Making progress with the laser.  I'm finding that I do need to specify the A axis as a rotary axis otherwise the discrepency in counts per revolution versus the normal X axis is too much variation.  I ran a part and the part was cutting off center.  I finally realized that I was missing steps because the feedrate that worked for the rotary was way too fast for the X axis to catch up if the line only had an X move in it.  I reset the machine to look at A as a rotary axis and set the proper diameter and the axis feedrated worked normally.  I do program my parts to 3.6" in Y then in a word processor, convert the Y's to A's and put a g51 a100 to scale it to full rotary.  That all works well now.
Here's a question; can the diameter of a part be given in the G-code of a part instead of input on the settings page?  I know for a fact that I will sometimes forget to set a diameter and get a ruined part.  Even having an average diameter for rings, like .80" will be close enough to get the feedrates to work well.