Lee,

The discrepancy and the pauses will be the backlash compensation. On a change of direction of an axis, Mach pauses the cut while the backlash is taken out. I am sure there is somewhere within Mach that lets you change the speed of the update but I'm not sure where it is as I do not need backlash comp on my machine - apologies, I don't mean to gloat :)

Mike