Extruder Straining? trouble with Z height

[blackrabt]

Edit: I have some functional setings for now, but am still seeing issues. As far as Z height goes, none of my perimeter loops are printing. Not sure it the filament is just melting out of the nozzle and it takes a bit to build it back up or if my endstops are not properly calibrated. Still working on some sloppiness in the upper layers of PLA prints as well, but I think those are retraction and speed related.

I am having a few issues but chief among them is I feel like my ezstruder is having to work too hard to move filament. I believe it is related to issues calibrating the z height just right. I set it to do 4 loops before starting the print and it doesn't lay material for most of them. I mark the filament with a sharpie in a few locations to check for motion and it does go but not like it does when on upper layers. However when fiddling with it, making adjustments of 0.03mm at a time I am either not getting any filament out or not getting bed adhesion. Currently printing PLA at 220C/62C (tried PLA at ranges from 190-215 with better results towards 210 but I thought more heat might help my extrusion issue). I have gone over videos and posts detailing the process and have reset it about 30 times now. It will print but the base comes out patchy. I would think that meant I was underextruding but it already seems like it it working hard at getting the filament out. On prints I did run all the way through they look okay generally but definitely need work.

Using Slic3r and Repetier-Host. All print speeds are under 40mm/s except for bridges and infill. First layer is set for 30mm/s. Layer height is currently 0.2mm, width is 0.5mm to match the nozzle. Extruder max feed rate is 100, Start feed rate is 45, steps per mm is 92.210 (I had to go back and recalibrate the extrusion steps because i was getting ~102mm/100mm.

Do I need to get a dial guage to get this figured out properly or am I experiencing a Twilight Zone episode where things won't calibrate? Or am I being dumb, which is very possible.

Also tried speeding things up and I got a fast growing ball of filament. So that might mean I need other tweaks to see if that can help but I'm fed up for the night.