Looks like I was able to resolve this. Recreated project from scratch, extruded the svg into empty space rather than carving it out of a block. Did the trick, and it’s performing exceedingly faster as well.
Will report back on new carve results as soon as I can.
I had success this weekend with the carve. I changed the COM port, baud rate, and removed my vac from the picture.
I will be replicating the carve with the vac to see if results are the same.
Side note- I also noticed my tabs were too short and some waste material was “kicking” into the path of the mill. This may have had something to do with it as well.