[EricH]

Originally Posted by ksafin

Wow, the nozzle has to be that close?

You know.. this is starting to make sense.

Perhaps the reason why the top layers turn out better is because at that point, the height of the object we're printing is > 5 mm, and thus the nozzle can get super close to it. Whereas the first few layers are super far from the nozzle and thus turn out noodl-ey.

Exactly!

What's happening is: You're starting so high up that the material won't stick. But, what does stick forms a base. As you get closer to the head, the material sticks better, and forms the shape better. So by the end of the part, it looks really good. But at the beginning, ugh.

I've seen that when I've pulled material from one part in a 4-part build--eventually, I got high enough that it wouldn't act up, then it built almost normally, then other stuff happened (that I won't go into here).

Use that height-adjustment screw set--it's your friend--but once you get good parts, you don't want to touch it unless you absolutely have to.