Pros and Cons of CNC Vacuum Tables | Hobby to Industrial

[@acerjuglans383]

You can use 1/16" thick peel and stick rubber gasket, or neoprene gasket, on your large cnc spoilboard, and create zones, and increase the hold on small pieces of wood. You can use 1/8" thick gasket in the same way to hold rough lumber, or slightly warped lumber too.

[@JosephWerle-je4ww]

Ryan. You hit the nail on the head with the Airweights. I have been using it for over 6 months now. It works great for me because I taught myself how use it and make it work for me. Your Bamx is a very good product for special projects. I cut out a project yesterday with it. Gonna do another one today. Thank you. Keep up the good work.

[@FrostedImages]

I love, "a word from our sponsor". 😂 Ryan excellent video on vacuum systems.

[@RobSandstromDesigns]

The best video I have seen to date on pros and cons of vacuum tables, both large and small ones. Great video.

[@bigdogmn73]

Would love to see videos on those jigs for your vacuum tables. So cool!!

[@stlwoodworking]

Good rundown. Using multiple banks on the larger ones also work well. Making sure each one is separated.

[@DonnTarris]

Fabulous video!

[@stockcarbangertoytracks9634]

Great video! I would love to see more on how you design and use the jigs!

[@EcoMouseChannel]

A small crappy shop vac plugged into a torsion box, with skimmed top is actually a pretty effective and cheap way to get started with your own DIY vacuum table. Obviously, the vacuum cleaner won't last as long as a real pump, but they are only $40 and gets you productive sooner than later.

[@larryrobinson7492]

I've thought about adding Vacuum to mine for quite some time but not sure it's really worth it to me so far since I have plenty of ways of holding down with threaded inserts, t tracks, tape with glue or double back, etc. I'm just a hobbyist that tries to find ways to help others figure stuff out so...I will probably add this system in the future. Thanks Ryan, you're a "Certified Nice Guy"

[@JasonPeltier]

I just bought a 3D printer so I can make my own grid tiling system. Gonna be sweet! Thanks for this video.

[@darkspace3316]

It's much easier, cheaper, and faster to drill the material into the spoil board than worry about the air escaping. Plus, you save on the upfront cost of acquiring a vacuum bed.

[@JasonPeltier]

I have a cutting board that I need to put a juice groove onto. I don't think the customer wants extra screw holes in it.

[@WoodPRO-Designs]

Ryan pointed out that if you are doing one-off's, it probably isn't worth the time and effort to use a vac system. However for production runs, it is definitely the way to go.

[@chrislavreys5779]

For on-offs i don't use a spoil board. I use the raster table, but leave 0.2mm untouched, so I don't damage my table. I finish the part on a small router table with a bit with a bearing on top. For production work, I make a custom spoilboard. Just finished a special floor for an airport 2 weeks back. Now they need 500 pieces more for a wall, so this spoilboard goes back on the machine. Estimated production time will be about 10 hours... around 50 pieces per hour.

[@lelabodezaocreationdinstru3569]

Hi, Since 6 month i try to get my vacuum table working with mdf, and when I pout the pump on, the mdf and the part on it donest clamp... Do you have some advices ?

[@hammerholz]

You are the best, Bro👌👍👍

[@personalcontent4484]

Thank you for the great info. If I may ask, relating to industrial machines. What's the smallest piece the vacuum table holds before pieces start to move? Do you onion skin for all the fast rough cuts and then cut through or keep tabs? Your spoil board mdf? How thick is the spoil board before facing it?

[@chrislavreys5779]

Some maths. If you have a pump like a becker ,busch,...vane pump and you can get to -0.9bar, the pressure on top of the part = 0.9kg per cm2. So a 4x4" piece, has a weight on top of about 90kg. At sea level! If your piece goes sideways, put a piece of sanding paper under it with double sided tape. It won't move again.

[@chrislavreys5779]

Big pump is 3/4 " mdf board, sealed at the sides, cover unused parts with plastic or tape.

