Good morning, fellas. I did some searching on the forum and elsewhere on the web, but I didn’t find anything more specific to a bigger machine like I have. I have a 2-year old ShopSabre Pro 408 with a phenolic T-Slot table. We are a custom stair component and molding shop that does a fair amount of custom Hardwood Flooring moldings, flush mount vents, stair nosing, and tread & riser parts. Most of our material is sourced from the engineered flooring itself which ranges from 5” wide to 8” wide. We have been making fixtures to hold our material down on the CNC table. This has worked well, but we are expanding our capabilities that won’t allow mechanical fixturing. We found a regenerative vacuum pump (25hp 3-phase unit from FPZ) and now need to construct a vacuum table and plumb it. I think it would be wise to use the permeability of MDF to pull vacuum through the spoil board, but I’m not sure which way would be better to utilize the pump; build a hollow vacuum “box” or use a flat sheet of MDF with a grid pattern milled into it and connecting the vacuum hose from the top of the sheet. These two methods seem to be the most common for smaller bench top machines, but I’m wondering what would be better for our bigger Pro machine. I have a custom stair tread order that calls for an overall dimension of 72” long and 36” wide that has a large curve on the front and back spanning about 54” made of multiple parts.

For what it’s worth, our machine is equipped with the HSD spindle, 4th Axis, Automatic Tool Changer (5pos), Cordless Remote Control, and mister/blower for cutting plastics and metals.

I’m a bit new to the CNC world, and I don’t know what I don’t know. Hopefully I’m not overlooking something or coming across as a complete dope.

Thanks for reading.

-Tim