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I'm disappointed that I can't find anything online describing his actual invention, I'm curious to see what it is.

The system I'm familiar with is SawStop (http://www.sawstop.com/), mentioned here previously. (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1202766). But, I don't think that he's associated with them.

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It's patent #7228773 (Radial arm saw safety top) and/or #7171880 (Dust collection for panel saw).

http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=f_WcAAAAEBAJ

http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=39J-AAAAEBAJ

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7228773.html

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7171880.html

Also this, which does not seem to have been granted:

http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=fdWYAAAAEBAJ

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/y2006/0225550.html

In all of SawStop's demonstration videos they use a hotdog to simulate a human finger. But surely at one point the inventors had to really see if their invention worked on a finger... I can only imagine.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMD3agP5hv0

The guy does it in this video, pretty sure it was in a comment on HN a while back.

I suspect that a lot of saw operators wear gloves. I wonder how well it works for the gloved hand. Also guy on video wet his hand before the test, kind of cheating a bit.

Now that's what I call eating your own dogfood.

Impressive.

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