I noticed this the other day while changing out the MC board fan. One pulley has belt teeth running on a smooth surface.
While I normally wouldn’t do or recommend this, I’m currently not experiencing this issue such as other users. However, i haven’t ran much PLA… mostly PA-CF and TPU, and the PLA prints I have ran were mostly round.
At .12 layer height on PA-CF I’ve had nothing but nearly flawless finishes. This material tends to hide these normal issues rather well though.
Maybe it’s time to run some test prints in PLA?!?!
Honestly, I think you might be on to something here though.