Sawstop owners: Sawdust in the brake cartridge?

[Mitchell Andrus]

I'm planning on picking one of these up once I'm in the new shop and something caught my eye in the manual. Every 50 or so hours of use you're supposed to check for sawdust collecting in the brake cartridge. Sawdust may keep the brake from functioning properly or at all according to the manual. (on-line PCS manual, p. 86)

Those of you with Sawstops, can you have a look and let us know whether there's a collection of dust in the brake cartridge and about how many hours has it been in use? Have you even checked this before now? If you find sawdust in the cartridge, do you plan to toss it and buy a new one?

This is potentially an important item to be aware of. I run my saw 10 to 15 hours a week. This can get expensive really fast.

[Paul Ryan]

I am not sure how many hours are on my saw. I would guess between 100-150. I have young kids so dont get to cut wood as often as I would like. My cartridge has very little dust in it. I didn't even realize there was a service interval on the cartridge. It isn't hard to check I would guess for most of us around every 50 hours were are changing to a dado. I haven't tried using compressed air to clean mine, but that would be my plan. The saw is pretty smart, if the cartridge isn't in working order it wont start. So I am not to worried. I wont buy another cartridge unless the brake fires, or I get an error code.

[Kyle Iwamoto]

I've not seen sawdust pile up on the brake, but I try to keep my stuff clean. I check often, since I tend to swap out the guard and riving knife a lot.

Thanks for the info, I don't recall reading that either.

[mreza Salav]

I have the earlier version of ICS.
Whenever I change to dado or back I check the cartridge,
Haven't noticed any dust build-up.
I found they have incorporated other safty features in the saw and the computer on-board does a check at the start-up, for example if any of the side doors are open it won't start.