CT Scans of New vs. Used SawStop
lumafield.com
lumafield.com
The alternative approaches from other industrial saw manufacturers that are "non-contact non-destructive" are interesting:
- cameras and machine learning used by Altendorf "Hand Guard": https://www.altendorfgroup.com/en-us/machines/altendorf-hand...
- inductive proximity (same science as Theremin[1]) used by Felder "PCS Preventative Contact System" : https://www.felder-group.com/en-us/pcs
- SCM "Blade Off" (not sure of detection method ... looks like inductive proximity) : https://www.scmgroup.com/en_US/scmwood/products/joinery-mach...
But I've heard reports from 3rd-parties that Altendorf's camera detection method is unreliable/glitchy and doesn't work as well as Felder's system. Maybe Altendorf fixed the bugs.
Also, Altendorf's philosophy of using cameras & ML instead of inductive proximity reminds me of Tesla's philosophy using cameras instead of LIDAR (Waymo).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theremin
EDIT ADD: >I'm not sure how comparable these alternatives are when two of them are "request a quote" kind of pricing, and the Altendorf is $7000+
My comment was about "industrial saws" so they're definitely not realistic alternatives to buying a jobsite SawStop for homeowners. I added italics to the adjective "industrial" to clarify this.
Each one really is a ~10x step in cost above the other. Of course quality and safety/reliability are higher too, and I know which I'd buy. But, comparable only sort-of.
Still a pretty fair assessment, though.
The 100/200 dollar table saws are not really comparable (at a basic spec level, they're just not the same thing - 8" blades, smaller table, no fence)
Most reasonable products you would actually buy for a jobsite are in the $500 range. The same Sawstop is 1500. The cheap no-stand versions are $300. The same Sawstop is 900. Pretty sure they're targeting 3x as the price.
On the flip side, if they fail a real case, it may well be because they engendered a false sense of safety, a bit like a sharp knife being safer than a dull one.
“Ok, here’s your money”
“By the way, to use the feature, you actually just do it yourself and then pretend the product did it”
Kind of seems like the opposite. I could be wrong, but in the case of the saw the cameras/AI are probably more expensive to develop and deploy than the inductive sensing. With the cars though, it's the cheaper option for sure.
Often times when a product has some patent-protected feature, the product itself is substandard, but I have not found that case with sawstop. It's one of my highest quality tools.
It would be nice if the mechanism wasn't so destructive. I accidentally had an aluminum fence just a fraction of a mm too close, and it touched the blade. I was using a dado stack, and it did a number on the carbide teeth of the blades. Good dado sets are not cheap, nor is the sawstop cartridge.
The scenario is that the gauge was set with reasonable (1cm) clearance at one angle, and then I changed the angle without re-checking the clearance, and the back side of the fence swiveled into the blade path. Pythagorean fail.
Or, perhaps with GP comment, used a setup with reasonable clearance for a regular blade, and then put in a wider dado, which ate into the clearance.
Really, I should have sacrificed a crosscut sled for dado usage, but it really chews them up.
The whole "releasing our patent" is simply SawStop's way of trying to lock out the competition. All their competitors (including Bosch) have said that it will take several years before they could develop an alternative product leaving them in violation.
Finally, the regulation SawStop is trying to force doesn't even solve the injury problems for a few reasons.
The biggest is that CPSC does NOT affect commercial saws. As it turns out, hobbyists don't have as many injuries as you might think because they don't use their saws all the time and they have a very healthy respect for them (there are exceptions of course). Most serious injuries happen because the guy at the commercial shop has become too complacent and made a mistake after a long day at work. This ruling does nothing to change that situation.
You also can't fix stupid. If blade guards and riving knives are left on saws, the chances of injury are incredibly low, but people choose to remove one or both of these. They'll also turn off the safety features and do something they shouldn't. SawStop safety is over-represented because the people who spend the extra money for one are already predisposed to take safety seriously.
