Hello all,
At the moment my router is still in the planning stage and will of the moving gantry style, I would appreciate some feedback on my plan to use a vacuum table and any cheap alternatives for a vacuum pump.

Most of the work to be done on the router will be various shapes to be completely cut out of mdf sheet ranging from 3mm to 12 mm using as small as possible dia cutters.

The only way I can think to do it is to have a vacuum table with sacrificial top boards made of mdf these would be dedicated top boards to cut out particular shapes.

Eg, I need to cut out 50 small cats out of a sheet I would place the sacrificial sheet which has the 50 cats already outlined on it.

What do you think about that?

Where can I obtain a vacuum pump for this duty? I believe a normal vacuum cleaner will only pull about -10 kpa vacuum or approx -1.3 psi, possibly not enough as some of the parts will not have a big surface area.

Has anyone "made" a vacuum pump out of any sort of pump or compressor?

Thanks very much. Michael