Planning Project: OSIDIAS (SFF taken to the extreme)

Thanks man. I'll get a hose mount figured out soon. Cuts that don't take long aren't so bad for holding the shop vac, but I don't want to follow the mill around for some of the bigger jobs. :)

I couldn't find it on their website, but a while back I got an adapter kit from Harbor Freight that hooks to a normal vacuum. Making/finding something similar might be useful so you don't have to route that big tube everywhere.

Now that's pretty interesting. Thanks for the pic. I'm not sure what I'm going to do yet, but I do know I'm not going to do a huge foot assembly like you see on a lot of machines.

WE WANT SOME ACTION SHOTS!!! lol..

Lol, I do have two videos linked a few posts up. Granted the quality is lower than I would like, but at least you can see the machine moving. :D

I came home from work today to find a nice sized box on my front porch. Inside was one of the last items I needed for setting up my Romaxx CNC machine. It was a VT6040 vacuum table that I had purchased from ebay seller dcad100. It measures 24.0”x16.5” x 0.8125", and was the perfect size for my machine. The vacuum table will allow me to hold parts in place without clamping. Should I need to clamp things anyway, there are M6 holes on the table that should easily allow this.

So, should we take a look at the table? Here it is as it arrived to me.

Opening the box revealed a very well packed table.

The table also came with a the necessary tubing for hooking up to a 2" vacuum line.

Also included was a solid rubber mat for blocking off unused holes during vacuuming, and a holed rubber mat that sits below parts that are being cut. The holed mat not only allows transfer of suction, but will help keep the end mill just above the aluminum table surface. These should be easily replaceable should the need arise.

The table looks to be of pretty good quality, and is well constructed.

Now finally, here is the table sitting on the machine. As you can see, it's the perfect size. All that's left is to get the vacuum lines hooked up, and it's ready for use. More coming soon!

Interesting. I wouldn't think that the pull from a normal shop vac would be strong enough to hold something down again the force of a router.

Well, even though it might be enough, I won't be finding out. I've got a nice vacuum motor I'll be hooking up in the next few days.

I had a little more time tonight, and was able to get the vacuum assembly finished. As of now, the vacuum table is completely ready to use. I am pretty happy with the way that things turned out. It's compact, easy to maintain, and fairly cost effective. Of course, none of that matters if the table doesn't perform as expected. Well, I'm happy to report that it performs even better than I had hoped. I know everyone is anxious to see how it turned out, so let me walk you through the rest of the setup process...

There are really only 3 major components needed in a vacuum table setup. The first is obviously the table itself which I covered in the last update. The second is the source of the vacuum itself. For this, I went to industrial parts supplier Grainger, and picked up a vacuum pump. I selected a two stage tangential unit capable of 97 CFM and 81.8 Hg vacuum. There were more powerful units available, but this one was an outstanding deal, and worth taking a chance. So, let's take a look at the pump...

Now, I should mention that although this is a vacuum pump, it's also a blower by it's inherent design. Unfortunately the only fitting for attaching a hose is on the blower end. That meant I had to get a little creative and epoxy a fitting over the vacuum hole. It was a simple fix, but just one more step I had to take before I could move forward.

Okay, now we've got two of the three major components out of the way. The third? Well, that should be easy. We've got to have tubing connecting the table and the vacuum pump. This shop vac hose kit offered the perfect solution.

As you can see the shop vac hose was a perfect match for the tubing adapter and splitter that came with the table.

Now all that was left was to route the tubing and hoses, mount the pump, and connect everything together. As you can see, the whole assembly is pretty clean and simple.

At this point I was pretty anxious to kick it on and do some testing. I'll try and get some video of that up in the next day or two, but as I mentioned above, I was very happy with the results. I could lay a block of wood in the center of the table, and with the pump running, it was surprisingly hard to move laterally. Keep in mind that this was without blocking off any of the other holes in the table. Doing so would increase the vacuum significantly. I'm pretty confident that as long as my feed speeds are appropriate, and my end mills are sharp, nothing is going to move while vacuum is applied. The only way to know for sure is to actually cut something, and I'll be doing that very soon!

Very nice. I can't wait to see it in action.