richards
10-03-2004, 11:39 PM
I installed a Rousseau vacuum pump (about $200 - the kind that connects to an air compressor) last week to hold small parts. It really works great. Following the advice from several of you, I made some 4x5 inch vacuum pucks from plastic, used closed-cell foam tape on both sides of the vacuum puck (so that it would self-clamp to the table as it clamped the material to be cut) and tried it out. Using two pucks in series, it was easy to lift a 24x97x3/4 piece of MDF clear off the table and shake it without losing vacuum. (Maybe easy isn't the best word - that stuff is heavy!)
As soon as I saw how well it worked, I drilled a 1-inch grid pattern on a 24x48 piece of MDF, made more pucks with mounting holes in the bottom to mate with the grid pattern and started production.
The MDF grid is held in place on one of the 24x48 inch sections with a Fein vacuum. (I used the Shopbot cutting file. The Fein vacuum works well with larger pieces (24x24 inches), but requires a vacuum mask to work well with most of the parts that I cut.) The Rousseau holds the small parts (3x4 inches or larger. It pulls about 15-20 inches of mercury at Salt Lake's 4,500 foot altitude, which roughly translates to about 7-10 pounds per square inch.
Limitations are that there can be NO air leaks (seal the MDF grid with several coats of your favorite clear coat) and it uses about 2 cfm air - so the air compressor might get a good workout. But, it opened my eyes to many other possibilities to the point that I built two other units with about double the holding power to operate clamping jigs at the drill press, the sander, the router table, the table saw and the boring machine. $200 is a small price to pay to keep fingers aways from sharp spinning bjects.
Mike
As soon as I saw how well it worked, I drilled a 1-inch grid pattern on a 24x48 piece of MDF, made more pucks with mounting holes in the bottom to mate with the grid pattern and started production.
The MDF grid is held in place on one of the 24x48 inch sections with a Fein vacuum. (I used the Shopbot cutting file. The Fein vacuum works well with larger pieces (24x24 inches), but requires a vacuum mask to work well with most of the parts that I cut.) The Rousseau holds the small parts (3x4 inches or larger. It pulls about 15-20 inches of mercury at Salt Lake's 4,500 foot altitude, which roughly translates to about 7-10 pounds per square inch.
Limitations are that there can be NO air leaks (seal the MDF grid with several coats of your favorite clear coat) and it uses about 2 cfm air - so the air compressor might get a good workout. But, it opened my eyes to many other possibilities to the point that I built two other units with about double the holding power to operate clamping jigs at the drill press, the sander, the router table, the table saw and the boring machine. $200 is a small price to pay to keep fingers aways from sharp spinning bjects.
Mike