Extrusion tests: Temperature, height, and extrusion width

Increasing the Z height by .5mm to try for better bed adherence. Annoyed with the constant disappearance of the text in the Arduino UI, I tried the newest version, and the Marlin 1.1.0 RC3 firmware, but so far has been blocked by various incompatibilities. So for now I use the new Arduino version as the editor but the old one for uploading.

One annoying thing is that homing to Z takes a long time, and I have to do that every time I've disconnected, which will happen a lot while calibrating. I suppose I could add a second Z stop lower down.

I cannot yet predict if it prints in the center or where the head happens to be. This time, I moved it a bit away to do a new print, yet it moved back. Moving XY manually does do the trick, though. Maybe it recenters after having done one print, but not after a cold start.

Bed adherence is better, but it's still just as blobby. Lowering by another .5mm. Calibrating for the new filament shows it's at a fine size. This lowering (increased Z height, really) made the initial layer not come out at all, so that was too much at 202.5. Trying at 202.2. The adherence looks good now:

Could this be a temperature problem? Whether this PLA likes a different temperature, or the thermistor is off, it could make it too melty or something. Trying at 195, but for some reason it didn't want to heat up to that. Actually, it looks like the reading is stuck, it doesn't cool off when turned off, either. The extruder has also been "drooling". Trying at 175 now. Worse adhesion, but the layers look better.

Retrying this starting printing at the corner. What's up with that? Apparently it thought it was centered.

The tape in the middle is getting a bit frizzled. Manually moving a bit away from the center.

Setting extrusion width down to 0.72 from 0.9. Not sure what I should expect from this, though.

Trying at 170 C gave really bad adhesion. At 180, it worked rather well. Still having X precision issues, which makes it hard to troubleshoot entirely. It might also be too thin a layer, it looks rather squishy.

Here's from left to right prints at 185, 180, and 175. With the variability in X movement, it's a bit hard to tell exactly what difference is due to temperature and what is due to X movement errors.

Is it normal that the initial adherence takes a bit? The perimeter consistently starts partway through.

I'm concerned about the sound of my X axis. Here's a video of it running with nothing else going on, it seems kinda rumbly to me.

Enough for now, it's time to go enjoy the sunshine while it lasts.