Tile Gasket™

The Foundation of Vacuum Performance

Tile Gasket™ is one of All Star’s flagship vacuum hold-down solutions and the fastest-growing Tile Gasket™ is one of All Star’s leading vacuum hold-down products, a patent-pending solution, and one of our fastest-growing product groups. It was developed to help shops improve the vacuum effectiveness and efficiency they get from MDF spoilboards on their CNC routers. All Star’s Tile Gasket™ is a 24″ x 24″ peel-and-stick tile with 1/4″ perforated holes spaced evenly across the surface. When a shop applies a set of Tile Gasket™ tiles over a porous MDF spoilboard, the table begins to work differently: less uncontrolled air loss through the spoilboard surface and more controlled vacuum draw through the perforated pockets.

MDF leaks. That is the reason a CNC router’s vacuum system can pull through it, but it is also the reason vacuum performance can be lost. Many shops paint or seal the edges of their spoilboards to reduce side leakage, and that can help. But on a 5′ x 10′ spoilboard, the edge represents less than 1% of the total surface area. The top surface represents the other 99%+. By covering the spoilboard with Tile Gasket™ tiles, shops can effectively seal a large percentage of that top surface instead of only addressing the outside edge. The result is a more controlled vacuum surface that allows the system to work more efficiently.

The remaining 1/4″ holes in Tile Gasket™ become the vacuum pockets. These pockets allow air to be drawn from small, controlled points across the spoilboard, creating the negative pressure needed to help hold the workpiece in place. Instead of the vacuum pump pulling through every open pore in the MDF, the system can pull through a planned pattern of openings. That is the real advantage: Tile Gasket™ helps reduce wasteful leakage while still allowing the table to create hold-down across the work area.

Operators do need to manage Z-depth carefully so they do not cut too deeply into the Tile Gasket™ surface too quickly. In many shops, the normal process is to “spoil a board” over time as random parts are cut. With Tile Gasket™ in place, the sacrificial layer becomes the applied set of tiles instead of the MDF spoilboard itself. When the tiles eventually become too cut up, they can be flycut off and replaced.

The life of a set of Tile Gasket™ tiles will vary from shop to shop based on material, cutting style, Z-depth control, volume, and how aggressively the table is used. However, many All Star customers reorder sets every 3 to 6 months and report that during that time they lose fewer parts, reduce or eliminate extra onion-skin passes, minimize waste from shifted parts, and avoid repeatedly flycutting their spoilboards. For shops looking for a clean, practical, operator-friendly way to improve vacuum performance, Tile Gasket™ can be a major step toward better hold-down, cleaner cuts, and more predictable production.