[@lambdaprocess7983]

There is a system called Tile Weights which is essentially 2 * 2 neopreneish self adhesive gaskets (1/8 or 1/16) that are applied to a MDF spoilboard preferably 1/4" and LDF if you can find it. The tiles are perforated with holes which concentrates the vacuum to smaller areas. I wanted to try it on the cheap. I applied craft foam to my spoilboard and then started letting V12 drill all the holes It was going to take forever. I thought....... I understand the concept of concentrating the vacuum and I understand that the gaskets also increase friction. Off I go to Home Depot for 1/4" perforated hardboard (pegboard) and then on to harbor freight for some of the Tool Chest Mesh Liner. I placed the pegboard on a 2 x 4 zone and put the tool chest liner loosely on to of it. Turned the Vacuum on and placed a sheet of 2 x 4 plywood on top. It worked great to cut profile cuts of some objects that I otherwise had trouble keeping in their proper spots I also ran some V12 Boxes that turned out fine. Proof of Concept. I then used a spray adhesive to make a more permanent setup. I'm going to convert the rest of my ~4 x 4 table now. Blocking off unused areas is really important IMO and pretty flat media as well. Oh and I'm going to start doing my projects from Pegboard/Liner surface in stead of working from material down. It will let you know if your "Z" is not really tight. Let me add - My Vac Table is gasketed like airweights and I set it up in 2 roughly 2 x 4 zones. If that didn't work - none of this would be possible. Self Adhesive gasket material (rectangular in my case) about 1/16" proud of the Vac Table. Works great.

[@MickDuijf]

I run a ex industrial cnc machine at home with a vacuum pod system. Works really well for one of projects and smaller workpieces but not to small. The major downside is i have to be really carefull about the placement of the pods because they are expensive to replace if i cut into them. And it is not optimal for big nesting projects.

[@acerjuglans383]

It's really cheap to make your own vacuum pods.

[@MickDuijf]

@@acerjuglans383 i have Schmalz style double vacuum pods which have replaceable rubber top and bottom pads, but if u damage the body u are out at least 100 bucks

[@MickDuijf]

@@acerjuglans383 I run Schmalz style double vacuum pods which have a replaceable rubber top and bottom suction pads, but if u damage the body of the cup u are out at least 100 bucks

[@MickDuijf]

I use schmalz style double vacuum pods which have a replaceable rubber top and bottom pad, but if u damage the body u are out at least 100 bucks.

[@lambdaprocess7983]

Gotta use a Tile Gasket type system for nesting and/or profile cuts from my experience. Allstar CNC Products.

[@dominic6634]

vacuum tables are totally worth it but they don't solve every problem.

[@ifiwooddesigns]

Ryan, great video as always. As much as I’d like a vacuum system, it doesn’t make sense for me. I do a lot of one offs, cutouts and profile cuts. I just bought a new CNC and want to try a pneumatic clamping system which makes it as quick and easy as vacuum tables, and a fraction of the price. If successful, maybe I’ll reach out to you and see if there could be a way to manufacture it and sell. Until then, I’m sticking (pun intended) to double sided tape and baking soda and glue methods.

[@thomasswearingen6971]

They make a double rod cylinder. They have holes or threaded holes. I made a clamp table out of a festool mft. I have clamped lots of things in it. I built it for doors and found I could use it and clamps for glue ups. I threaded a 8mm socket cap screw through a 14mm socket and use that and a clamp to hold the clamp in place. I have a foot pedal and daisy chain the air. Used a flow valve on the exhaust so that all 5 clamps close at the same time. The thing that I see is that you could put wood on the face of the clamp so that you had a place for the bit to over travel. And then just use the mft grid with plastic dogs. I needed to put 400 Domino holes in frame pieces. I used a clamp and two dogs. The biggest thing was that I didn't have any clamping time. I had my hands free to hold the tool and turn the parts. I used clamps for thirty minutes and then switched setups. I finished in two hours. If I had stayed with the manual clamps it would have taken me over eight hours. The key was the foot pedal that was latching. So it stayed in the position I put it in. I would recommend getting a bigger cylinder say that lest a 30mm. A short stroke is better. 55mm is the shortest I would try. And then you can use blocking strips to make up the slack and give you more space if needed. The hardest thing is holding the ram. There are lots of different ways to do that if you can have a mft style top. Thanks for giving me an idea of how to hold and index on my machine.

[@ST3yo]

I have trouble wrapping my mind around this: so the vacuum will pull through the spoil board and pull down the workpiece? How is it sucking air through the spoil board? I never understood that

[@acerjuglans383]

MDF is permeable. A strong vacuum pump will suck down material that's placed on a 3/4" thick MDF spoilboard.

[@thomasswearingen6971]

Vacuum, if you take all of the air out of a place then there is pressure placed around that object. If you breathe in. Could you hold something with just your lips? As thing a vacuum pump pulls air in just like when you breathe in.