This leads to the price issue. Table saw prices will go up from $220 up to a minimum of $600 or more. This increases the risk of someone not having that much money and then turning their circular saw upside down making an incredibly dangerous table saw without a blade guard, riving knife, or even a parallel fence massively increasing the baseline risk for injury.
I love the idea of SawStop and I think it's an amazing safety device, but after reading the arguments on all sides, I think we should leave the current saws situation alone and instead simply require each saw manufacturer to offer at least one AIM model in their product lineup by 2032 or so (while maybe getting the courts to fix up the colossal screwups they made with the SawStop patents). This will give them time to develop alternatives and maybe drive down prices over time until it finally (hopefully) makes economic sense to only sell AIM devices.
> Despite previous litigation against would-be imitators of their safety brake, SawStop has committed to dedicating its original patent to the public when these new regulations go into effect.
The scheduled vote on the regulations was postponed this year, and it seems unlikely it would pass once it becomes Republican majority next year.
Lawsuit discovery showed all of them had developed their own technology that was fine, patent wise. But it would have eaten into their profit.
Personally, I have an altendorf handguard sliding table saw, which will stop as fast as the sawstop, but not destroy the blade.
I'm not so sure if other companies have the ability at a sub $2000 price point! Bosch came out with their own system that they thought was different. The product was on shelves for a year and then SawStop successfully sued. If a major company like that is unable to do it even after their lawyers gave them the clearance, I'm a bit dubious it's that easy.
Evidence from the lawsuits says they could do it at the 299 or 399 price point. Cost per saw was like 50 bucks.
> The fuse wire is designed to be stable enough to resist stretching or thinning over time despite the intense repeated vibrations from the saw use, ensuring it doesn’t prematurely release the spring.
"Just" some bad QA and the wire releasing the mechanism breaks too early needlessly destroying the saw, or too late needlessly destroying the hand. A patent won't fix that for the manufacturer.
Or is it and I'm just not seeing it from my Dutch viewpoint?
Does anyone know of anyone who has written about this discrepancy with some numbers (emergency room admissions, SawStop sales) backing it?
Patents. SawStop does not sell outside the US/NA to my knowledge and they hold all the patents required.
In 2015 Bosch introduced a system that did essentially the same thing as SawStop, but with a slightly different mechanism. SawStop sued in the US and won against Bosch.
Since 2017 SawStop is part of Festool, which explains why their tech is slowly making their way into Festool products. For example, the TKS 80 has the SawStop functionality built in. But at an MSRP of ~2.500€ it’s not really a hobbyist machine.
I think it's more regulatory. There are regulations in the EU around things like blade stop time that products designed for the USA do not meet.
If you run commercial production, then you do need a table saw (but one with a sliding table!), but for hobby work you might as well spend some time for track saw setups and be much safer.
I have an older Delta table saw and recently decided to sell it because a miter saw + track saw + some other tools you need anyhow does nearly everything a table saw would do, but uses space way more efficiently.
A track saw is more convenient and arguably safer when breaking down a huge piece of plywood. After that it's no table saw replacement. You can't easily do repeated cuts of identical stuff width, you can't work on small parts, you can't make most of the common jigs, you can't do dadoes or box joints, etc.
About the only thing the tracksaw is not good for are long cuts of narrow stock. And yes, dadoes, but I do those with a router and arguably you should not even try to do them with a table saw, unless you are trying to hurt yourself.
Implying that because of the possibility of kickback a tracksaw is comparably dangerous to a track saw makes no sense.
I recently made a cutting board with many tiny pieces - 0.5" square, several hundred of them. With a table saw it's "run pieces through, rotate 90 degrees, run pieces through" - not fast but WAY faster than having to move the track saw every time, and that second cut is impossible with a track saw.
On a table saw I can do crosscuts. I barely ever use my miter saw (in favor of my crosscut sled on my table saw) unless I'm trying to keep the table saw fence positioned somewhere precise and need to make a crosscut in the middle of my workflow.
