Saw Stop is here

[Chris Padilla]

Are people driving more recklessly since seat belts became mandatory, since air bags were installed, how about since helmets were required for motorcycles.

Tough to say and mesure I think. I'm guessing probably, "No" but a "Yes" wouldn't surprise me a bit. I grew just fine without being in a child seat, too, but now those are the law. I dunno. Rules, rules, rules.

BTW I am in the process of finishing my basement, a part of which will be my shop. I plan to add a electrical subpanel that has a keylock so that all the outlets are disabled in the event my children enter the shop without me. To me that is a reasonable cost for the safety it provides. (The foregoing are just my opinions, and no brain cells were injured in the forming of those opinions.)

Interesting thought! I'm redoing my garage and you've provided some fat to chew on here as I have a little 2 year old girl. I also have a swimming pool in my back yard that simply won't work with a fence (too close to the house) so my solution is to make darn sure my daughter knows how to swim and teach her best I can. I think it is a fine line between protecting our kids and teaching them. I can be tough to discern at times....

[JayStPeter]

$2200 to address the second leading cause of injury on a tablesaw? Money foolishly spent! As I see it there are three areas of concern with the tablesaw; kickback, amputation/cutting, and pushback. Pushback (saw pushes work back at you) is annoying, probably doesn't cause much of a problem except for a few stained shorts. The SawStop does address the amputation/cutting flesh problem but likely not with dato blades. Properly guarding your saw will also solve the amputation/cutting flesh issue. Kickback is not addressed at all with the SawStop and this is a major area of injury for table saw users. Fortunately amputation and kickback problems can be addressed by using a properly adjusted riving knife and a decent guard; check out the european combo machines to see how it's done right. If the SawStop folk's were really interested in selling an inherintly safer product then they would design an American style cabinet saw with a proper riving knife with an attached, and detachable, guard.

Ummmmm, did you look at the SawStop saw? It has a proper riving knife and detachable guard as well as the stopping mechanism. It also has a proper dust collection shroud. That's what lead me to say it has all the features one could spend hundreds for to upgrade a typical US saw. To me, the blade stopping mechanism is just a bonus.
In reality, it's only competition is the Laguna TS (which I still drool over) and european saws (ditto).
I don't agree with everything they've done (treading thin ice here I know). But, I think in the end they did manage to put out a product that looks like a winner.
Unfortunately, the contractor style saw didn't get the riving knife and slick looking guard. That one doesn't look like a winner to me.

Jay

[John Parker]

I had the accident that this device is suppose to prevent. I slipped and my right middle finger tip contacted the blade. The interesting part was this. The skin of my finger tip never touched the blade. what contacted the tooth of the blade was my finger nail. When this happened it pulled my finger down and into the blade. The blade shattered the end bone of my finger. The doctor was amazed that the skin of my finger was intact. I wonder if the saw stop would have helped. Needless to say I am very careful around my table saw. I would not pay 400.00 dollars for this device now becouse this type of accident WILL NOT happen to me again. I am much more fearful of kickback.

John Parker

[Peter Kuhlman]

I do not know what makes this thing work. I wonder what could cause a miss-fire of the cartridge? Would cutting wet wood, various soft metals, coated plastics or some such item cause the cartridge to accidentally fire and destroy your nice new 100$ blade? There is most likely something other than a hotdog or finger that can activate this system. Like others, I got a bad taste when they tried to force/legislate the SawStop into use but I do believe in using practical safety devices. I spent money for a quality cabinet saw, Biesmeyer splitter, Delta overarm guard combo after a really bad kick-back accident with my Craftsman saw due to it loosing its blade to slot adjustment after adjusting the blade for bevel cuts so the cost of the SawStop as an additional feature would not be a major issue to me.
Pete

[Chris Padilla]

Peter,

Read up a bit more. They claim that green/wet wood is fine and even cutting non-ferrous metals is fine since you can turn the SS off. Dunno about plastic, however.

Where are you guys reading that it destroys the saw blade you are using? I don't know how the brake works but I guess it destroys several teeth on the blade, perhaps?

I think the FAQ is sorely lacking but I suppose if they get wind of this thread, they might update it?

[Warren White]

I hope this is taken in the spirit in which it is intended....

There is a lower cost, lower tech answer. My wife suggested this addition to my table saw:

[Cecil Arnold]

I think the SS is a little short of where our equipment needs to be and the price seems to be a bit much. We have seen very little in the way of safety improvements (and certinaly no real innovation) since the start of OHSA in 1970, which forced altogether too many quick and dirty fixes on the WW equipment manufacturing industry. I would make a small wager that the extra $5-700 for the SS represents a rather large insurance premieum per unit sold. The better dust collection shrowd, reeving knife, the addition of an overhead guard, and a more competetive price should sell saws. The addition of the blade stop, to me, represents added insurance that you always hope never to use. Unfortunately, my Jet CS is only two years old, and I'm still adding things to bring it up to where I feel it should be. Have the Bess. splitter and will be adding an overhead guard soon. Slightly off thread, I think manufacturers should consider ease of use for the devices they load us down with, the splitter is a case in point, as the stock item is a pain to use so I didn't and had a real attention getting kick back with some 1/4" ply. Just my opinion.

