Another potential SawStop Competitor

[twistsol]

This is going to be an aftermarket add on for "most any tables aw" that also has a version to work with band saws. They appear to be in a crowdfunding stage right now but claim they'll be shipping products in the first half of 2021. The site is pretty slim on the details.

https://www.getsawshield.com/

[LCHIEN]

$349 pre production order price. Not cheap. At least it doesn't eat your sawblade.
But other than that I got no useful info out of that website.

[jussi]

Hope it does well. Competition is always good. There was another company that had a similar design a few years back. I never heard them getting past the prototype step however.

[capncarl]

I welcome competition and hope they come up with some good products. Accessing the problem, making a spinning saw blade safe, is almost an impossible problem. I can see how other attempts failed. I can’t remember where I read it, but I think I read the attempt to make the band saw safe is some kind of auto deploying blade guard. Totally different from the Saw Stop. Saw Stops solution was absolutely brilliant and was probably not invented by someone who had any concern for the outcome of the equipment. What better way to protect someone’s finger from a spinning blade than jamming a hunk of soft metal into the blade to instantly stop it! When Saw Stop first came out the thought of having to replace its cartridge and a destroyed blade seemed like a high price, but then the potential medical cost, time lost and discomfort added up to many many, times the cost of a cartridge and a blade.

[woodturner]

$349 pre production order price. Not cheap. At least it doesn't eat your sawblade.
But other than that I got no useful info out of that website.

But you still have to replace a $70 cartridge each time it trips :-(

My guess is that it is something like a disc brake caliper and squeezes the body of the blade to stop it, without contacting the teeth.

[LCHIEN]

But you still have to replace a $70 cartridge each time it trips :-(

My guess is that it is something like a disc brake caliper and squeezes the body of the blade to stop it, without contacting the teeth.

Better than a $100 cartridge and a $100 blade.
And the video clip shows it stopping the blade almost 1" shy of actual contact... That means its susceptible to unintended tripping.

[leehljp]

Since it has a proximity sensor, that would take a bit of experience to get used to the distance, but it sure looks feasible to me.

[twistsol]

I plan on buying a SawStop ore something with similar safety tech in the next couple of years as budget allows for it. I'm always curious about the concern for the cost of tripping a device like this. I would expect that most users never trip this safety system so the cost is irrelevant. If you are tripping it multiple times, then you've thrown basic safety to the wind and are depending on technology to keep you safe instead. It's very similar to people with 4 wheel drive who think they can safely drive 70MPH in a snow storm.

On the other hand, $200 to save a finger or my hand is a bargain. $200 on false positive activation would annoy me.

[woodturner]

I plan on buying a SawStop ore something with similar safety tech in the next couple of years as budget allows for it. I'm always curious about the concern for the cost of tripping a device like this. I would expect that most users never trip this safety system so the cost is irrelevant. If you are tripping it multiple times, then you've thrown basic safety to the wind and are depending on technology to keep you safe instead. It's very similar to people with 4 wheel drive who think they can safely drive 70MPH in a snow storm.

On the other hand, $200 to save a finger or my hand is a bargain. $200 on false positive activation would annoy me.

I know several people who have Sawstops and false trips are frequent. After the first couple of false trips I suspect most people turn off the safety feature. I don't think any of them keep it on any more.

Personally, I would rather use the guards on the saw and follow good practices to be safe. I've never met anyone who was injured by a saw and was using the guards. The problem seem to be that people take off the guards, and I suspect people who would take off the guards are also likely to disable the safety feature.

[Slik Geek]

Shark Guard protects me really well - and no false trips!