As I recall, Steve Gass, the inventor of Sawstop first attempted to license his technology to existing table saw companies but was met with indifference - either from cost concerns or because having a safety technology on some of their saws would open up a company to liability for their other saws. He reportedly had a tentative agreement with Ryobi, but the company wanted him to assume all liability for any malfunction or other deficiency in the mechanism, even though Ryobi was going to be manufacturing the mechanism, and talks eventually fell through.
At at this point Gass founded his own company and began manufacturing saws himself. At some point, he began lobbying for tighter safety rules to require the technology. Not surprisingly, the industry and its lobbying group fought this quite hard. Again, there are those who say it was strictly a financial opposition and others who argue that they opposed it due to liability concerns. Regardless, they eventually defeated the proposal, but in the process agreed to start making riving knives, blade guards and other safety equipment standard.
At this point, I don't know if Gass is still open to licensing his technology or not. If he is, and cost was truly the concern by the other manufacturers, presumably having two similar technologies would drive the cost down. I have a suspicion that the cost argument was simply a ruse and that the real concern of the saw manufacturers was one of legal liability, in which case we are no more likely to see a Powermatic saw with a Bosch mechanism than with a Sawstop mechanism. Someone mentioned a successful lawsuit in an earlier post. If that is true, that would likely do more to make the technology available than anything else.
The last I read, the legal issues between Bosch and Sawstop were ongoing, so the long term availability of the Reaxx saw may still be in question. I haven't used or even seen in person the Reaxx saw. I did own a Bosch 4100 saw and while it was in general a good saw, I had a difficult time keeping the riving knife and to a lesser extent the fence alligned with the blade. The Irving knife was a major issue, since it would move out of alignment with the blade on a regular basis and cause the wood to either bind between the knife and the fence, or pull the wood away from the fence and towards the blade, both of which were safety concerns. because of this and the fact that a hand injury could be financially devistating to me I sold the saw and purchased a saw stop cabinet saw. It's not a fair comparison, but there is no comparison and I couldn't be happier.
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Originally Posted by Clint DeBoer
