I had a 5'x10' down draft table which was my first plasma table. It was used and worked ok, but you needed the entire deck covered or the fan doesn't do jack. When we were cutting smaller sheets we would cover the rest of the deck with carboard. We traded it off on a larger 6'x12' water table and it is leaps and bounds cleaner, quicker, and easier. From a software point of view it is the same, and we kept the Hypertherm 85 from the other table. But cutting same parts is less mess and prep. Have you seen the Arc Droid machines? If I was going to get a table for my personal shop I might look there. They look pretty handy and they use your regular hand plaz. Now if you are cutting a bunch of parts for other people you shop would be a disaster, but if you are doing some fab for yourself and need a custom bracket or dash part they would be slick.