Do Vacuum Tables Really Work? UNEXPECTED RESULTS

I'm going to be showing off three different ways that we are torture testing this we're going to be doing the tugboat test and then we are going to jump into the shrinking Island and then last but certainly not least we're going to be doing the profile paloa and showing you what it really looks like to profile your project on an air we system and how much we can actually get away with so so without further Ado let's go ahead and jump into the tugboat test to give a little bit of context to this test this is a 2x4 piece of MDF and it has two sections of tile gasket up on top tile gasket is made by another company called Allstar CNC so regardless if you're using an airweight system or if you have a different vacuum table system tile gasket really changes how the air moves through your MDF really making it so that it's concentrating all of its holding power to specific parts of your piece this is one of the things that really helps make it so that you can use MDF and you can profile through your piece I recently was at the iwf conference here in Atlanta and I was talking with air weights as well as Allstar CNC so of course I told them that I was going to be trying to do a torture test video and he said that the best way to get the best results is to have a piece of material that has as little paracity as possible so instead of doing that and making it as perfect as possible we're going to go for the real world scenario not very many people are out there purchasing prefinished material so we're just going to be putting a piece of Walnut down and I do want to say that this piece of Walnut is not going to be covering the entirety of the top by any means I went ahead and put in a sheetrock screw and this tiny little band clamp and then got this shackle scale and attached it to the CNC machine now I will definitely say do not use your CNC machine for this there is a world of problems that could arise by attaching things and pulling and pushing all that being said that's exactly what we're about to do so I attached the scale to the very top and I started pulling things because in the last video that I had I had a lot of pulling motion that was vertical but not lateral so first I wanted to start off with just the very center of the machine and pulling it laterally and I noticed very quickly that I did not have strong enough material I was using an old shoelace because it's the only thing that I could find around the shop and it immediately snapped so then I got these very heavy duty zip ties I tied that to the spindle as well as to these crane scale and then I started moving things along I did have the different versions in this in kilograms and in pounds back and forth so it did get a little bit of confusing but I kept noticing that my zip ties were breaking around 100 lb which honestly was really infuriating so in order to have a final call on what it actually meant for this I grabbed some old electrical wire I stripped out some of the copper and then I tied that to the spindle and then to the crane scale and as you can see right here it just kind of stopped and the reason that it stopped is because wifinity has safety measures built in for their Motors sensing that something was happening that should not and it shut down so what does that actually mean for us as hobbyist does this thing actually hold I don't think the number matters as much as the fact that the machine shut down before this moved that being said is only really engaging 50% of the vacuum surface area that we have and it was still holding incredibly well over 110 lbs pulling force on it now I do want to mention that there are a lot of things in here that I'm breezing over these come in 2x4 sections as well as 2x2 sections the 2x2 kit comes with a smaller pump because it is a smaller unit and then the 2x4 kit comes with a bigger pump because it is a bigger unit I personally think that I was going to be covering the entire 4x4 bed of my 1 infinity machine with these I would buy four 2x two sections before I would buy two 2x4 sections hopefully y are keeping up I know I'm throwing out a lot of numbers but the reason with that is I would love to be able to zone out the CNC machine just like on the larger industrial machines so that you're really pinpointing where all the suction is going to be going now obviously with that you might have to have more pumps but with that you would have more control over where the vacuum is actually happening on your CNC bed rather than just hoping that the entirety of the bed is being covered if you're not really using the entirety of your bed I did find that in the past just a 2x2 section was not really long enough for the type of work that I do in the shop which is why the 2x4 I thought was going to be the Saving Grace because of the length of it but after having it I kind of wish that I would have gone for two 2x two sections with the same pump that comes with the 2x4 section next up is what I'm calling the shrinking Island this is a very simple premise we're putting a piece of material down the exact size of the work area and then we're starting profiling from the very outside and going in until the part fails I recently made this Santa Claus here on the channel using this insulation board foam and I have absolutely loved this material I did use this recently for my wife's 30th birthday I cut out 30 different foam candles using these air weights and this was just a project that I was doing off to the side and I could not believe how efficient I was in the shop with just using these air weights I