And speaking of the fence: The table saw is a precision instrument. The track saw is not. I set up my table saw fence once, eight years ago. I have never had to adjust it or look again. If I want something an inch thick I set the fence to an inch and make the cut and it is correct. I don't have to draw a line on my workpiece, measure, and make a mark. I don't need to measure the final piece with calipers to see if I got close enough to actually an inch. I can work quickly and efficiently.
Then there's bevels - am I going to buy a new rubber track guard for every different angle I want to cut, or am I just going to use my table saw and tilt the blade? If I want to be precise and always use a zero clearance insert, at least I can make those myself rather than having to buy rubber molding.
I own a fairly nice track saw (Festool TS55) and a pair of good-quality tracks for it. I own several expensive chunks of metal which profess to do things such as align the track at a 90 degree angle to my workpiece which I am unable to trust or even to get working consistently. I'm not talking "oh, this is 89.7 degrees", I'm talking "I can see with my eyes that's not square, guess I'll go get a combo square and a pencil".
I have owned devices such as the Kreg jig which aim to make it easier to do repeated rips with a circular or track saw and while if you don't own a table saw they're better than nothing, they're nowhere close to the precision, reliability, or ease of use of a table saw.
I love my track saw. I hate trying to pick up and manipulate 4x8' or 4x4' pieces of wood on the table saw and the track saw makes my life much easier - but that initial breaking down is all I ever use it for, because for every other task the table saw is dramatically better.
American hobby woodworkers all have huge two- or three-car garages giving them the room needed to store and use gigantic machines like table saws. Such large homes are unusual in Europe, and mostly owned by people who don't work with their hands.
European hobby woodworkers don't lose their fingers to table saws because they're using circular saws instead.
I suspect America also has a lot more woodworkers; many of their buildings have wood frames, wood siding, and bitumen-over-wood roofs.
If you look at the Google Maps marker for New York and go 90 minutes drive north, you get this: https://maps.app.goo.gl/RY9ebS6vcD5w8cQA6
San Francisco and go 90 minutes north: https://maps.app.goo.gl/wJQx9BV5C2d7C6iR9
You look up Berlin and go 90 minutes north: https://maps.app.goo.gl/7javF29PE1p6F4rb9
Look up Paris and go 90 minutes north: https://maps.app.goo.gl/nyHut9xD4eAZnhdn9
You look up London and go 90 minutes north: https://maps.app.goo.gl/VnEWsmNHSC5pc9H98
Europe's higher population density gives them has great, walkable cities, practical public transport, good cycle-ability and plentiful bus stops.
The trade-off is smaller homes and less parking. There's a reason nobody over there drives an F-150 truck.
Yes, this is what I mean when I say few Europeans have the two- or three-car garages needed for a table saw to be practical.
I'm just saying you don't have tablesaw injuries if you don't have tablesaws.
(This is just one scenario. Both tools are capable of unwanted removal of body parts.)
Woodworking YouTube has changed this a bit. Since American creators are so widespread, everyone has gotten exposed to SawStop and I know at least a couple years back people were trying to import American-style table saws instead of the local European-style because that's what YTers have. I don't know if it was regulatory or what that has prevented the former from being more available in Europe.
I think this is marketing done right. I am not in the CT scan industry, nor do I think I'll ever have the need for these services, yet I came out slightly more knowledgeable about the world around me after reading their article. Maybe one day I will have the need for commercial CT services, and Lumafield will be the first one to come to mind.
Saw was expensive, yeah.. but they hold their value on the second hand market, if you ever even see them for sale.
I had a cabinet maker over last week, after he noticed my sawstop he showed me his 2 partially missing fingers.
The company also isn't playing games, the saw is beautiful and a lifetime purchase.
With the topic under discussion, this is an amazing pun.
Here's a saw stop in action, so it's not gory. But look at how FAST things go wrong here and how violent the interaction was.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Whatcouldgowrong/comments/11s53ew/w...
