Griggio makes a slider with “Safety System”.
I think a slider with that system is way overkill. My hands are never close to the blade with a slider. With clamps and or a Fritz &Franz jig the tiniest of pieces of wood can be cut with your hands miles away from the blade.
Thank you.
The sliding saw hot dog demo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HmMKyZlcMM
Simon
In my case it was the slider mechanism that resulted in the board that I was holding flipping over and putting my hand into the blade.
I was nowhere near the blade but the flipping board jerked my hand sideways into the blade. I will admit that I was doing something that was not correct but it was a new machine and I just did something that I had done on a different machine many times.
So even a slider can bite you if you get complacent.
My experience is that the initial patent must be renewed at 3, 7 and 11 years until at the 20 year mark, you can no longer claim exclusive rights. Each renewal is more expensive than the previous one. I was getting small royalties on my patent until well after it expired.
NOW you tell me...
Sawstop technology is nothing new. It's a spring loaded blade brake operated by GFI circuitry. GFI circuitry that was developed because of government regulations.
I agree with this 100%.
I don't think my table saw is anywhere near being the most dangerous tool in my shop. In close to 60 years of working with tools I have had a lot of injuries and the vast majority were from hand tools or handheld power tools. I have never in all that time had a table saw related injury.
Looking back on my injuries, I found that failure to use clamps or a vice or putting hands too close to clamped work pieces accounted for the overwhelming majority of my injuries. When that finally sunk in and I did better at not holding work pieces when using sharp tools my injuries became pretty rare.
Each brake has a 32-bit processor. The algorithm to process the signal is not trivial. Don't entirely minimize their engineering as trivial and nothing new.
A copyright applies to the specific code, not to the idea. Another person can start from scratch, write code that does exactly the same thing, and not violate the copyright. In essence, copyright protects against copying the work. That applies to a book as well as software code.
In no way would that prevent another company from doing the exact same thing that SawStop does. A patent, however, protects the concept. If someone did the exact same thing, the patent owner could assert against that person or company.
Mike
[A copyright would probably be of little use because Festool is not going to let anyone outside of the company see the code.]
Last edited by Mike Henderson; 02-23-2018 at 10:47 AM.
Go into the world and do well. But more importantly, go into the world and do good.
There are many, many situations where companies have produced alternatives to very complex systems. For example, many people produce WiFi (802.11) products. The complexity of 802.11 is mind boggling. People are smart. If one person can do it, another can. And the implementations from different companies not only have to work, they have to work with each other. And that's a more complex problem.
Compared to 802.11, I imagine the software to detect a finger touching the blade is pretty trivial.
Mike
[Another example, not as well known, is SONET. It is exceedingly complex and yet multiple companies produce working (and interworking) products.]
[What may happen is that a semiconductor company (probably in China) will make chips that implement the SawStop safety feature (after the patents expire) and sell those chips to the companies who make table saws. That would make sense because it would only require one company to make the investment to build the "system", rather than every table saw company having to do it. That model is used in WiFi where several companies make WiFi chips and many companies make consumer products with WiFi in them by purchasing the chips.]
Last edited by Mike Henderson; 02-23-2018 at 10:48 AM.
Go into the world and do well. But more importantly, go into the world and do good.
Ya know Pat was talking about apples and oranges, don't you?
Just because something else is more fatal or more dangerous does not mean government regulations on better safety is wrong. With that kind of logic, we don't even need any warning labels on ANY products.
Any product that is made safer (due to government regulations or not) is a good thing. If the industry does not act or acts only for its own interest, the government has to step in. Riving knives, like seat belts, smoking hazard label warning etc. are good examples. Why not mandatory finger-saving features when the patents expire?
Simon
Simon