Extruder motor keeps skipping

So, I literally just burned myself. No not with the print head, but on the heat sink of my extruder's stepper motor driver. I have been having problems with my extruder motor skipping. I thought that the problem was probably that the the motor was not getting enough voltage, so I increased it using the potentiometer. That seemed to be working, so I started a print. Nine minutes into the print the extruder motor started skipping every so often. I went in to increase the current just a little bit, but then my middle finger accidentlytouched the heat sink if the stepper driver which was scorching hot and actually burned my finger. My finger will be fine, but I could really use some advise on how to fix my extruder. (Accidentally posted this message twice)

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/22/2016 09:06PM by Sam Torbert.

Your tension is probably too tight on your filament causing your motor to skip because it doesn't have enough torque. You've also probably increased the current way too much if the heatsink is that hot, which also says your torque on the filament is too high.

Well thank you for the advice, but unfortunately, my extruder was designed by a company that really did not think you would ever want to adjust anything, so the pinch wheel is in a fixed position. But I had another idea that could be a possibility. You see, it is a direct drive extruder where the extruder just screws onto the motor, and then the hobbled bold goes directly onto the shaft of the motor. The assembly had no place to mount a tube clamp, so I designed and printed a mount that sandwiches in-between the motor and the extruder. Without the mount in-between the motor and the extruder the hobbled bolt lined up perfectly with the pinch wheel when pushed all the onto the shaft of the motor. However with the mount sandwiched in-between I've had to compensate by pulling the hobbled bolt away from the motor a bit. Is it possible that I have not gotten it the right position and that is causing the motor to skip?