Cynical take is that the SawStop feature adds enough cost to budget table saws that they will no longer be economically viable and you can only purchase mid-high end tables saws going forward.
Also, you can get a push stick for pennies. There's never an actual reason you need to put your fingers anywhere close to a moving blade.
It is pretty uncommon and rather difficult to cause yourself a digit injury that cannot be recovered from with a kitchen knife. Bad technique is most likely to lop off the end of the fingertip which can fully regrow so long as the cut isn’t very deep.
Mandolines and meat slicers (guards are bypassed when cleaning which happens every 4hr, they also tend to be used by 16 year olds) are much much more dangerous but they tend to be dialed in quite shallowly which limits the damage.
Table saws are THE most dangerous thing for your fingers because of where people tend to put their hands when using the tool and how they can go right through your digits and how they’re dialled in to make thick cuts. The logic that well if we accept kitchen knives we shouldn’t have safety regulations on table saws doesn’t make sense because table saws are far more dangerous and unlike with kitchen knives it’s actually possible to enforce the default use of an effective safety mechanism which ensures a cut will usually be shallow enough to be recovered from. Of course some people will disable the brake excessively but the average person will likely keep it on most of the time.
You can argue we shouldn’t have this safety regulation because it will add costs to consumers, and point out that other safety approaches already exist, the safety paradox, but the comparison to kitchen knives doesn’t really make all that much sense. I’d argue adding saw brakes as a standard feature makes a ton of sense due to the high social cost of digit amputation and the inconvenient and frequently ignored use of other safety approaches.
But that's how it is: people do cut their fingers off on table saws. They all know what you said. And yet 30 K accidents per year in the US alone. It is a serious problem.
I never bought one because it's just too big of a risk.
It's no different to Apple insisting that only they should repair Apple products, and hobbyists should be trusted.
I think table saw brakes are awesome and absolutely have a benefit for things like high school shop classes, but a properly functioning blade guard also does the job most times.
"You can operate the saw in Bypass Mode which deactivates the safety system’s braking feature, allowing you to cut aluminum, very wet/green wood (see above) and other known conductive materials. If you are unsure whether the material you need to cut is conductive, you can make test cuts using Bypass Mode to determine if it will activate the safety system’s brake."
https://www.sawstop.com/why-sawstop/faqs/
The first thing people will do is turn on the bypass and never turn it off.
I'd have a hard time leaving it off if I had a gristly accident. That might just be me though.
I have a feeling that you have never used a sawstop. You can not "turn on the bypass and never turn it off." As soon as you hit the stop paddle the bypass mode is disabled. You must reenable the bypass mode every time you want to pull the paddle. If someone is dead set on getting stuff done the bypass procedure gets old quickly.
Have you ever used a sawstop? How did you turn on bypass mode forever?
If people are already bypassing the safety features then "add more safety features" is a dubious move. Gotta go fast, can't afford if the saw has a false positive, switch it all off. Changing behavior is likely going to be a lot harder.
Seems like you have to do it for every time you switch it on, but on the jobsite saw it's not a key, just an extra button, so we'll see if people get in the habit of just always turning it off in case they have wet wood or other material.
First digit amputation (100% recoverable) I caused myself happened after spending most of my life using a knife because I just got complacent and was cooking when I knew I was extremely fatigued. Wood is also a natural product where natural variance can cause a table saw to operate in unexpected ways that catch people off guard.
Expect better than SawStop to appear when able, and this issue to go away.
However, the blade-preserving system puts the explosive between the table and the pivot that's already there for retracting the blade. The full explosion force is there to force the blade down and it ends up being faster than the SawStop. Which while cool the SawStop was already fast enough so it's all the same.
So I don't know, I guess to me I'm surprised that the solution we jumped to first was a brake when the action of moving it out of the way takes far far less energy. It's only the energy to move the weight of the blade and bar down at the requisite speed, instead of needing to absorb the full energy of the spinning blade.
Do you mean in a system with both moving it away and a break?
The only time my fingers hit the blade of a table saw they were moving with a fair amount of momentum and hit first low on the blade - dropping the blade at the speed of gravity wouldn't have been enough.
I haven't seen an explosive system like you mention - is that what Bosch had for a bit? - so I don't know just how fast that is, though dropping a spinning-towards-you blade also seems to have some other potential risks of grabbing shit with it, too. If it's fast enough I wouldn't be concerned as much, but at relatively slow speed it seems maybe nasty.
Just putting out there: the popular idea that blades are always trash after an activation is not true.
That said, cheap big box store blades without carbide teeth will die a horrible death.
The missing teeth need to be replaced and the plate needs to be re-checked for runout, but most carbide-toothed blades are repairable.
Ruminating a bit:
Cheaper blades are replaced more often with use and can’t generally be sharpened; SawStop tech doesn’t change the lifetime of a blade unless an activation happens. So, if you’re already willing to run to the box store for another blade semi-regularly, whether one survives activation perhaps isn’t material?
On the other hand, somebody who doesn’t regularly use their saw is probably both more price conscious and less likely to need sharpening/replacement often. I assume they care most about whether an activation forces them to buy a new blade (and a $100 brake). I suspect those are the people who propagate “SawStop = trashed blade”. For them, it’s true.