Hi All,
It has been a couple years since I’ve visited this community. Have a S3 table that has been used at my work daily for the last 5-6 years (Cutting DyeSub Aluminum and MDF). My company would like to get a 4’ S-Pro table. But before we buy I need to make sure I can get a proper vacuum table for it.
Requirements:
Fits the whole usable area of the table
Zones that can be opened or closed
Aluminum is preferred to keep the tolerances tight.
Budget is $3-5K (not including the router table).
Any leads on a manufactuer would be helpful. Not really interested in building a vacuum table on the Shapeoko. made a couple for the S3 out of MDF and there was always high and low spots.
Also, really like the Carbide system, its ease of use and we have about 250+ programs that I would rather not rewrite.
So does your $3-5K budget include the vacuum or just the table? How many zones? What would be the preferred zone layout?
Contact me via PM if you want to talk more. I could make the aluminum baseplate and your first MDF top. You would need to handle the plumbing and vacuum. Either of these would work depending on your needs/wants:
Hi @Darko138
This isn’t quite the exact approach you specified, but I think could potentially achieve a pretty good result for your set-up. It could at least get you started for well within your budget: AirWeights Complete Kit
We offer a modular vacuum workholding kit. Each plenum is just shy of 24" x 24", so you could lay out 4ea on the 4’ S-Pro. That said, we’ve only tested up to 2ea side-by-side on a 4’x2’ machine and would need to validate that the current pump can handle the 4’x4’ area. If not, more pumps or sizing up to a larger pump are both options. We’d even consider a custom, high flow option for 2" PVC if that’s more the approach you’re looking for. That said, with the new Tile Gasket from All Star CNC, we’ve been able to hold small parts pretty well without the need for a large, high flow rate vacuum pump like the Black Box options. It’s a consumable and you can cut thru your parts right into it.
Hope this can be supportive for you and/or others!
There are two relevant features of AirWeights vacuum tables that address your XY locating question.
There is a touch plate feature on the front left corner of the AirWeight. This holds your touch plate in position with a small vacuum zone while your machine completes its probing sub-routine. This allows you to program your parts from the front left corner of the AirWeight. DXF and SVG files of the top surface are included upon purchase so that you can layout and optimize part positions relative to the front left corner. This also means that if you move your AirWeight around on your machine for any reason, your code is still valid so long as you set your XY zero on the front left corner after moving it.
We have locating pin features on the AirWeight so that you can install and remove with repeatability. These holes receive 1/4” locating dowels (provided) that are meant to be installed in your spoilboard. You drill holes in your spoilboard using your machine so that you know the exact location of them relative to home. Again, these locations are provided upon purchase within the same DXF and SVG files. This is convenient for programming parts from the home position of your machine and is well suited to running production, avoiding the touch plate step to set your XY zero. You’ll likely still need to set Z.
I’m not sure I 100% understand your question about cutting from stock, but here’s my best shot.
Best case scenario is your stock is oversized on all sides by less than your cutter diameter. Then you can profile the outer boundary without any additional material flying around the shop. You can also account for large amounts of left over material by including gasket zones under the left over stock so that it’s still held after cutting. We offer affordable customizable fixture plates for these types of applications.
Another solution is to use a sacrificial gasket under your material (see Tile Gasket above). When you cut thru, you cut into this sheet of gasket. This allows you to cut our parts completely and avoid a customized fixture plate. However, the holding force is reduced in this set-up due to more aggregate leak.
Each approach has its benefits and drawbacks. Happy to answer more questions about this and thanks for the interest!
I just finished making one using a blackbox cyclone. It was around that 3.5k mark for everything. I milled through the hybrid table and used a hole saw to for the plywood table I mounted the shapeoko on. Got a deal on some 3/4 HDPE I used for the plenum and 3/4 mdf for the top. Super happy with the result. I did have to mill out a small pocket in the corner to keep the bit setter. Everything was done on the machine with the exception of making custom t nuts that ran the full track for easier alignment.