think that it was kind of like purpose-built for things like foam and repetitive actions really making sure that your machine set up and you're just pressing go over and over and over again and through all that I realized that using foam for this shrinking Island test was going to show a whole lot more than using plywood or MDF really just because of how light the material is so I went ahead and set things up by putting a 2x4 piece of this foam it is 1 in thick and I was using the brand new o Loop bit by Cadence manufacturing I have it linked down below and I did notice that the cut length of this bit was actually shorter than the thickness of the material which does affect things and I'll show that off in a little while but the test went incredibly well I kept on just standing by the machine watching things as it was going expecting it to shift around and I was absolutely amazed that this is what we ended up with this very very small piece you can see right here how incredibly impressive that is how small this piece is and the entirety of this vacuum table had vacuum on it and this part still was was sticking to the very middle now obviously I would not rely on Parts this small being worked on with your CNC machine without masking the other area so that it had full suction on it and as you can see only half of it was really suctioned down towards the end this end was really floppy and I think that's because this material was not completely flat when we started but that's something also to really talk about normally your material is not going to be completely flat you're not going to have the perfect material every single time but even though this one did have a slight Bend into it I turned on the machine i' pressed down in different areas and it all suctioned down giving me a really good clamp and honestly this result is way better than I could have hoped for so if you're like me and you abuse your o Loop bits and melt a ton of foam onto it leaving this monstrosity it's a very simple fix don't worry just put in a little bit of lacquer thinner into some type of a container and then drop your bit in it's going to take a little bit maybe like 10 minutes but it will all dissolve away and you wipe that off and your bit is going to look brand new ready to use again just a quick tip for any of y'all who make mistakes I I never make mistakes but I know some of youall out there might so all this has been pretty good news until this now this piece that I've been showing off is not the exact piece of MDF that I've been using in the test the piece of MDF that I've been using in the test is the piece of MDF that was shipped to me from Airways but I really wanted to be able to show off for y'all that don't want to buy a piece of MDF you might have some in your shop and what that process looks like for you to be able to set something up and use with your air air weights I was incredibly disappointed honestly to find out that my piece of/ in MDF I took it over to the machine I took off the entirety of the top and I was not running dust collection with this because I was trying to do another torture test and honestly it got really confusing and I couldn't have any like Real Results to it so I really just made my shot messy for no reason but I went ahead and skimmed off the top and then I flipped it over and I skimmed off the other side as well and I thought that that's what I needed to do I got it down to about3 3 in in thickness and then I went ahead and put on my tile gasket I'm very thankful for Allstar CNC for sending over a few of these because I told them about the torture test and the fact that I was going to be ruining some of these and I ruin these without even touching them with a bit from what I've seen when I use the stuff that he sent over it works perfectly and I really want to be able to replicate that here in the shop using stuff that I already have without feeling like every time I gouge this which I'm totally going to that I have to order a new sheet from Air weights so in the future as I'm using these more and more because I've been getting such good results I definitely will update y'all and show y'all what I've done as a workaround option for my shop in particular if you're getting any type of value out of this video or enjoyment whatsoever please take a moment to like it it really does help YouTube figure out how to get the video to the right people and if you're not subscribed consider it torture test number three this is going to be profile pandemonium or whatever I call it at the very start of this video we're cutting out 91 of these bottle opener pucks this is by far my bestselling file on Etsy and a lot of people have made these over the years because they sell really well and they also make for really really great gifts one of the things about them though is they're very very tiny you only really need to use one bit for the entirety of this and this is the file that is going to be available for all of you CNC with me members in its entirety not only in carveco and vectric files but also in SVG and dxf it's going to be set up so you can cut out six of these at a time using scrapwood is an incredibly easy file and definitely the one to go for if you're just a brand new beginner looking to cut something out on your CNC machine these bottle opener files are the way to go I wanted to cut out a ton of them using the entirety of this piece and I did have some brand new material in the shop that I've been working with a lot lately that I absolutely love it is called bamcore and it's from cic workshop I'll have it linked down below and