Compare that to a band saw in use, and you can see fingers quite close to the to the cutting edge and still have good control over the work.
I use a table saw quite a bit and think there are more ways things can go wrong, most of which stem from kickback which happens in a split second. The wood will either fly back and hit you, or your hand will be pulled into the blade and you will likely lose a finger.
Both machines can be safe with the proper precautions. That said, I still enjoy my SawStop as insurance for my fingers since I still write software for my day job.
One of the more horrifying things I've witnessed second-hand with kickback was a lucky third scenario. It was high school woodshop and one morning the teacher pulls us all over to the miter saw bench and points at a huge chunk that's missing from it. The bench surface was two or three layers of MDF glued and screwed together. He explained that someone had been cutting something on the table saw 8 feet away from it, had a kickback, the kickback missed but the piece of wood shot into the miter bench and that was the result. Thinking about what that same piece of wood would have done if it had hit a human... yeesh, I definitely treated kickback with a lot more respect after that day.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuWNEAlC2-0
Not something a band saw will do. So a band saw will just cut you while the table saw will cut you but also hurl material at you.
I'd say overall a tablesaw is more dangerous compared to a band saw because it has the additional failure mode of kickback which happens occasionally even to very experienced operators.
So to bring the blade to a complete standstill, in significantly less time than start-up, is probably not feasible, unless you have a massive bank of capacitors with stored energy so that you can dump all that current in the motor without burning your building's wiring. But that will probably vaporize the motor.
So even if you send peak current it won't (this is for the DC brushed, for the induction it can't be reversed unless you have a speed controller - also called an inverter)
355mm radius disc, mass 1kg, moment of inertia is 1/2 mr², so 0.06 kg.m² [1]. This ignores all inertia of the arbor and motor rotor, mind, which is possibly significant (smaller radius but dense, depends on the transmission whether the motor is part of the blade system - if there's a clutch or belt to let go, then the motor isn't really part of the problem, but it's also not going to be part of the solution), Say it spins at 4000rpm, or 420 rad/s (some saws go to 6000 plus and this is quadratic).
So kinetic energy in the blade alone is 1/2Iw², or 0.5 * 0.06 * 420², or 5.2kJ. For comparison, a rifle bullet is about half that, which seems right ballpark on the face of it.
So to remove that energy in 5ms (SawStop's claim) is 1MW, or a current of 4000A at 240V, or 8000A at 120V. I don't know if any big saws run on that voltage in the US (may small ones?), but let's take the lower rest-of-world figure anyway. That's roughly 1300HP or 4 top-spec Tesla Model Y's at full throttle (320kW each).
This is not completely technically impossible to deliver - you need about 400 0.1 farad capacitors charged to 250V, which are 100mm in diameter and 250mm tall and around $150 each, so a fridge-sized box, maybe two[2]. Some very large and pricy solid state switches will be needed too, and some nice copper busbars to get the current where you need it. Actually pushing 4000A into a motor winding for 5ms isn't that easy either as it's a canonical example of an inductive load, so you need even more current, plus hopefully a way to stop the current when done before turning the inside of the motor into a plasma ball. Evaporating the motor winding before you've stopped the blade is no good, and it'll be nice to use the saw again, so you'll need to uprate the coils massively, which will make the motor very heavy, very large and very expensive.
There are probably other issues like induced voltages far higher than main voltage the will need management. As mentioned earlier, you will also not be able to use, say, a belt drive - the motor needs a very stiff physical connection to the blade.
So, you won't break physics to do this, but it will be large, heavy and incredibly expensive. $50k in caps alone.
Flipping the blade physically away from the obstacle is a much better bet. Which is actually SawStop's real trick - all that kinetic energy in the spinning blade system is grabbed and harvested to move those kilos of steel down and away in a few milliseconds. Stopping the blade is just a handy side effect of stealing all the energy. You could possibly do the same with an electrical system, but it would still be very large and very heavy compared to using the exact same huge kinetic battery that will always be there (or it's not a table saw) and which is actually the threat to safety in the first place.
