or just print at way slower speeds or .1mm like I do for solid prints. as I notice on .3mm profiles the head temp drops faster than it recovers on even just 60mm speed passes

I'm really glad there's such a great community for bouncing and sharing ideas.  I'll keep playing with it and testing some more.

My theory is that at .48, with the .4 nozzle, since you only are squishing the sides out .04 it doesn't get that as good of contact.

Leaving the nozzle diameter the same at .4, change the extrusion width to .6.  Since it now has .1 squished on each side, I would think the extra plastic its being told to extrude should put more down force from the center out to better help layer adhesion.

Maybe i'm misunderstanding the program, but if you have everything setup correctly, isn't the extrusion width the variable to change for how thick it makes each strand it lays down?  From your post it sounds like its supposed to be how far apart it makes each strand.

Are those the slicer settings you have been using in the picture you attached?

I made a test piece to test out what the slicer software would do with different width walls.  I made it just a 4 walled cube without a bottom.  Since I have my width set at .6mm I made the sides in those multiples.  One wall is .6mm, the next 1.2mm, the third is 1.8mm, and the 4th I threw in a curve at 1.0mm to see where it would take it.

The .6 wall is .62, the 1.2mm wall is 1.25mm, the 1.8mm came out a hair small at 1.65mm, and the 1.0mm wall it seems just rounded down and it is also just .6mm.  It was mentioned that using multiples like this would just result in the strands not touching, but I had to forcibly cut the double (1.2mm) wall with a utility knife.

essentially we are saying the same thing other than there will be a physical limitation of the nozzle itself.  At some point (each nozzle will be slightly different) you will reach a point that the lines won't connect.  In the software you are really telling it two things.
1. how much filament it should push through
2. the tool path to follow
so by telling it that your nozzle is bigger than it actually is you are also telling it to follow the next path slightly farther apart.
I have also noticed that this all changes on the condition of the filament itself.  Filament that is full of moisture seems to expand quite a bit. Where as good dry filament will only expand roughly an additional 20%  which is where we get the .48 that you see used for a .4 nozzle.

As far as the settings above... Yes those are what I use but I have a .60 nozzle and change sizes routinely depending on the job.  With the bigger nozzle you can really start to see the effects of changing those settings.  Notice I have it at .70 and it really should calculate out to .72.  That just doesn't work with out some serious over extrusion problems.
I say have fun with it and learn some things along the way.  Maybe you can teach the rest of us a thing or two.

Are those the slicer settings you have been using in the picture you attached?

I made a test piece to test out what the slicer software would do with different width walls.  I made it just a 4 walled cube without a bottom.  Since I have my width set at .6mm I made the sides in those multiples.  One wall is .6mm, the next 1.2mm, the third is 1.8mm, and the 4th I threw in a curve at 1.0mm to see where it would take it.

The .6 wall is .62, the 1.2mm wall is 1.25mm, the 1.8mm came out a hair small at 1.65mm, and the 1.0mm wall it seems just rounded down and it is also just .6mm.  It was mentioned that using multiples like this would just result in the strands not touching, but I had to forcibly cut the double (1.2mm) wall with a utility knife.

I don't mean the nozzle diameter, I mean just changing the extruded width.  On my single walls, instead of a .48 thickness, i am using .60.

I know what you mean.  Your changing these settings.

And to a certain degree that will work.  However,  if you set the extrusion width to 2mm what you will get is two lines that center out about 1mm apart and don't actually touch one another.  So you are limited by the actual diameter of your nozzle,  the amount of expansion and how wide you can squish it out to.  With a .40 Nozzle the widest I could ever achieve (in actual printed width) was about .9mm's  and that was only on the bed.  After that first layer there is some serious over extrusion that's going to happen.  Even that can be worked around but in the end I reverted back to the tried and true formulas everyone else uses.  Either way it is fun to experiment with and learn the affects of certain changes.

That shouldn't be right if it still has a gap and things are calibrated.  Would that not just be an error in the slicing software?   This interests me quite a bit, when i get back home later this afternoon I'll experiment some with it as well.

It would be right in a perfect world where the printer was calibrated to that .48 wall thickness.  Changing the nozzle diameter setting doesn't actually change the diameter of the nozzle. Just the distance between the paths the nozzle follows.  Of course we don't live in a perfect world so for certain things what your suggesting actually works for others it does not.  Keep us posted on your findings.  I used some extreme's for testing and slowly worked back to normal.

I'm sure its just as well going smaller, including the fact that i'm still dialing in things.  I would like to point out that for some, we could adjust the width in multiples of the dimensions we are trying to acquire. For example, when trying to print a 1 mm object, at .48 it would basically try to draw two .48 lines and fill in the .04 with the zig zagging.  Increasing the width to .5 would let it just do two solid and connected lines.

Even though this really won't help for the larger objects, I would like to hear your thoughts and experiences on it.