I lift up my hotend when it retracts during tavel. there's a z setting in the retraction tab. this avoids the "bumps" because hotend is flying over them, however, your overall print time will increase. :-) i think it's a good trade off.

I enabled that for a print that had many small parts that the extruder kept knocking over and it worked wonderfully.  But I read somewhere that it is hard on your Z axis motor.  I guess that it can't be that hard though as the X and Y axis are constantly moving and they are fine.

How much lift do you put on Z?  When I did it I put 1mm.

But that isn't my problem though.  I think that the problem is the Z axis doesn't do the proper steps on layer change.  I had the Well Nut Z wobble fix on it and think it might be causing it to jam.  I have taken it off and will test without it.  If that doesn't do the trick I might try upping the Z axis current to give the motor a bit more push.

What do you guys think?

The slight flat spots aren't that big of an issue for what I am doing right now.  My biggest problem is random and unexpected over-extrusions.  Every once in awhile it seems more plastic is extruded than should be which results in blobs along the exterior and/or bumps on the surface which causes the nozzle to catch and shake the build platform which increases the problem to the point where the build eventually gets knocked loose from the platform.  Could this be caused by variations in filament diameter?  Right now I am using Octave red which does seem to have significant variations in diameter (as much as .5 mm or more).

I am still tweaking the settings and it seems that each filament I use requires different settings.

I had to bring mine down to 95 to get the nickle to fit. I read somewhere that normally it is around 110...not sure if this has to do with my E3D hotend or if I did something wrong, but I do get 38.10 outer diameter and the nickle fits.

adrian wrote:

Have you run through http://vimeo.com/55031028 ?

Yes I did (shortly after my original post) and while it helped substantially there are still slight flat spots at the same locations.  But I can now get the nickle to fit.

I wouldn't worry about the flat spots too much unless they are severe. Slicer may be causing those when it draws the tool paths. It might be worth trying the same thing on another slicing program to find out.

Have you run through http://vimeo.com/55031028 ?

Yes I did (shortly after my original post) and while it helped substantially there are still slight flat spots at the same locations.  But I can now get the nickle to fit.

I have attached a picture that shows the problem.

There is a definite flat spot at the top and bottom of the inner and outer circles.

Please advise as to how I can eliminate this.

Thanks alot everyone.