It's actually quite interesting to see the relative weakness of electrical forces illustrated this way. Even quite prosaic mechanical objects can develop powers that require electrical systems the sizes of small rooms to rival. And again, chemical systems contain more power still: all that spinning mass is the energy contained in a few grams of gunpowder.
[1] Edit: I double counted a factor of 1/2 in the MoI - it's actually more then I first estimated!
[2] Another underestimate as you really need a lot more as you have to get that energy out fast and you can't wait for the slow tail of the discharge curve to finish. Plus at least Nichicon only seem to go to 160V for 0.1uF!
They do it (basically) by predicting whether your hand will touch the blade, rather than waiting until it does touch the blade.
If you wait until someone actually touches the blade, then yes, you have to operate very very fast. That is unavoidable due to physics, as you say.
But if you can gain 100ms or 250ms by proving a 100% probability that the hand will touch the blade before the person can stop it, you now have a lot more time to stop the blade.
I can show you a video of an air quality meter sitting between the cameras and the saw hood if you want. The amount of particle change is minimal
This is company producing high end sliding table saws that cost tens of thousands. They've been at it for over half a century.
This is not someone producing a 299 saw as cheaply as possible.
They are a German company (ie regulated heavily) and have a ridiculous number of safety standard certifications that test things like "what happens when there is dust"
do you really think they haven’t thought of the obvious basic issues and figure out what to do about them?
if so, what evidence do you have that this is true?
(Also I think you don't understand European requirements on dust extraction and allowed exposure to wood dust. This saw does not produce a meaningful anount of dust)
I can't think of anything, short of dropping a person on the saw.
Because that's what doesn't happen and people lose fingers.
A hawk decided to throw a dead animal at the window behind me hard enough to shatter it. I was startled and my hand moved enough for my palm to cross the top of the blade.
I would not have lost fingers most likely but it would have been very bad.
To your point accidents are not always foreseeable. Yeah some people work stupidly but plenty of times, It’s just random unexpected events.
https://www.sawstop.com/service-tips/what-to-do-if-the-sawst...
One of them did require a resharpen though.
A few weeks later I needed some scrap for something, grabbed the piece closest on hand, pushed it into the blade and immediately triggered the wet wood alert and the blade spun down slowly. I knew that the wood wasn't wet, so started the saw up again and pushed it straight back into the blade only with more force, triggering it straight away.
Second time was due to cutting a lot of pitch heavy pine over an extended period of time - it built up on the cartridge and after a blade change that I didn't check the clearance on, it bridged the brake with the blade (i assume) and triggered on start up. (It comes with a tool to check this clearance after a blade change - I of course did not follow the instructions).
And
2) correct.
You can manually disable the auto—trigger mode in those situations though (bypass mode).
It also doesn’t like anything conductive - so anything coated with Mylar, any kind of conductive dust or debris, etc. is also a crapshoot.
Very much edge cases though, unless you’re dealing with a lot of randos. A workshop I used to share had a wall covered with sawstop ‘trophies’, due to people doing weird stuff.
At that point, it's just another dumb saw that will chop your finger off, but it won't trigger the cartridge, and you can make what ever cuts you need.
The way it tries to determine if it's wet wood / a body part is the capacitance change. Slightly different profile which they can use to make an educated guess (obviously erring on the side of caution).
This is why for some time they would give you a free cartridge if yours triggered on flesh - they wanted the data on there from real-life flesh contact to improve their calculations.
The automatic defibrillators manufacturers also will often send you a unit for free if you used your unit for an actual defibrillation. Same idea.
