By Team FORG3D
"They suck" is a compliment in this context.
The Grabo Pro-Lifter and DeWalt Grabo are among the most capable portable vacuum sources on the market — battery-powered, high-pull, and ready to go wherever the job is. They suck in the best possible way. The engineering challenge was never getting them to generate vacuum. The challenge was building a baseplate that could survive what happens when that vacuum has to go somewhere else.
The substrate problem
First-generation Nexus prototypes were built on standard composite panel stock. Lightweight, machinable, cost-effective — the obvious choice.
They deformed.
When a Grabo unit pulls vacuum against a sealed interface, the pressure differential creates significant bending force across the baseplate. Standard composite materials aren't built to resist that kind of sustained load at the scale of a palm-sized interface. The panel flexed, the seal degraded, and the vacuum went where you didn't want it.
The solution was ACM — aluminum composite material — combined with an internal stiffener. ACM resists the bending forces while keeping total assembly weight practical. The stiffener translates distributed bending load into compression the structure is designed to handle. Once those two decisions were locked, the deformation problem was gone.
That's the part no one sees: you don't know where a new form factor flexes until you put it under real vacuum load.
Three bodies, no universal adapter
The Grabo Pro-Lifter 20, DeWalt Grabo, and Grabo Brushless are three distinct products with three distinct footprints. The obvious engineering path was a universal baseplate — one plate with adjustable registration or set screws to accommodate whatever body you drop on it.
We didn't build that.
The reason is mode switching. Nexus has to let you move between using your Grabo as a panel lifter and using it as a workholding vacuum source — in seconds, without touching a fixture. A universal adapter means some adjustment mechanism whenever you change configurations. That mechanism is friction. It turns a mode change into a setup step, and a setup step is exactly what this product was designed to eliminate.
Purpose-built plates for each body remove that friction entirely. The footprint is fixed. The Grabo seats correctly every time. Mode switching requires no adjusters, no straps, no incumberances of any kind.
Two operating models
The distinct footprints led to a second engineering fork.
The Grabo Pro-Lifter 20 has an integrated port — a vacuum path built into the body that the SYS-GRP taps directly. Vacuum routes through the Grabo's own port into the SYS-GRP pod circuit. The Grabo handles generation; Nexus handles the seal.
The DeWalt Grabo and Grabo Brushless don't have that body port. For those units, the Nexus vacuum base uses a pass-through to the 1/4" push-to-connect fitting on the base of the unit. That connection lives inside the vacuum base housing — protected from impacts and jobsite mishaps that would otherwise expose a bare fitting to damage. Same vacuum distribution outcome, different interface path. Two operating models, because we followed the geometry of each tool rather than forcing a common interface that would have compromised both.
Anchored to the workspace
The vacuum interface solves one problem. Where Nexus lives when it's not in your hand solves another.
The Nexus base includes an integrated cleat that quick-anchors to the extrusion interface on an MFT, a Dashboard PWS, or through our SYS-PLT mounting system. Drop it in, lock it, pull vacuum. No separate bracket, no improvised solution.
For setups outside those ecosystems, every Nexus ships with a mounting adapter. Wall mount it in the shop. Cleat it to the bench. Put it wherever the workflow puts it. The adapter handles the hardware; you handle the work.
The goal throughout was the same one that drove the substrate decision and the three-body footprint decision: the tool should be ready when you are, not the other way around.
The Grabo Brushless
Customer demand made the Brushless addition relatively clean to scope. The footprint differs from both the Pro-Lifter 20 and DeWalt Grabo, so the plate required its own geometry. But the core Nexus architecture — ACM substrate, stiffener, port configuration, gasket system — carried over directly. Like the DeWalt, the Brushless doesn't expose an integrated port for the vacuum path, so it uses the same base-capture model.
We reused as many components as the geometry allowed, which kept manufacturing complexity down.
Cycling behavior runs similarly to the other Grabo units. The brushless motor is more efficient — better battery life, less heat — but the vacuum cycling pattern through a multi-pod setup is comparable. That's expected. Cycling is driven by sealing conditions, not motor type.
What the engineering adds up to
The Nexus baseplate has no electronics, no moving parts, no adjustment mechanisms.
Getting there required solving a substrate that doesn't flex under vacuum pressure, building purpose-specific mounts for three different Grabo bodies, and maintaining two operating models — one that routes through an integrated body port and one that captures through the base.
The payoff is that switching between lifting a panel and holding one for machining requires no reconfiguration whatsoever. The work changes. The setup doesn't.
That's the suck story.
Explore the SYS-GRP Nexus Baseplate.
SYS-GRP by FORG3D
Your Workflow. Without Limits.