[revwarguy]

I've just gotten my VFD/spindle to work, (yea!) and already I find the pot speed control on the panel a bit difficult to use.

Apparently, it is an either/or choice to be able to use a remote pot on my main operation panel to control the spindle speed, or to allow Mach to control the speed via GCode.

Is it true that they are mutually exclusive, or did I get that wrong? Is there a workaround?

Assuming for the moment that either approach is easy to do, which makes the most practical sense?

When cutting a new (to me) material, I do like to experiment with feeds and speeds to find the sweet spot - it would seem this process would be best served by having a manual control. OTOH, once that spot is known, it would seem less error prone to always have the tool identified for that material which has its best speed specified.

Any advice for the spindle Newbie?

[ger21]

If you have mach3 control the speed, you can add a spindle override control which will allow you to vary the commanded speed with a knob.
Depending on the hardware you're using, there are a few different ways to accomplish this.