to temperature.

Retraction Speed

Faster retraction depressurizes the melt zone more aggressively before the travel move begins. A starting value of 30–45 mm/s works for most setups. Direct drive systems can push to 60 mm/s without issue on PLA and ABS. Bowden setups are better kept below 45 mm/s; higher speeds grind flexible filaments and can strip soft materials.

If you see pitting or rough spots on your surface, retraction speed is usually too high. If you see strings on every travel move despite adequate distance, try pushing speed up 10 mm/s and reprinting the test.

Minimum Travel Distance

This controls the shortest move that triggers a retraction. Set it too low and Cura retracts on every tiny gap, grinding filament and slowing the print significantly. For PLA and PETG, a value of 1.5–2 mm is a reasonable threshold. For TPU, increase to 3 mm or more to prevent the soft filament from being chewed by the extruder gear.

Temperature and travel speed

Print temperature has a larger effect on stringing than most users expect. Viscosity drops sharply with temperature — PLA at 215°C flows noticeably more freely than at 205°C, and that difference shows up as longer, thicker strings.

Typical working ranges by material:

Material	Nozzle temp range
PLA	190–210°C
PETG	230–250°C
ABS	220–240°C
TPU (95A)	210–230°C

Start in the middle of your filament manufacturer’s recommended range and step down 5°C at a time. Stop when strings shorten noticeably or disappear. Watch your perimeters for under-extrusion (gaps, rough surfaces, poor layer bonding) — that’s the floor.

Travel speed also matters. A nozzle crossing a 30 mm gap at 150 mm/s spends 0.2 seconds in transit; at 80 mm/s it’s 0.375 seconds. More time in transit means more ooze. Set Travel Speed in Cura’s Travel section to at least 150 mm/s for cartesian printers. CoreXY machines with input shaping configured can run 200–250 mm/s without layer shifts.

Combing mode and Z-hop

Combing mode tells Cura how to route travel moves relative to the printed boundary. When combing is active, the slicer steers the nozzle through already-printed material rather than crossing open air. Any ooze lands inside the model where it’s invisible.

The most practical option is Not on Outer Surface (some Cura versions label this “No Skin”). This routes travels inside the model while keeping the exterior walls free of ooze marks. Off disables combing entirely and tends to produce the most strings. All works but can significantly slow prints on complex geometry because Cura routes travel paths around every boundary.

Z-hop raises the nozzle by a fixed height before each travel move, preventing the tip from dragging across and picking up already-printed surfaces. A value of 0.2–0.4 mm clears most geometry. Larger values (0.8 mm) help on tall models with thin features like calibration towers, but add time to every travel move. Z-hop reduces surface artifacts from nozzle dragging; it does not reduce ooze. If you’re relying on Z-hop to hide strings, the retraction and temperature settings still need work.

Verifying the fix

Print a dedicated stringing test before and after each adjustment. The standard format is two thin pillars spaced 50–80 mm apart, requiring the nozzle to repeatedly cross open air between them. Multiple profiles and geometries are available on Printables and Thingiverse. A temperature tower (spanning 185–220°C for PLA in 5°C steps) identifies the exact temperature where stringing disappears, which you can then transfer to your material profile; the flow and temperature tower guide walks through building one.

Pass criteria: no visible threads between the pillars. PETG and nylon frequently leave a few fine hairs even at optimal settings — threads thin enough to brush off with a fingertip are acceptable. Thick strings that require tools to remove indicate the core settings are still off, and the wider print defect troubleshooting guide covers what else those symptoms can point to.

If stringing persists after tuning, check the filament. Moisture absorbed into a spool causes steam-driven bursts of extrusion that no retraction setting can fix. Dry the spool at 45°C (PLA) or 55°C (PETG, nylon) for 4–6 hours in a food dehydrator or purpose-built filament dryer, then retest.

Related reading

Cura’s Combing Mode is the setting most often blamed for stringing, and it has no exact counterpart outside Cura — Cura vs PrusaSlicer explains what the closest equivalent actually does and why retraction values do not transfer between the two. The firmware-side fix for the ooze that survives retraction tuning is pressure advance. For a starting retraction and temperature set written out under Cura’s own setting names, run the slicer settings cheat-sheet generator.