So you are definitely onto something. I built a vacuum table a while back that is for sanding, keeps the dust down. I used pillars like that to keep it from collapsing (it’s powered by my vacuum cleaner, which has a much higher static pressure than this project).
I posted about it here, let’s see… aha here we go:
The mesh barely deflects at my current vacuum amount, I’m not worrying about it anymore. If I upgrade the fans to something with a much higher static pressure I will think about making a metal support grid along the lines of what @rbtdanforth suggested.