I have a swing away, and as Twinge says, clamping it down would be a good idea. I have not done that yet but should. I have used it on plastic tables (a little slippery though without clamping it down), and on a wood table. I don't think it matters that much. For me the size of the surface is very important. The plastic table I use tends to be a little small when handling men's t shirts. Especially from large and above. For small shirts, it is easy to see the entire shirt and manipulate the shirt to centre the image properly but for the large ones it is hard. I am still working out how to best centre the images on the shirt. I usually have text only and that makes it tough to be centred well and doing it fairly fast when producing numerous shirts.