Thread: saw stop inventor puts his finger into the blade

it should not be relied upon

I'm still intrigued by this attitude. Can you imagine someone nonchalantly passing their finger through the blade, knowing that the mechanism will protect them? How do you 'rely' upon it? What behaviour would having a Sawstop induce that might make you more likely to put your hand in the blade?

Originally Posted by silentC

I'm still intrigued by this attitude. Can you imagine someone nonchalantly passing their finger through the blade, knowing that the mechanism will protect them? How do you 'rely' upon it? What behaviour would having a Sawstop induce that might make you more likely to put your hand in the blade?

To put the point another way - this indicates why there is little risk of SawStop leading to a reduction in the level of care taken by an operator. No-one in their right mind will do something which is going to increase their chance of having a finger damaged, even if they have SawStop and even if they believe implicitly in its efficacy.

What SawStop recognises is that the obvious danger of tablesaws does not of itself lead to all users of table saws adopting appropriate levels of safety procedure to prevent accidents. In the face of that reality of human behaviour, the only question is whether the extra protection against injury that SawStop offers is worth the money they are asking for it.

And that is just a matter of personal opinion.

Originally Posted by jmk89

To put the point another way - this indicates why there is little risk of SawStop leading to a reduction in the level of care taken by an operator. No-one in their right mind will do something which is going to increase their chance of having a finger damaged, even if they have SawStop and even if they believe implicitly in its efficacy.

Sorry JK but I disagree, because just about everything the average human "right mind" is constantly over ridden by the perception of, "it will never happen to me". Sure, no one in their right mind is consciously going to stand there and poke their finger into the saw, but what happens with new product safety features is they eventually become part of a subconscious "background safety net". When seat belts were introduced the number of motor vehicle accidents per vehicle.km on the road increased. One might well say that "no one in their right mind would run their car into a another" so why did the number of accidents increase? The same has happened with air bags. Now we're even starting to see people not using seat belts because we have airbags! And not everyone is in their right mind when they head for the shed eg "I've just had 5 beers and I'll just go and rip some timber on the TS . . . ., hang on, that's a dangerous tool, maybe not, . . . oh wait I have saw stop, she'll be right"! OK - A bit over the top maybe but just trying to make a point"

I'm not saying that this is a reason not to do these things, but I think what happens is these safety features are "over marketed", which adds to that subconscious safety perception. If anything, to counteract the safety net perception companies should make an even bigger deal about what their "safety features" do not cover. Sawstop does that to some extent but does it do enough?

It was not a "real situation" demonstration, I would like to see him pass timber through the blade, with a finger or thumb in the line of cut, I don,t believe he would becuase it would cut his finger, however the injury would most likley far less serious. any thing that reduces injury is a good thing, but it should not be relied upon

I think you are less likely to have an accident when your hand is on the timber. You do pay more attention when you are actually cutting wood don't you?

Accidents are more likely to happen when the cut is finished. You relax, you become less careful and you are reaching out to get something else while the blade is still running. (For example a piece of off-cut or a pencil) I know someone who lost part of his finger that way.

When seat belts were introduced the number of motor vehicle accidents per vehicle.km on the road increased.

I've heard that before but no-one has ever linked the assertion to a published study. So do you have a reference for it, or is it just an urban myth? Do they take into account the increase in drivers on the road, the change in attitude towards motor vehicles as a status symbol, the recklessness of young drivers. etc etc?

It seems counter-intuitive to me, but maybe it's natural selection at work.

And by the way, the 'it will never happen to me' attitude applies with or without the safety mechanism in my experience. There are plenty of prematurely dead people to prove that.

Yeah, like to instances where it could have happened as posted on here somewhere yesterday with idiots letting 6yr old sons use a tbale saw and another idiot letting his 2yr old son shoot an automatic pistol - come from the same country - is there something in that?

Originally Posted by silentC

And by the way, the 'it will never happen to me' attitude applies with or without the safety mechanism in my experience.

I hear it all too often.

"It will never happen to me."
"I've been using a tablesaw for twenty years and haven't cut my fingers off."
"It's good technology for someone else."
"Better still, I just won't touch the blade."

That last one was told to me by a guy at the Sydney T&WWW show. He rang me three months later, just as he got home from the hospital after cutting the tops of two fingers off. He now owns a SawStop machine, and is hopefully the only 'I told you so' story I ever have to deal with.

