Nozzle & banging noise Hictop

First post noob to 3D printing.
Finished building machine (Hictop I3 Prusa from Amazon) and have a couple problems: first just how small of a hole is in the nozzle? Very first try at loading with filament nozzle clogged. The only thing I could find that was small enough to clean the nozzle was one strand of copper wire from an stranded 16 ga electrical cord. Really really small! What nozzle size it that? I've ordered more brass nozzles but I'm thinking I should get SS nozzle. Should I start with .05 size?
Once in a while the bed keeps slamming into the end stop; have to pull the plug. Another poster said switch mount was wrong. I don't think that is my problem.
I'm having a really bad felling about this printer. I just think that the extruder is going to be a big pita! I've got new filament Hatchbox.
Any suggestion or help very welcome.
Carl

First off don't use wires or drills to clean nozzle it may distort opening, remove the nozzle and use a propane/butane torch and heat it up till the material melts and burns out, some soak in acetone and before you put nozzle back in try feeding filament by hand through the extruder it should come through easy otherwise that barrel needs to be removed and cleaned out. There are a couple good tutorials/videos on rebuilding the hot end watch these first. You may have to heat up the extruder to remove nozzle. Make sure software setting matches whatever nozzle you pick an average is 0.4mm. To check end stops move all axes to the middle and do a manual movement in the software of say 50 mm for x and y and press the limit switch and the motor should stop maybe micro is NG or setting in software. The Z axis limit must be adjusted to allow the nozzle to be .01 mm from the bed on all four corners after leveling otherwise nozzle can plug, parts won't stick or print right or scratch hit the print bed. There is a lot to learn with 3D printing and settings in software not to mention the CAD end of it also BUT SUCCESS comes with patience and perseverance. If using Slic3r get the manual to see what all the settings do. GL

---

rwt

I had the same issue, I just bought a couple new ones where i knew the hole size. I got a .2mm (really nice smooth prints) and a .6mm (you could shove an elephant through the hole, and can print big parts fairly quickly.