I have been looking at vacuum tables a lot this last week. Small parts are not ideal, less surface area means higher vacuum is needed, or slow cutting. But in the right production environment they can save a ton of time, especially when you factor in things like tab removal. Not so much for one offs.
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I would love to have one for all the plywood I cut. But I am too cheap to make it happen 
I now own a side channel blower and a Becker vacuum pump I got as additional payment for my LowRider, so I should really revisit this… 
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I run a vac table with a “3-hp" shopvac (4x8 table) im using it for v-routing acm only, for the cut passes it is off. It works amazingly well.
I was curious how the custom fixture plate is designed. I see how you have the pins and holes for exact positioning. I can’t quite figure out what the underneath side looks like. I’m guessing it’s just flat and sealed by the gasket in the main base plate?
Yeah its just flat and sealed by the gasket as you guessed. Ive been using my table quite a while now and I ended up just dropping pieces directly on the main plate. However I did crash a bit pretty hard recently which meant I had to reprint the whole thing, so a fixture plate might have saved me there.
I think having the gasket slightly smaller than the finished piece is a good idea. Ive run a few things like that and it seems to work well. Mostly I have just been leaving 0.5mm or so on the bottom and cutting that out with a knife or small bandsaw.
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The prints came out great and it glued up well with a small bit of sanding. It makes sense but it’s interesting how pine and plywood seals better than oak and MDF. Ultimately, I’m experimenting to figure out what features to add to a new table whenever I get around to building an LR4. If I did include such a thing, I would recess it so it’s flush with the table.
