Re: Hot End Temperature Not Reading Accurately

I think your extruder "having trouble pushing the filament" may not be related to temperature. Perhaps the filament path has an inner diameter too small (should be at least 3.2mm to allow for filament swelling before melting). Or perhaps the surface of this "inner cylinder" is rough so the filament just gets hard to push, in which case you could try putting the finest kind of sandpaper through and by the use of a rotating tool you can try give it some "luster" (e.g. shiny inner surface). Or perhaps the nozzle orrifice got something inside blocking the nozzle, in which case it may only need a cleaning. Or perhaps something else. But anyway a filament "hard to push" is not just about temperature. In your case ~210 and more should already be sufficient extruder to work.

You can take out the pressure bearing and just push the filament by hand, and see if it is hard to push by hand at working temperature. I think this is a very useful test, and if it feels the filament is too hard to push through then its a problem. Because you already have an geared extruder, if it has trouble pushing the filament then you probably have this (normally this can be done even un-geared). So if that is an issue, filament "hard to push" perhaps you can investigate the above possibilities.

Dunno about "slightly melting when touching a hot surface", because this is bit subjective expression - it could be interpreted quite differently by any of us.