[Mike Cutler]

Chris. Nice thread you've started here, so I'll add my.02. I've been e-mailing with the Sawstop folks off and on for the last 18 months, about the availability of this machine. Personally I find this technology fascinating. My only hesitation is the question of long term survivorship of the company, not the actual operation of the safety device. The actual saw itself looks to be a Taiwanese made cabinet saw similar to many others on the market, so I would expect to get good results with the actual machine itself. The safety device works on the capacitance reactance principal, and the reaction time is in milliseconds. I wouldn't expect to do any damage to the saw itself in the instance of the safety system actuating, I believe that either the belts would spin on the pulley or the blade would spin on the arbor. It may damage the blade itself, but that is a small price to pay. I wonder how the safety system works with the CMT Teflon coated blades on the market. Is there enough insulative properties in the teflon coating to mitigate the operation of the safety system? As to the point of the dado stack/ additional braking device,I thought about it but it really isn't an issue for me. I do dado's on a router table, and will probably never do them on a TS again ( for me there is just no comarison in the quality of the dado, when it is done with a router vs a TS). As I stated, I like the machine but I worry about parts replacement down the road, not just for the safety system but for the saw itself. Overall is the machine worth it? I think it is. I view it as another device to be used along with splitters, blade guards, pushsticks, Grippers etc. So far for me my most serious accidents have all come from chisels, and the only TS "accident" I've ever had was when my hand slipped taking a blade off and one of the teeth caught my finger. Bled like a stuck pig for a few minutes and the TS wasn't even plugged in! Once again, Nice thread you've started here

[Frank Pellow]

I think its a clever idea and an interesting use of technology but I cannot say that I would ever trust it and also feel that it covers a risk that can be thoroughly managed without it.

There is a temptation to compare it to safety devices fitted to motor cars but the big difference for me is that in a car (automobile) I am protecting myself from me but also from other road users. With a table saw I am in sole charge of the process and therefore feel that I can manage the risks.

The other interesting thing for me is that the sawstop protects against a high severity, low probability risk - physical contact with the sawblade. With a tablesaw the higher probability risk is kickback, which can be largely managed with splitter/riving knife. These to me are significantly more important features but because they are not whizzbang technology they seem less impressive.

Bottom line - If I could add this level of protection for $50 I would. For $500 I probably wouldn't. Even if it was there I would never trust it to work and would still rely on my own actions for my own safety.

I agree completely with what Ian said. In addition, I would worry that, if I purchesed one of their saws, I might shortly be left with a $2,500 piece of equipment with no one to support it. I have exactly that situation with a computer that I purchased a year and a half ago and I don't want to repeat that fiasco.

I will be in the market for a cabinet saw next year and will probably purchase a General.

[Jason Roehl]

Where are you guys reading that it destroys the saw blade you are using? I don't know how the brake works but I guess it destroys several teeth on the blade, perhaps?

The brake is some sort of piston that slams into the spinning blade, at least that is what I recall from earlier discussions. I'm not sure whether the damage is primarily teeth, warpage or both, but to take a blade from 3000-4000rpms to 0 in a few milliseconds, you have to figure there will be damage. There's bound to be stress fractures, missing teeth, bends, who knows?

This gets me to thinking. What happens when someone decides to cut something, and, not wanting to mess up their good blade, throws on a cheap blade? Could a cheap blade shatter and provide projectiles if it were involved in an SS firing?

[Steven Wilson]

Ummmmm, did you look at the SawStop saw? It has a proper riving knife and detachable guard as well as the stopping mechanism. It also has a proper dust collection shroud.

Sure did. You can have a riving knife OR you can have a guard. Silly, plain silly. Mount the guard on the riving knife and get rid of those silly anti-kickback pawls which do nothing for kickback except make things worse.

[Bart Leetch]

How long before one of the big companies offers enough money to buy Saw-Stop out that the owner can't refuse getting rich. Then will it be shelved ?

[Ian MacDonald]

For example, you make a ripping cut and stop the motor (left knee against switch as is my routine). Then you reach across the blade to grab the stock but bump the blade with your finger. At this point the saw is "Off" and the blade is spinning with enough force to cause serious damage should a body part come into contact with the blade, but with the saw off, does the Saw Stop device still function?

I asked the inventor this same question. I was also curious how the device worked during a power failure. He indicated at the time that the device would operate correctly even after power was removed from the saw.

Regards,

-- Ian

[Bill Grumbine]

During the entire Saw Stop debacle I have been very vocal in opposing their initial marketing strategy, which was to impose this thing on us by government fiat. I even wrote the owner/inventor of the thing to express my opinion on the matter.

However, I applaud them for taking it to the marketplace. Personally I do not see the value. Yes, there is a value there, but is it a cost effective value? I do not think so, and so I would not buy one. However, if they get enough people to think so and buy one, then they have succeeded in the free market, which is the way it should be.

Bill

[Rich Konopka]

During the entire Saw Stop debacle I have been very vocal in opposing their initial marketing strategy, which was to impose this thing on us by government fiat. I even wrote the owner/inventor of the thing to express my opinion on the matter.

However, I applaud them for taking it to the marketplace. Personally I do not see the value. Yes, there is a value there, but is it a cost effective value? I do not think so, and so I would not buy one. However, if they get enough people to think so and buy one, then they have succeeded in the free market, which is the way it should be.

Bill

Bill:

If you look at the auto industry, innovative new features such as anti-lock brakes, Traction control, airbags, disc brakes, etc.. have always been introduced as options and then eventually became standard features. Mass market acceptance will push it into a mainstream feature.

If Saw Stop is technically successful, it has a finger saving chance of survival. All that it will take to be successful is a good writeup in FWW, Wood, Popular Woodworking, or SMC . If people are willing to pay for Pet Rocks, Chia Pets, George Foreman Grills (My Sister swears by it) , or any Ron Popeil gadget, then Saw Stop will succeed.

People are skeptical of Saw Stop and especially cost conscious. Jay St. Peter nailed it when he said:

In thinking about the cost, lots of people have spent $500 for a splitter and overhead guard.

I really think it is skeptism on whether it actually works and not really the cost. I sincerely hope that it succeeds and I will purchase it once I feel that Saw Stop is technically and financially sound.

Cheers