the really cool part about it is it is pure bamboo so I went ahead and took a 2x3 sheet and then a 1 by two sheet and put them all over the top so that I can make the entire field to cut out all of our pieces now normally I absolutely just love making sure that the profile cut goes all the way through I do not like onion skinning that's not something that I'm a big fan of I think that creates more work and if you're going to be buying a system like this you really want to make sure that it's creating less work for you right not just different work for you so I wanted to show that you could profile cut all the way through with these every single one 91 in total it of course did incredibly well for all the magnet hole positions as well as the bottle opener insert positions and the void where the bottle opener actually has to be able to inset so that it can work but then we got to the profile cuts and honestly I was really nervous because it was the first one of 91 now when the program was finished I was very interested to see what the actual results were because I did see three of them actually shift all right vacuum off how cool is that now I did have some failures up here this one does not have any Edge damage this one definitely does and then this one does not have any Edge damage which means that we just cut out 90 of the 91 no clamps no CA glue no double-sided tape vacuum tape crazy now of course it was not all sunshine and rainbows like I thought it was a lot of these did profile and really did stay put and I was very pleased with that but I didn't realize that some of the parts did not cut all the way through I went ahead and went back and pulled out all the pieces that I could and some of them had a little bit of onion skinning but I would say that probably half of them were fully profiled through and out of that half that were fully profiled through only three of them really were knocked loose causing one to absolutely fail because we had a lot of marks on the sides I'm very aware that there are real people out there spending their real money on these things so would I actually buy this with my own money the answer is yes I would not buy a single 2 by two because I don't find that useful for the work that I do but it could be very useful for y'all I would buy two 2x two sets with the 9 CFN motor speaking of which it runs on 110 it's incredibly quiet and it does get very hot during operation also another thing that you probably haven't thought about if you are very high in the mountains your air is going to react differently your vacuum capability is going to react differently uh so depending on where you are you might get different results if you're exp to be able to put down any old type of material on these and for them to work out it's probably just not the case the perfect material for an airweigh setup is going to be a very nonporous slick smooth material so your acrylics are going to fit on this absolutely fantastic if you do acrylic and you looking for a solution for work holding so you're not using any type of double-sided tape or clamps and you want full access to the top of your material look no further because this is the way to go we still got very good results no I don't think that I would depend on this system to be able to cut 91 of these out reliably every single day I think that there's probably a few tweaks that could be made but the nice part about this system is if you were doing this you would be able to cut out an entire section of material so that you could just vacuum hold individual portions which they have entire tutorials on how to do I really want to be able to show real world scenarios and people who are going to be using these in different ways I would love to say that I cut out the exact same thing in the shop every single day and and I just have a rhythm and it all works out but the truth is that's not what I do I create different projects every single week to be able to show off to you all which means that I'm not setting up jigs that are going to create the perfect scenario for things to work I really want to be able to have a catch-all system that is going to work incredibly well I tried my best to set up all these torture tests and scenarios that I thought that were really important if you have any other scenarios that you wouldd like to see in the future let me know down in the comments down below if you feel like I was fair or unfair if you feel like this system is useful and how you might use the system yourself if you're interested in purchasing air weights use code Hamilton you'll not only get a little bit off but it will give the channel a little bit of a kickback which is always hugely appreciated these files are available right now and I will have a tool path tutorial showing you all some of the things that I've learned along the way about how I was originally tool pathing them but how I've changed things up to make the assembly process a little bit easier I'm currently in talks with a few people about having some live tool pathing tutorials set up so that y'all can join live and ask questions about a few different softwares so hopefully that is going to happen soon keep your eyes peeled if you're not already a cnnc withme member go ahead and check out CNC withme.com where we have a ton of different projects we have tool path tutorials there's a thriving Community tons of challenges lots of really cool stuff going over there I can't even remotely cover it all but check it out on CNC withme.com thank you so much for stopping by and I will be seeing youall next Friday bye [Music] [Music]