Let me emphasize: you should run the above list in order. If you can design a problem out then you are not allowed to put guards, brakes, or warning stickers on./
Most industrial machinery is designed with the above process. there is a lot of machinery from early days still around with out safety, but most industry has been adding guards and brakes to those were possible and replacing (machines from the 1950s are probably worn out anyway) the old stuff. Industry also has extensive safety training for the dangers they they cannot prevent other ways. The safety results for industry is much better than it was 100 years ago. Not perfect by any means, but much better and getting better [I was going to write every year, but random chance means some years there are more accidents than others despite the safety situation overall improving yearly]
I can't help but wonder if a big part of the reason the number of incidents is so high is because we're intentionally hyperbolic about risks when it comes to warning labels, for liability reasons. As an example, many appliances will warn that you can never operate them with the covers off and doing so can cause death or serious injury. Okay fine, sure, it's not necessarily safe, and perhaps you could indeed kill yourself by accident doing so. However, in practice it's bullshit. People do this all the time, and you pretty much have to sometimes. How the hell are you even supposed to troubleshoot without being able to see what's wrong? Just guess?
So sometimes when it comes to warnings it's easy to empathize with the person who didn't take them very seriously, as we're pretty much conditioned to take warnings like this with a grain of salt.
Though honestly, when it comes to using a table saw, the thing I'm actually afraid of is kickback. Amputation risk is still very serious of course, but I feel safe enough with the many layers of mitigations I already use. I don't want to fall into complacency, but I also don't think I'm going to lose sleep over not having a SawStop table saw either. (I am not using my table saw often enough for it to be a terrible concern anyways.)
The idea that safety features cause complacency has been debunked several times. Statistically, well designed safety features or equipment reduce accidents, even if it may cause some people to get complacent.
And you are right to be afraid of kickback, and one of the risks associated with kickbacks is inadvertently touching the blade, that is the issue SawStop is designed to address. The blade guard helps too, but AFAIK, there are many instances where you can't use it.
Disclaimer: cabinet builder.
Blade guards are rarely used in shops I've worked in. I've even worked in a shop that removed the riving knifes on their saws as they got in the way of certain cuts and they didn't want to spend time taking them on and off.
With a cove cut you move the fence to about a 30 degree angle to the blade, to get an elliptical cove along the length of a board. It's a rare thing to need. But if you really need a wide cove, it might be hard to get a router bit to do that.
Timestamped for convenience: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxKkuDduYLk
You see it in utilities. Gas workers will helmet up swapping out a meter head.
I've work in multiple production furniture shops and that has not been my experience. People are just moving fast, trying to get stuff done and things happen. Also, training safety in a non-educational setting is tough.
A pro in a hurry? Not so much. It's the pro that's gonna remove the safety guard and riving knife, be invested in expensive blades they don't want to replace if the cartridge goes off accidentally, etc., etc.
The worst one I’ve seen is someone cutting circles on a table saw (already normally a no) with their hand behind the blade on the side that pulls you in instead of cutting (the kickback side). And it pulls his fingers right into the blade. (Saved by SawStop though.)
Heathy fear does not mean they know how the saw works at all. So I’d say both sides are apt to lose fingers.
Either way I think Sawstop is great. As a hobbyist I wish it were cheaper. Although to be fair a big part of the cost is that Sawstop doesn't sell low end saws — that's nothing to do with the safety tech.
The hobbyist doesn't enough to get into a groove and so won't have that happen. However the hobbyist is doing many different cuts and so doesn't always remember how to do each safely.
Chainsaws have about the same number of annual ER visits as table saws. It's common to see someone using a chainsaw without most of the recommended safety gear. In those cases, it's probably money.
Of these 30,000 injuries per year, how many happen when the blade guards are removed? How many happen when a push stick is not used? How many happen when a person stands in the direction that a piece of wood will be thrown by kickback? Once all those are subtracted are there enough injuries to count?
What if all tablesaw injury cases were tried by a jury of shop teachers?