Wow,
Read this entire thread…
I work for a company in the US that sells SawStop…we sell Jet, and Powermatic, Steel City and Delta also.
To address the “fitting one to my saw” question.
The inventor designed his original mechanism to fit the Delta Unisaw…offered the design and patent to Delta, and they refused, because they didn’t want to sell or promote the idea that their products might be unsafe to begin with.
If you look closely, the basic cabinet is close to a Shop Fox saw…but the SawStop has much heavier trunions and bearings.
As for the circuit failing…
The basic circuit is a collapsing circuit, technology that has been around for almost a century, but with the modern chip technology it can be made quite compact and bullet proof.
The cartridge used in the SawStop will work underwater, buried in sawdust and under almost any condition you could imagine…the cartridge simply provides a path for the current, the blade is the trigger…which is why the saw checks the blade when you first turn it on…it measures the resistance present, so it has a base line resistance value…change that value and the cartridge will fire, period.
If you happen to be resting your hand against the blade and try and turn the saw on, the resistance value exceeds the safety values and the saw will not start.

As someone who has been using a table saw for 38 years, if I was in the market for a new saw, I would purchase the SawStop…not simply for the brake and safety feature, but because the saw is an excellent machine all by itself.

We demo the saw about three times a year…using our classroom SawStop, which has 100 of hours of use on it, it is as dirty and dusty inside as you would expect a saw used daily to be.
During one of our demos, we decided to try the hot dog, but taped it to a board and ran it through the blade with no one touching the hot dog…the brake fired.

There will always be folks who don’t believe this works, or are sure it will fail because it is a machine, or involves electronics and such, but trust me, short of causing intentional damage to the cartridge, it will work..


As for the blade skipping because of the crumple zone on the brake…the holes in the aluminum brake are there to give the blade something to bite into…if the brake was a solid aluminum block, the blade might skip off of it, but because of the holes, the brake face collapses, grabbing the blade not only one the face, but on the sides as well, using the centrifugal force of the blade to force it down below the table…this happens faster than you can blink.

At our store, we sell on average three SawStop cabinet saws, and one SawStop contractor saw every month…so far they out sell the Powermatic p2000, Delta Unisaw and Jet combined.
Our local school district’s insurance carrier insists the schools shop have a SawStop only, and we have sold several to both our state and to Federal concerns, for the same reason, their insurance carriers insist on them.

It works.
As the promo say, “if you could buy a machine that could prevent an accident, why wouldn’t you?”
For the small extra cost of the safety brake, plus the fact that it is as good, if not a better built and running saw than most other, why not?

According to my latest FWW tools & shops, the StopSaw is only US$200 to $400 more than the powermatic saw and the new Delta Unisaw. It must be a pretty attractive buy over there in the US.

Wongo, from the experiance, of nearly 40 years in the woodworking trades most acidents happen when someone is making the cut and not paying attension or plain stupidity, one incedent I saw, an apprentice came back to work after removing his index finger on a dimension saw, the other lads asked how managed to do, he promptley demonstrted by removing his middle finger by the same method

I have followed this thread carefully and with great interest even though I cant - and possibly never will be able to afford this machine.

Like most of you I have never had an accident with my table saw; had a couple of minor upsets with other power tools - the worst requiring a few stitches. I don't for one minute suggest that the low incidence of personal injury is due to luck, no! it's due to dilligence, forsight and the reasoning that a mistake or a faulty piece of equipment could cause havock at any time.

Knowing this I, as I'm sure most of us do, I take every concievable caution, each time that saw is started I consider what it is going to do, how my work is going to be presented to the machine, what will happen if I slip, these plus a host of other things.

Now, should I be fortunate enough to be able to install saw stop in my shed, does that mean that I can forgo all these precautions - no - Not that I dont trust the system but because common sense tells me that the more precautions taken then the less chance of an accident, after all fingers in saw blades possibly only account for a fraction of table saw incidents.

Finally think of saw stop like you would a RCD in an electrical circuit, surely you wouldn't play with live electrickery just because the RCD is going to save you?

Denn

With the table extensions, 52 inch rails, and mobil base, the Saw Stop runs, at our store, $300.00 dollars more than the PM2000 from PowerMatic with the same size table and legs.
The PM2000 has a built in caster system.
The brake cartdridge runs $89.99, and the dado brake runs $99.99.
For an extra $300.00 bucks...if you use the safety brakes once, the saw paid for itself and then some.
Listen to Ruddigar, go see one of these in person...make a few cuts on the demo saw...you will want to buy one, count on it.

Originally Posted by Wongo

According to my latest FWW tools & shops, the StopSaw is only US$200 to $400 more than the powermatic saw and the new Delta Unisaw. It must be a pretty attractive buy over there in the US.

Originally Posted by edblysard

Listen to Ruddigar, go see one of these in person...make a few cuts on the demo saw...you will want to buy one, count on it.

He's seen the demo....didn't buy it.

Typical Chinese - always want 'best price'