Wasteboard / Vacuum table

Hi Guys,

I’m currently mainly working with sheet material at the moment. This gives me an issue with 6mm ply mainly with the middle of the material bowing up, when the machine comes along and cut the shape its not flat on the waste board and the machine ends up cutting the tabs out leading to all sort of problem.

I’ve been looking at making some improvements from the standard MDF waste board and adding a aluminium base with T slots and strips of MDF to make a board similar to Philjohnson Phil's New Waste Board - #31 by NathanButler

However this won’t solve my problem with material lifting on sheets. This lead me to thinking about making a vacuum table as my waste board. What i can’t get my head round with a vacuum table, do you need to block off the holes which your material doesn’t cover? I guess this could be done with either scrap material of masking tape. Can please make a recommendation?

Thank you.

Given that the sheets you are cutting are probably going to be square, you can probably get away with a few pieces of scrap in rectangles of various widths you can just lay down on the non used parts of the vacuum table.

I have been using double sided carpet tape. It holds well and still releases with some steady pull.