The best advice I got in shop class was to slowly and quietly count to 10 on my fingers before throwing a power switch and in doing so to envision the operation from beginning to end and all the forces which would be involved, and to remind myself, that I wanted to be able to repeat that cut when the power was turned off.
SawStop goes on about how they will license their patent, but the licensing being offered is a very narrow one and doesn't seem to include the entirety of their patent portfolio, and they have fought very hard to keep tools with similar capabilities out of the U.S. market claiming patent infringement.
> The best advice I got in shop class was to slowly and quietly count to 10 on my fingers before throwing a power switch and in doing so to envision the operation from beginning to end and all the forces which would be involved, and to remind myself, that I wanted to be able to repeat that cut when the power was turned off.
It's great advice, but injuries tend to happen when people become complacent with the operations.
Seems like you don't buy into the swiss cheese model of accidents. Because other safety mechanisms and good practices exist, it doesn't mean that there's not reasons to add additional safety. In aviation, we always blamed the pilots for a long time, and it wasn't entirely wrong. However, no matter how much we told pilots "stop crashing and dying!!" they didn't seem to want to stop.
This is there for the day when other things go wrong-- when a tired operator reaches for something he obviously shouldn't; when a blade guard is out of place and someone slips; when someone who isn't sufficiently trained doesn't realize he shouldn't use the table saw.
I think it's reasonable to say "we have done enough" at some point though. We can debate where the point is, but safety is not an unalloyed good. It has a cost, and reasonable people can disagree over whether a particular safety invention has enough ROI to justify its existence.
For example, we wouldn't countenance banning all motor vehicles even though we could eliminate all car related deaths with that one simple trick. We would get a fair bit of payoff, but the cost would just be too high to justify it. Similarly, if we could inflict a very minor cost on everyone in the world to prevent one death per year, that would be too low of a payoff even though the cost is very low.
So yes, we can always add more layers of defense against accidents (or security incidents). But eventually, the juice isn't worth the squeeze and you stop. So I don't think the Swiss cheese model really can justify any particular intervention by itself; you have to evaluate the specifics of whether the particular intervention is worth it.
That has to be a point in time decision though. Closed circuit TV backup cameras in cars have been possible since I dunno, probably the 70s, certainly 80s technology could have done it; but they weren't a reasonable intervention (outside of say armored cars for currency transports) until more recently as cameras and displays have gotten less expensive and quality has improved. Also helpful as modern vehicle design has resulted in significantly reduced visibility compared to the past, but that's a rant for a car article :P
You don't need to prevent too many maimings to pay for a whole lot of these and their occasional consumables.
Sure, risk homeostasis will claw some of the benefit back, too.
Simply make table saw manufacturers liable for any injury from the saw and this kind of mechanism will instantly become default.
There is supposedly woodworker opposition.[2] "Many woodworkers argue that the implementation of SawStop technology has disrupted traditional woodworking practices. Some feel that it has altered the craft in a negative way by making it less reliant on skill and attentiveness, instead placing an emphasis on technology to prevent accidents. This shift in focus is seen as a departure from the fundamental principles and values of woodworking." However, no actual woodworkers are quoted, and the author has a tool store, so this is probably astroturf PR. That web site is addressed to people with a semi-religious attitude towards woodworking, not to working carpenters or cabinetmakers.
(Having used circular wood saws, I am all in favor of blade-stop devices.)
[1] https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/118/hr8181/text
[2] https://www.woodworkcenter.com/why-do-woodworkers-hate-the-i...
Wow. This is basically: real men enjoy getting their fingers cut off.
TTI and friends were very effective at riling them up. I belong to a number of significant woodworking forums/etc, and have watched the manipulation over the years firsthand.
This was mostly in the form of "big daddy government wants to make you pay for more saws because of dumb people", so the take they have there around the craft itself is pretty funny.
But surely there must be some middle ground between a company making a fake safety saw, and a good faith effort that isn't quite perfect.
The claim was "The saw manufacturers all blew off SawStop because they were worried that they would now be liable for any injuries which still occurred."
