Official Luthiers Forum!

Well as you know I have not invested in a vacuum system yet, but plan to.

Anyway I was at a friend of mines cabinet shop the other night and he had these V-clamp all over his shop
The work using your compressed air through a venture port on the clamp and a rubber gasket. My friend loves them. He gave me on to play with. I got back to my shop hooked it up and tried it out as a holder while routing channels for binding with my luthierstool.com binding jig. Man this is perfect. I tried it for several tasks. It worked like a charm, so I ordered 2 clamps and2 on-off valves You can get the clamps single sided or double sides and tall gaskets for radius parts, but the standard gasket works fine with 15' radius backs. They hold good and tight in any position horz, vert, or upside down. The need 80psi-100psi air supply at 2cfm to work continiously

How loud are they?

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Steve Walden
Aspiring Builder,
Bartlesville, OK

Not that bad. The venture does make a liight whistle but it is not irritating or really load much less db than the router

To classify the produce a fairly light whistle not loud at all. Louder when not sealed than they are under loading. Running a ROS or laminate trimmer you would never here it at all, least till you turned the trimmer or sander off.

Very cool.

I found a link to the site: http://www.vac-clamp.com/

It looks like an extra $12 for the double sided kit. Am I correct in
thinking you wouldn't need to mount the double sided in order to use it?

Those suck-vacs are the way to go unless you need to hold down over large areas...then there is nothing that competes with horsepower. But for jigs with minimal vacuum leakage, suck-vacs kick butt!

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http://www.PeakeGuitars.com

just checked out the website...i guess the venturi is located right in the jig?

If you want to generate vacuum using compressed air, just do a search for "vacuum generator". You should be able to find some similar venturi systems which you could route to your own jig.

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http://www.PeakeGuitars.com

yep

With out a doubt you can find tons of venture vacuum generators. We have them here the plant that lift 3000 lbs sheets of plate using 3-6" diaphrams. Most systems have the switch and venture in on single unit that can be plumbed to one or several fixtures. But not one that I could find was less for the the venture valve than this hole system is with two fixtures and a on off switch valve.

That said I am still searching. Since I have plenty of air volume available I may think about working a bridge clamping system using a venture supplied vacuum system. However the prices I find it is about a wash out compaired to a dedicated vacuum pump.

I just liked these for the ease of being able to use any where ever I have air supply and that would be in all 4 rooms of my shop and at a pretty reasonable price.

I recently built the venturi vaccum generator from "Joe Woodworker.com" and have been using it to clamp bridges. It works flawlessly and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it if your looking for such a thing and have a compressor that is up to the task.

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Tickle your guitar daily, and it'll tickle you back.

I have a small vac pump and a venturi. I find the venturi pulls a better vacuum, much higher CFM at full vac, but it uses a lot of air and is noisier so I use the electric pump when I can get away with it.

If you don't have a pretty hefty compressor sitting around and don't need enough suck to stop a guitar neck from flying off your CNC, then the electric pumps are a great deal.

I do find it funny how expensive the venturis are considering how little stuff there is inside there, though...

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Bob Garrish
Former Canonized Purveyor of Fine CNC Luthier Services

Would these clamps work with a vac pump instead of using the venturi type? My vacuum pumps make far less noise than my compressor does.

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Dave Rector
Rector Guitars

Looks like those guys only make clamps with built-in Venturis. There are a bunch of companies making vacuum clamps for general use (Google). If you want to roll your own (ie: drill a hole, apply weatherstripping, profit!) then check out http://www.joewoodworker.com/veneering/vacuumclamping.htm

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Bob Garrish
Former Canonized Purveyor of Fine CNC Luthier Services

You would have to chisel out the built in venture as it is built into the fixture not using an external generator

I made my vacuum pump from an old fridge/freezer compressor. I just kept a eye open at the local landfill for something(we don't have garbage collection out here at the lake, so we need to make weekly trips "to the dump") and one day, there were a small handful of discarded pumps. I presume the refrigeration place cleaned out their shed or something; at any rate, I grabbed a few, and one still worked perfectly fine.

Whisper-quiet, and pulls great vacuum. Zero dollar investment....



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