Howdy!

I'm in the process of refurbishing a Precix router table that I acquired for nearly nothing. The electronics / controls were all beyond salvaging so I just gutted everything from the control box except the power supply and built it up with a BOB, a SmoothStepper, some Gecko servo controllers, etc. and am going to run it from Mach3. So far that's all progressing nicely.

What I'm a bit perplexed by is the table bed on this machine. It's an aluminum t-slot system, but there are three vacuum zones and the flat portions of the extrusions are perforated with small holes every 3-4" that are clearly for the vacuum to be pulled through.

I've never used a vacuum table with out a spoil board, but I'm not sure how well that will work in this case. For one thing, it feels like I won't get enough flow through the LDF if all the air has to go through that grid of tiny holes. For another, the underside of the spoil board would leak air like crazy because of the T-Slots.

So what's the protocol here? How is one intended to use a "hybrid" table like this?

Thanks!
-Ben