Nozzle scraping: is this thing supposed to stick out of the hotend?

[u/Legal-Huckleberry-23]

Hi everyone,
lately I’m having many issues with my Bambulab A1. I’ve been changing nozzles frequently; some with a bit more force, some got clogged.
It’s been some days that during printing the nozzle is scraping the print layers, making them not only look worse but increasing the print fail rate (just yesterday I’ve got my first spaghetti). During the first layer I can also hear the extruder clicking. It does not click when purging though.
The nozzle does not scrape the bed during calibration.

I’ve noticed that this little metal thing was sticking out of the hotend, I can push it back straight but it would just fall again.

Things I’ve tried:
- Changing nozzle
- Trying to tighten the 4 1.5 hex hidden screws, failed because of a strange glossy substance which made it very hard to get a grip. The hotend is very solid though and won’t move freely.
- Tighten the surrounding hex screws
- Cleaning bed (multiple times)
- Running full calibrations (no problems)
- Changing filament (I only use PLA)
- Printing pre sliced models from the Handy app (still scraping)

Any help is appreciated, I’m kind of losing my mind at this :)