[@alece9697]

One question you didn't address (i think) is whether it works for small parts like 50ish parts from a 4x8 sheet. Would it still be effective as all those profile cuts open up and leak air? That question has held me back from buying a vacuum pump for my cnc for years now....

You need a dedicated fixture. A spoil board won't work unless you use tabs, which is a pain. We have dedicated fixtures for our smaller parts. I'd look up all star gasketing and check out their videos. It may a few times to get it right.

[@alece9697]

Having a dedicated fixture would be great but the parts move around from day to day (not just the same cuts over and over unfortunately.). Everything I cut is made to order so the parts vary based on the orders for the day/week. Sounds like a vacuum table isn't the solution for me. More fun with tabs. 😂

[@thomasswearingen6971]

I like free time to much to not understand how many pieces I sell in a day. If you don't want to have more time that is ok with me. It sounds like everything is custom some how. If you break a sheet up and make ten jigs that gives you lots of options. I understand why a hole sheet and is there a way to break it up into four pieces that you could make jigs in. If it took you 40 hours to figure it out and set up a good system. How many days of not cutting tabs would it take to make up the 40 hours. I think that the problem is you don't know how much time you spend in total. If you did then you could tell me if you made $50 an hour how long until the vacuum table paid for it's self? You might find yourself cutting sheets up so that you can save time with a vacuum table. A smaller table with more CFM will hold smaller parts. Don't want to spend lots of money make a small one out of mdf and use a cheap air compressor with the hose on the intake side. In my shop I went from making $50 an hour to $300 an hour. It was all about saving seconds. Now I work three ten hour days instead of seven 16hr days. I have time to do what I want and make more doing it. Every day is now a game to find a way to save more time. Every step I take is now accounted for. Anything that I could cut has been. Wish you luck and remember time is money. And once you spend time you will never be able to get it back.

[@ColumbiaSCRealEstate]

Bam! ........ X!

[@TheBenjiLewis]

Big fan of the sponsored ad.

[@tstanley01]

You don't want it to suck a bow out of a warped board. Because even if it could hold it, the second you turned it off, it would reintroduce the bow into the board, and your project would be crap...

[@mrscience1409]

Escape not ecscape

[@acerjuglans383]

The Air Weights table is a true vacuum table, because it uses gasketing. Every large cnc, using a vacuum pump to hold down an MDF spoilboard, has a downdraft table. Two different things, but people just call them all vacuum tables.

[@colormeblooodred8500]

"Downdraft tables or downdraught benches are workbenches with built-in ventilation to capture dust, smoke, and fumes and draw them away from the operator and the material being worked on"😂😂😂

[@michaelconvey8017]

if you isolate your vacuum pump and motor your shop will be so quiet you will wonder why you didnt do it right off .your sucking all the heat out get rid of all that noise

[@dennygrant8148]

it funny you have this channel but you still don't know shit about cnc work. Your understand of the vacuum pressure is poor. you finally have some real machines but you have alot to learn, I were to hire you to work at my shop I would need to 100% train you.

[@theebalz]

I have one question. I see a spoil board on your big cnc. Is the air somehow sucking through the spoilboard or? Do you have a physical address for airweights as I live in south Denver and would like to see their products up close. Thank you

[@acerjuglans383]

MDF is permeable, and a vacuum will suck right through it to hold the workpiece.

[@AirWeights]

@theebalz reach out via the contact form on our website and we’d be glad to give you a live demo!

[@thomasswearingen6971]

Just remember that elevation has a big effect on the type of pump that will work. I live at 3,500 feet above see level. A Regen blower will not work for me. And if I get a Becker pump I need to have it calibrated for my altitude. I know a lot of people who have shop bots and the like and got a vacuum table that doesn't pull enough Mercury to hold a part. For a small table CFM will help you. Just know that not every pump will work at higher elevation. Don't ask the manufacturer they will say that it will. They will not tell you the Mercury it can pull though. And that is what you need to hold your parts. Sorry I just know that large pumps are a lot and that people don't understand what they don't understand. My magic number is 22. I don't know if the number is metric or US. I believe it was metric as the CNC was Italian. It was the same on the German one. When I got to 15-20 I had to replace the spoil board to get the number back.

[@AirWeights]

@@thomasswearingen6971 excellent point! Luckily, AirWeights is headquartered in the mile high city of Denver Colorado, so we build and test our systems at high elevation by default.