Meaning that table saw manufacturers were worried if they implement SawStop like safety feature, and they advertise their saws as safer they become liable for times when the technology does not work.
So yes, you appear to be correct what saw manufacturers say about their safety now, but that's not the point we are discussing. The point is that if they add a SawStop like feature and advertise it then they would be talking about the safety of their saws.
Old school radial saws, for example, basically don't exist anymore at the consumer level. They were simply too dangerous. Slider-type miter saws have almost completely replaced them.
Personally, I would even go so far as to suggest that weekend woodworkers should avoid even having a table saw, period.
The main problem with table saws is that they become a "do all" machine even for those kinds of actions that really shouldn't be done on it. You're already at the table saw, and it's often really convenient to just "sorta kinda" bodge something up on the table saw rather than doing the safe thing and changing the blade, putting together a real jig or using a completely different tool.
If you have a track saw or a cheap CNC instead, the danger level is way, way lower, and the result is probably a lot better.
Traveled to New York City or the U.K. recently? Check your pocket for a locking blade, or an assisted opening knife before-hand.
That essentially contributed to a gun buying bubble and solider cosplay.
This
I would pay thousands to avoid losing part of my hand. The increased price is a very good value, tens of dollars.
Look at rearview cameras. Cheap tech. Used to be a 1000+ USD option. Now that they are government mandated the manufacturers figured out how to include them for a couple hundred dollars.
Price goes up, but just a little. Money well spent.
I cut off the distal segment of my right thumb on a table saw in 1995. The initial bill, before I disputed it and received a "professional courtesy discount", was $25k.
So, you can pay a relatively small price to avoid losing part of your hand, or you can gamble that it will never happen, and then pay a high price for losing part of your hand.
Pretty simple choice to me.
ps.
Doctor: what do want to do with the rest of your life?
Me: well, I'm a programmer right now, but I'd rather be farmer
Doctor: I know a lot of farmers with less digits than you still have, and you'll still be able to hit the space bar as-is.
Ed: The fact that you can hit the space bar with either hand, whereas the tab would require changing your keyboard layout is not a consideration I had previously considered in this debate.
It’s a fine principled argument, but stay the hell away from product management.
A requirement for this safety feature would be enacted in order to prevent a large number of accidental mutilations. It might make money for certain people and they might push it for that reason, but that’s not the main purpose for enacting it.
I look forward to your complaint that you’re forced to spend money on seat belts you don’t need.
Ah personal responsibility! The magic bullet that mitigates all accidents.
All of your personal responsibility will vanish the instant you injure yourself horribly - then you'll be wholly reliant upon numerous other people who will have to deal with the horror of what you've done to yourself, or else be delayed in receiving their own care because of it.
When it comes to table saws, you only have to make a mistake once to find out. Almost perfect doesn't cut it. (ba dum bum, tss)
But I don't think that companies are trying to make the tools more expensive. In fact, it was the opposite. SawStop sold high-end saws, other manufacturers did not want to adopt the technology because of the cost it added.
The issue of proper saw safety and use of sawstop technology are two different issues, I believe. And while I agree, the proper safety procedures you cite should be used by everyone, they aren't. In fact, they often aren't. And we can sit here and shake our fingers, but it won't change the overall culture around them. And I think that's the conclusion that regulators have come to as well: They're not going to get people to always use their blade guards or count to 10, so they'll mandate adoption of a technology that mitigates the risk due to people not following directions.
Regarding the licensing, I think that's been addressed by others elsewhere. But in short, SawStop defended their patents in order to license the tech. When the government moved to mandate it, SawStop said they wouldn't enforce their patent, but they're not handing the tech over either. Other companies are free to develop their own method without running afoul of SawStop's patents, or they can license SawStop's tech. To me, it seems like a fair approach that both protects their investment while not putting themselves in a morally questionable position in taking advantage of the upcoming regulation.