Homemade Black Box type Vac system

After spending months reading through hundreds of threads, I am going down the "rabbit hole." I am using many of the design attributes from the thread started on this forum years ago. I have worked with melamine for years...I hate the stuff. My choice of material is 3/4" PVC. My thoughts on this are: easy to machine, not porous, easy to seal the joints, sound dampening, heavy to help reduce noise and vibration.

The vacuum table size I will be creating will be 48"x42". This works well for my material requirements. The plenum will be made from 1"PVC with a 1" Baltic birch substrate on the bottom to avoid an flexion. The piping will all be done with 2" PVC pipe and a 3" manifold from the vacuum box. For the motors I have decided to go with 2 Ametek Lamb 122178-18 motors for their specs in comparison with others that have been used.

I am sure there are reasons why no one has ever posted pictures of the inside of the new vacuum box model made of steel, although they would be interesting to see.

I have no interest in mass producing this thing if all goes well. There are commercial options out there already. Being in Canada, I can't justify paying what those options would cost here. It is about double what these products are available in the US for.

If anyone would like to offer an suggestions, experiences, photos, ideas. All would be greatly appreciated and welcome to join me on this journey.

Go to central vac and look at the shopbot page. I prefer one motor per section over the oem version of several motors per chamber. I'm sure others disagree. I have built about 10 of them. I did other options on material for vac grid and went back to mdf. Cheap, and it works good when sealed all around and supported. I glue the spoilboard and that is an issue with plastic grids.

One motor per chamber, what a great idea, I guess you don't need valves then. Just pipe the PVC to the motor and have a switch for each chamber. Brilliant. I like that idea.

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Originally Posted by KurtR

One motor per chamber, what a great idea, I guess you don't need valves then. Just pipe the PVC to the motor and have a switch for each chamber. Brilliant. I like that idea.

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I like the idea of valves and 4 motors for 1 chamber with switches to run 1 2 3 or all 4 motors sometime I need more suction for 1 or 2 zones.

I believe this is the page Ken is talking about.
https://www.centralvacuummotor.com/shopbot.htm
Attachment 34504
Attachment 34505

I will post progress photos as I go.

The parts are starting to arrive.Attachment 34534Attachment 34533Attachment 34532

I use Fien vacs nice and quite and plenty of suction

Two motors with mufflers are less than the price of one Fein. I have had both. Mufflers are great.

http://www.talkshopbot.com/forum/att...id=34535&stc=1

Thanks for the pic. Is that laminate covered plywood? The white tube end I see below the venting, is that an extension on the muffler?

Yes. I finished that one up today and am getting it under it's intended machine. Vents to help the motors cool, but not open to where someone can touch the wires. Opposing motors to give room for the mufflers each way and keep the box small. The plywood has an abs on one side. It came from a friend of mine that makes cases for music and oilfield equipment.

http://www.talkshopbot.com/forum/att...id=34536&stc=1

http://www.talkshopbot.com/forum/att...id=34537&stc=1

http://www.talkshopbot.com/forum/att...id=34538&stc=1

Thanks again for the photos, that helps with understanding.

Looks great. Do you know how much vacuum it pulls? How large of a table are you using?

I have never measured how much vac it pulls. Two of them have worked cabinet building on a 4x8 machine for years. If you cut very small parts, you may need to go with 4 motors, or apply both of these to a 4x4 section and do it that way.

Okay, I should be fine. I only have a 4x4 table.

Thanks Ken for sharing the pictures of your vacuum box. Chuck

The motors have arrived.
Attachment 34580Attachment 34580

Quote:

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Originally Posted by jerry_stanek

I like the idea of valves and 4 motors for 1 chamber with switches to run 1 2 3 or all 4 motors sometime I need more suction for 1 or 2 zones.

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This won't work. I have two motors in one chamber on my old system. The vacuum created by the running motors will cause the un-powered motors to spin backwards, allowing air in that way as a result. One motor per chamber is the way to go, IMHO.

Okay, thanks for the input I will make sure I do that.

I've got two chambers and 4 motors. Has been working for many years (at least 9-10 years). Original design from Gary Campbell. Holds anything I want to cut. My issue is I live at 2500' altitude and the vacuum I pull is not comparable to folks at a lower altitude. But I've not had anything slip because of lack of vacuum. When cutting smaller parts, I switch on the last two motors. Each motor has it's own switch to turn it on and off.