Mass Production: Vacuum Clamping and Pattern Cutting on the Tablesaw 

Thanks. Very potent jiggery pokery. Love it. Thanks for the video. Cheers, David.

Awesome "Yig," as the famous late Sweden woodworker named Tage ("Tay") Frid, would say. Thanks for showing us Steve how to do it. We appreciate what you teach always, kind Sir.

Great to see more uses for vacuum pump as more of us wood workers are using them in our workshops whether for vacuum clamping bags or work holding they seem to be a good addition to have. Thanks Steve

Great jig! Thank you for the inspiration. I love all the Aigner stuff! Especially the Integral fence. Can‘t live without it anymore. The sawboy was never on my wishlist. Until today. 😂 Greetings from Germany.

Another Fantastic Video Steve.. The Aigner accessory is pretty awesome!

Hi Steve. Thank you for sharing this video; very neat. An alternative to MDF that I use frequently to similar operations is high pressure laminate (HPL). Obviously it is not as readily available as MDF, but if you can get it, I recommend that you try it out. I get mine in the form of leftovers from a local furniture factory. They use it for making table tops. HPL is none porous, so leaking is not an issue, but you still need to be a bit careful when treading. The use of CA glue here is a brilliant idea. I use vacuum clamp made of HPL on a saw sled for resawing guitar backs and sides on the band saw. It works like a charm. Sometimes there are tiny cracks in the wood, especially rosewood, but a small strip of masking tape over the crack is all that's needed to prevent vacuum leaks. I use 4mm nitrile string as gasket, which make it easy to vary the size and shape of the vacuum zone according to the size of the work piece. You can check it out here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-pRAJRUNzDYM.html and here ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-ZyXvvORhTkE.html. By the way, Tage Frid was born in Denmark, not in Sweden. But it true that he was one helluva woodworker... ;-)

Awesome 👏

Thanks for your video, I was just thinking a week ago if I could make a vacuum hold down. Festools is very expensive, so I bought the small square blocks Rockler sells and are very similar to what you made. I think I’ll give it a try.

Never knew tapping MDF could actually work, will have to try that CA trick sometime. Nice jig, seems like you could make it work on a router table too. For even larger scale production, a laser cutter or CNC might be more time effective?

Might try aligning MDA/jig to pattern fence and just let it stick. Let the slider do its thing

Always amazed at the machinery & methods used. Any chance of a video where you share your background in woodworking? Or aero space engineering? Thanks

What am I missing? How does your jig and vacuum pump "suck through" six layers of MDF? Is the MDF that porous (and through the top and bottom surfaces, no less)? At 1:55, you doubt porosity on the "end grain" will be an issue, but I would think the "end grain" would be far more porous than the top/bottom. Thanks!

What pump are you using?