Quote Originally Posted by clough42 View Post
The extruder sitting slightly out of level is because the weight of the motor is hanging on the right side of the carriage. You need to have the eccentric tight enough that both top wheels stay fully in contact with the extrusion, but there will always be a little flex and it will always be tilted a tiny bit. As long as it stays at the same angle, you'll be fine.
It is rather tight right now, so I believe it shouldn't affect the print quality. I will be assembling new extruder today and will try an idea I have with the motor.

Quote Originally Posted by clough42 View Post
1. Reduced retract rate to 10mm/s. Reduced blobbing and other issues related to gaps when restarting.

2. Upgraded to newer versions of slic3r. It's pretty buggy from version to version. I'm a couple of revs back, but I'm running one of the 1.0.x stable versions. Be sure to turn on variable width extrusion. This helps with tapered edges and other situations where the gap to fill doesn't match the extrusion width exactly.

3. Switched to a 3mm/.4mm Hexagon hot end.

4. Lowered my first layer height to .2mm, like all the other layers. I think the wider bottom layer extrusions were because of the increased layer height. Of course, the lower layer height makes the leveling and z height adjustment more critical. I added auto bed leveling soon after this, and I will never own another printer without it.

5. Added a print cooling fan for PLA. I always get blobby, melty results without it on small parts. What I see in your photos of the knob look similar.
1. Done

2. Downloaded the latest version from the beginning. It's 1.0.6, I believe. But I've also tried using Cura, which, in my opinion, produces much nicer gcode for smoother movements, but has less settings to play around with. Not sure where to find this "variable width extrusion" setting.

3. I've bought the kit with .4mm hexagon hot end.

4. Will try this, and will continue playing around with settings like that.

5. Interesting, will definitely try to print something with and without a separate fan to see if it makes a difference.