A method includes: selecting a movement path for a moving component of a machine tool; either before or after the movement path, causing the moving component to make a first predefined movement; before the movement path, causing the moving component to make a second predefined movement; after the movement path, causing the moving component to make a third predefined movement; recording, using a computing device including one or more accelerometers, movement data resulting from the first, second and third predefined movements, and from the movement path; analyzing the movement data by finding waveforms to identify a start point, a finish point, and which one of the predefined movement paths in the set was selected; calculating timing information based on the identified start and end points, and the identified one of the predefined movement paths in the set; and determining performance limits of the machine tool based on the timing information.

A method to control a material remover can include generating a test path to be processed by the processing circuitry to cause the material remover of the machine tool to move along a predetermined path; causing the processing circuitry to execute the test path and move the material remover along the test path; timing at least one of the performance of the processing circuitry and the movement of the material remover along the test path to generate machine tool timings; and using the machine tool timings to set limits which are arranged to subsequently be used when cutting paths are generated for the machine tool for which the test path has been generated.