Taking some clues from your questions, I went back and re-evaluated my setup. The end of my board where the filament guide is was much longer than necessary, so I cut the end off after flush with the filament guide block and let the filament droop down to the floor while passing over the guide. That seemed to help a lot. I did put the filament guide the requisite distance from the nozzle, so I don't think that was an issue. It seems to be doing much better now.
The only other item to work out is spooling as it is produced. I see a few designs out there on automatic spoolers, but none that I really like. The reason this is needed is to better control the filament once it is on the ground. I just let it run for a few hours (and watched it). Every so often, the filament would get where it wants to spring into another position and has a dramatic flop around on the ground, totally disturbing the output. For the most part, it is pretty good looking quality if I can just keep the filament on the ground still. I made a quick and dirty manual spool and holder and that seemed to help quite a bit. It just needs adjustment every minute or so and that gets a little tedious over a few hours at a time. I'll be adding some intelligence to this with either a stepper or gearmotor, sensor and Arduino of some sort to coil it for me.
-John
