I want a vacuum table!

[Tenson]

Thanks Geoffrey. I like the way the very thin dust sheet can wrap around the edges of an unusual shape. Sometimes like in the image above the edge of the sock material is not actually a straight edge. I do also have a silicon seal around the edge of the table. I bought some 6mm dia silicon tube on eBay. I also have some smaller peices that I can use to section off areas of the table. I threaded the holes in the steel tube that feeds the vacuum so I can also put a bolt in any of the 18 holes.

I can also confirm that painting the table with a thin coating of 'liquid rubber' helps reduce parts sliding about. I used Isoflex. I then surfaced the table and haven't put it back on since it is slow to set and very smelly, lol.

I'm moving workshops soon and will need to make the machine quieter not to annoy neighbours, so next will be a big sound-proof box for the whole machine. That's not too hard, but making it easy to access the machine when needed will be more tricky since doors and windows tend to break a sound-proof seal.

Oh and those part drawings I posted earlier in the thread were to be cut from Acrylic. That didn't work well on the vacuum bed directly because it doesn't take well to 'skinning' due to not being easy to remove the final part cleanly with a knife. What I did find worked well, much to my surprise is just putting a flat sheet of MDF on the vacuum table and then sticking the acrylic sheet on there with lots of double sided tape. I keep the protective cover in place on both sides of the acrylic too. I thought that would be far too weak to hold, but it isn't and it's far easier than removing the double sided tape from the acrylic sheet itself.