I would like to run this idea past everyone. I have a product I want to manufacture from 12mm birch plywood.

I can get 5 products from one sheet if I butt all the parts very close to each other and leave say 11mm clearance for the 10mm tool. There are 35 parts in total.

I am using a 8 by 4 sheet of plywood.

What I am thinking about doing is cutting a custom vacuum fixture which would sit under the whole 8 by 4 sheet to ensure the vacuum seal is not broken as the parts are cut out of the top sheet.

The plan is to use a 6mm sheet of mdf and cut the same toolpath but instead of using a 10mm tool instead use a 12mm tool and cut say 3mm into the sheet. I would then paint all the tool paths in the sacrificial sheet with a latex paint to seal the sheet only in the areas where it will be exposed.

I have never used a vacuum pump on my machine so this is something I would need to source and because the bed is so large the better the sealing I can get the less vacuum/ flow rate I will need. Also looking on youtube it seems vacuum hold down can be a little tricky to get to work right. I have heard of companies using two 25kw vacuum pumps together to get the hold down needed to hold smaller parts. I would like to avoid massive vacuum pumps at the expense of flexibility.