January 25, 2012
Studying the feasibility of setting up an automatic vacuum system for the router that will automatically change the pump speed based on the pressure in the vacuum table, and in this case I mean a negative pressure, at least as compared to the standard atmospheric pressure. In my current pumping system, the pressure is going down to about 85,000 pascals (100,000 pascals is about the atmospheric pressure at sea level) and 85kPa seems to be pretty adequate for most cutting. The whole reason for this is because the new pump is VERY overpowered for this purpose, so it makes sense to throttle it down to the appropriate power level. The best part though, will be that as the sheet gets cut up and starts to leak, the pump will be able to automatically increase speed to make up for the loss, and at some point, it will be possible to trigger an alarm if the pump doesn’t seem to be keeping up, so we’ll know to use mechanical hold-downs BEFORE the sheet gets torn off the machine. 

Studying the feasibility of setting up an automatic vacuum system for the router that will automatically change the pump speed based on the pressure in the vacuum table, and in this case I mean a negative pressure, at least as compared to the standard atmospheric pressure. In my current pumping system, the pressure is going down to about 85,000 pascals (100,000 pascals is about the atmospheric pressure at sea level) and 85kPa seems to be pretty adequate for most cutting. The whole reason for this is because the new pump is VERY overpowered for this purpose, so it makes sense to throttle it down to the appropriate power level. The best part though, will be that as the sheet gets cut up and starts to leak, the pump will be able to automatically increase speed to make up for the loss, and at some point, it will be possible to trigger an alarm if the pump doesn’t seem to be keeping up, so we’ll know to use mechanical hold-downs BEFORE the sheet gets torn off the machine.