Might be wrong, but my own amateur reasoning has me believe that a table saw has far more kinetic energy than a battery powered battle bot, and that the SawStop must likely move the saw in microseconds, vs a battle bot which may comparatively have all the time in the world.
The question is, how fast does it need to be? Likely not that fast really, certainly not microseconds, and an actuator could easily yank the saw down without damaging it if it detected you were about to lose a finger.
There's also no reason you couldn't use the same actuator to do fancy things, like vary cut depth on the fly, or precisely set the cut depth in the first place. Can't do any of that with a soft aluminum pad that gets yeeted into the sawblade when it detects a problem.
Basically, SawStop exists to sell saws. Those saws happen to be safer, but that's a marketing point, it's not what ultimately makes them money. Look at the incentives, you'll find the truth.
I don't know - the marketing material actually says 5 milliseconds. That's the crux of the problem and I don't believe you can actually move the saw fast enough to not cause serious damage to the human without damaging the saw. The problem, as I understand it, is stopping the saw. The saw actuator only makes sense if it moves fast enough and given the saw stop works on detection, I'm not convinced you have that much time.
I'm considering the physical reality here - if the saw must be yanked down quickly, how much force must be applied to the saw to move it, and then can that equal and opposite force be applied to stop it without damaging the saw?
>Look at the incentives, you'll find the truth.
This is true of any safety device? The SawStop inventor created his company after trying to license it and eventually won in the marketplace after nearly 30 years. Surely his competitors would have released an actuator based solution if it is was possible rather than ceding marketshare of high end saws?
As far as I can tell, REAXX also damages the blade.
This is the most asinine argument I’ve heard yet, and I am not a fan of this regulation.
Blades are typically cheap and the ones that aren’t are often repairable after an activation. Also, Sawstop barely sells any blades - I don’t know a single woodworker or cabinet shop that runs their blades.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Carpentry/comments/11s6zlr/cutting_...
While we're still not talking microseconds, I think it highlights that moving the blade out of the way needs to happen very quickly in some cases to avoid serious injury.
"Protect your equipment AND your fingers."
With the government potentially mandating these types of devices, you could be makin' the big bucks!
These incentives are clear, where's the truth?
(This is only somewhat facetious. I'm skeptical of your claims, but not enough to discount them out-of-hand. The industry honestly does seem ripe for disruption.)
According to my calculations, on a 10in/ 30tpi blade you have a teeth passing every 8.3uS.
If the rate of advancement is much slower (like a normal pace of feeding the stock into the saw accident), you have several milliseconds before reaching a 1/16" depth of injury from first contact to last contact.