I had a similar result with Esun ASA where it would start with patches that looked decent but rapidly transitioned into a mess. In my case as best I could tell the issue was inadequate bed adhesion and too much nozzle adhesion such that it would go ok until a bit of extrusion would curl up onto the nozzle instead of sticking to the bed such as doing a short zig zag after a long travel to begin infill in a new region.
I got significant improvement from various things to improve bed adhesion such as glue stick, better bed leveling, trying other build plates, etc. But then I tried a different nozzle, nothing special just a different dirt cheap brass nozzle and the problem has never recurred.
ASA roll diameter is slightly under sized 1.7-1.6 mm and oval in shape based on my measurements. the extruder gears are not capable of gripping the filament reliably no matter how tight the tension is set. this picture is from the same roll of ASA run on my Biqu BX using the same filament profile in Orcaslicer.
It doesn’t take much before undersized filament won’t extrude properly. Filament specifications are usually +/- 0.02 or +/-0.03 mm. 1.7 mm is -0.05 mm under sized and is questionable. Oval filament will orient itself to the minor axis between the extruder gears, and 1.6 mm is definitely a problem. On the Zero, I can pull that filament out of the extruder with the extruder gears maximally engaged so it’s definitely under extruding… a lot.
I’ll often find a short section of under extruded filament. Actually, the printer finds it for me!
I’ll use the calipers to measure up the filament every meter and I’ll often be able to cut out a few meters and the rest of the spool will be fine, but I’ve also had entire spools that were way out of spec. Fortunately, that hasn’t happened lately. It was more of a problem in the early days, and was more common with stretchy TPU filament, before the industry moved to 100% laser quality control.
I remember Bambu having a big issue with this last year with dual-colored filaments being far enough out of round that they would fail to feed.
One of the things I look at with filament providers is their published tolerances.
±0.02mm - Exceptional
±0.03mm - Good, most upper-end filaments are in this range
±0.04mm - Tolerable, but not great. This is the absolute minimum I will accept.
If they don’t publish their tolerances, I figure It’s outside acceptable range