Introduction to Vacuum Table Setup (0:00-1:18)
0:00-1:18: “Hello. Hello. Welcome back to another legacy training video. My name is Chris and today we’re going to show you how to properly set up your vacuum table. In the previous video, we showed how to surface your base table and attach these grid tables to the top of that base table. Uh, the next step is to actually install these foam cords. The foam seal around the perimeter of each grid table section. This one is already laid out for us and there’s two different methods in which I’m gonna show you on how to connect the ends. Uh, first one is it doesn’t matter where you start as you just plug one end in, and then when you follow up with the other end coming back, you’re going to cut it to length so they just match at the same point. This one, all we’re gonna do is we’re gonna start right at the edge of the square. And when you, um, install this foam, all you have to do is press straight down. You don’t have to do any of this stretching, you just press straight down as you feed it, and then you’re going to just simply make sure that’s all pressed evenly down.”
Installing the Foam Seal (1:18-2:28)
1:14-1:38: “and then you’re going to just simply make sure that’s all pressed evenly down. And we’ll just continue this all the way around the perimeter. When we come back to the end, we’ll show you how to follow that up. Okay, so make sure that, again, you don’t stretch this, you just wanna press straight down. Now when you come back to where you meet, where you started, we’re just going to bring it towards the center of our grid.”
1:43-2:01: “With the foam seal installed, we’re now ready to place our spoil board. On top of our grid table, we use three quarter inch mdf. And if you’re a one man shop, I recommend, uh, a dolly like this. This is a crazy horse dolly on a resource list. You can get it from West Oak Studios, um, show you how easy it is to use.”
2:10-2:31: “You can see that I can easily maneuver and use this any way I wish. I’m just gonna place this on. Now. What you don’t want to do or you want, what you wanna be careful of is not to smear the seal. You want to place the material on top so it doesn’t roll the seal out of the”
Placing the Spoil Board (2:28-3:38)
2:27-2:50: “You want to place the material on top so it doesn’t roll the seal out of the groove. So we’re gonna lift and place instead of just sliding, we’re just gonna line up that corner, check your edges and you’re good to go.”
2:57-3:39: “The reason we use MDF as our spoil board material is because it’s porous enough to allow air to travel through the sheet, um, and it will hold additional parts on top of that table surface. You may not believe that if you haven’t seen it before, but we’ll sh we’ll demonstrate that here momentarily. Um, the other reason is because we can cut through our parts and into the spoil board itself without losing the seal. Once you have enough of these cut grooves within the top surface of your spoil board, you’re gonna need to surface that spoil board. However, the first time you do this, you’re gonna want to surface both sides, the top and the bottom side. Let’s show you how to control the vacuum tables. Under the horizontal table where we’re currently at,”
Importance of MDF and Spoil Board Maintenance (3:38-4:59)
3:36-4:22: “Under the horizontal table where we’re currently at, we’re gonna go to a display screen, the control display screen, and then the bottom left corner, we can see all the button controls for the vacuum table. There’s your main vacuum button as well as your zones. Now if we press the vacuum button, it enables the vacuum to be used for automatic and manual procedures. The automatic procedures take place whenever we run something like touching off a smart tool padd. The vacuum will automatically turn on, or perhaps when we load a program and we press the play cycle start button, that will turn the vacuum on and then also shut down the vacuum when the program is finished. To run the vacuum manually, we can press this vac button underneath the pause button and that will toggle it on and off.”
4:29-4:45: “Last, we can also control the zones. So we have zones one through six for larger machines on the four by eight. We have zones one through four and we can toggle those on and off just by pressing those buttons. But we can also toggle them on and off while the vacuum is running.”
Operating the Vacuum Control (4:59-6:23)
5:04-5:36: “So let me demonstrate this for you. If you have a part that doesn’t have enough surface area to it, it won’t be able to be sucked down or held down to that table surface. When we turn the vacuum on, you’ll need about three to four square feet of, of contact or surface area for your sheet or part that you wanna hold down. It has to be completely flat, no bower twist to it. Uh, traditionally you’re using the vacuum table for sheet processing. So let’s turn on the vacuum and compare the hold down forces for both of these parts.”
5:46-6:23: “So you could see that it took a little force to, to move the smaller component and a lot more force to to move this larger component. However, this type of table fixture, we’re not cutting out small components like this. We’re typically using four by four, four by eight sheets, which have plenty of hold down force to cut down all your components within one sheet. Your vacuum table is now ready to be used for standard sheet good processing, and another video will show how to produce table fixtures with the vacuum table that allow you to hold down other types of components. Until then, thanks for watching and we’ll see you in the next video.”
