Here we go, CPSC wants safer table saws

[Richard in Smithville]

Just wondering here.....how long would the patent for SS technology be exclusive to Mr Gass? Can the technology eventually become open to any manufactorer or is that too far down the road?

[Cochese]

Twenty years after 1995. So I'd say we have around ten years left on the original patent.

[Richard in Smithville]

So what are the odds that everything will bounce around in red tape until the technology becomes widely available and it will become cheaper?

[Cochese]

I think that depends on how long the current chair is in office, which is directly related to the upcoming election.

[woodturner]

Really inexpensive saws, like the one in the Ryobi lawsuit, just can't reasonably take the stress of a near immediate blade stop.

I don't think that is the case - essentially any saw is "strong enough". The Sawstop mechanism experiences some stress, but it really isn't transmitted to the saw frame.

Others may be right, we may not see this implemented until the patent (and inevitable extension) expire, but I think we will see this on all saws for a minimal cost increase, if any.

[carlh6902]

...The other technology eliminates those added costs, so let's drop the appendages excuse...

What other technology? Whirlwind?? It remains to be seen that this will offer any tangible protection at all, what with its stated blade-stopping times of 1/8 to a full second. Plus, most blade contacts happen when no guard is employed. And the last time I looked, the Whirlwind is a guard. Those who remove guards would not use this big ol' guard either.

Carl

[carlh6902]

Cost of Sawstop

Just out of curiosity, does anyone know why SawStop is so expensive? I've that that using the technology basically requires the tolerances of a high end tablesaw, and therefore while the actual SawStop tech isn't too expensive, it can only be built into a high end saw. I've also heard that since they don't sell that many that economies of scale haven't kicked in.

Just my opinion, but here goes:

Sawstop is expensive for two reasons:

1) The arbor and associated parts of this saw are massively over-engineered, compared to a similar saw without the safety brake. This is needed to tolerate the impacts that braking puts on the mechanism. Without this, things would bend, fatigue, and might eventually fracture while running. This would be really bad for Gass (talk about your lawsuits).

2) Gass knows that their is a limited time to get the Sawstop brand established. He decided to make a darn good saw, which includes his safety mechanism. Had he just made a mediocre saw, with his brake on it, then the Sawstop brand would be next to worthless once his patents expire, and every manufacturer can compete equally. As it is now, it will be a darn nice saw, with the safety brake, competing with the run-of-the-mill models of other manufacturers, with their answers to his mechanism, when the patents expire.

Oh, and a third thing that comes to mind, some of the cost no doubt goes to cover future lawsuits, if and when a brake fails to protect the user.

Carl

[jussi]

I don't think that is the case - essentially any saw is "strong enough". The Sawstop mechanism experiences some stress, but it really isn't transmitted to the saw frame.

Others may be right, we may not see this implemented until the patent (and inevitable extension) expire, but I think we will see this on all saws for a minimal cost increase, if any.

Then where would all that energy go to if not the frame? 4000 rpm to 0 in less than second seems like alot of force for a jobsite saw to absorb.

[LCHIEN]

First of all everyone should want safer saws - I can say enough people are injured there's a lot of room for improvement.

Concerning saws being "strong enough" I don't think a $200-300 saw being sacrificed when a $100 module and a $20- to $100 blade are sacrificed already is an issue. Whether its $100 or $400 lost when tripped, that still pales in comparison with the typical $10K to $20K for hospital treatment, not even including the loss to your personal life and professional life.

concerning the royalty - I understand Gass still demands 8% of the sales price of the saw meaning for a BT3000 class saw it would run $24 for the royalty and for a $2-3K PM2000 or Unisaw it might reach $160-$240. Plus the modules bought from Sawstop would run wholesale maybe $40-50 each saw. You could imagine the higher royalty fees for more expensive saws compensate for the fact that they are used more.

The cost to the end user per saw being anywhere from about $75 to $300. Lets weight it more heavily to more plentiful cheap saws and say the average user cost will be $100.

On a strict accounting basis, then if medical costs are $20K per incident then the breakeven point is when the lifetime of the saw risk of getting injured is around 1 in 200.

One site claims 60,000 injuries per year, 3000 amputations per year.
I'm going to assume that 300,000,000 citizens the average household is 4 for 75 million households. Guessing wildly, maybe 1 in 10 households has a usable table saw - 7.5 million saws in the US. Lets allow another 2.5 million saws in industrial/commercial use for 10 million saws.

60,000 accidents per year for 10 million saws - that's 1 in 166
But for amputations, 1 of 3333

lets say amputations are $20K accidents and the remainder - 57,000 are $5000 accidents. $345 million per year.

Given a ten year life of a saw, that's 3.5 billion divided by 10 million saws in use every year about $345 per saw. So $100 per saw is not an unreasonable economic tradeoff - it makes lots of sense.

So where does that 3.5 billion come from now??? Medical insurance.
IS medical insurance going to go down when the safety devices are installed on all new saws and over tens years the majority old saws get replaced or scrapped? I'll bet yuou don't see a dime of it. Nonetheless, its probably a good thing for society. But them so are motorcycle helmets, which we can't seem to decide if they are infringing on personal freedom or not.

[Cochese]

I'd be much more interested in knowing how many passes are made in a year without incident.

[cabinetman]

I'd be much more interested in knowing how many passes are made in a year without incident.

Those don't cost anybody anything.

.

[Cochese]

My point. No substitute for good safety practices and so many of us do that each and every day.

[mpc]

A spinning blade & arbor is basically a light flywheel - how long does the blade coast to a stop when the saw is turned OFF? Stopping it instantly from a few thousand RPM converts that rotational momentum into some other forces/moments. The Saw Stop relies on that rotational energy - it is used to help quickly move the blade downwards, into the saw body if I understand it correctly. The guts of the saw have to be strong enough to survive this jolt - otherwise the blade could exit the saw some other way... and that would defeat the safety purpose. Or the guts could break when the Saw Stop module activates resulting in the blade not getting yanked down at all... The saw guts don't have to be beefed up enough to survive this energy undamaged - though it'd be nice if they were (less to repair). They guts do have to be strong enough though to control where the blade + Saw Stop brake module end up. Saws like the BT3 might not be strong enough to meet this requirement.

The CPSC is supposed to watch for items on the market that aren't as safe as they should be, or could reasonably be. It becomes a question of "what is reasonable?" Is the Saw Stop technology a) effective and b) justified on a cost/benefit ratio - or could that cost be better spent elsewhere? From a lawyer's product liability viewpoint (when a company is sued, often the argument is "this failure or this safety issue is something your company should easily have been able to foresee... why didn't you design to mitigate it?") once a safety improvement is generally "known" (as Saw Stop is now, and was once Gass showed it to manufacturers) then any accidents that it might have affected are "foreseeable" and thus potential lawsuits. When the CPSC decides new regulations are appropriate, my concern is "how" the regulations are written:
a) manufacturers shall provide a means to prevent xxxx from happening (or to at least substantially reduce the chances)
or ... and this is what I fear will happen...
b) Saws built after 2012 must include device yyyy. (such as Saw Stop mechanisms)

"a" lets manufacturers come up with their own ideas. Maybe a saw that is covered more - so you can't get hands in there at all? A different way of detecting hands/fingers in contact with the blade? "b" locks designs to one solution, limits innovation, and future saw designs may be restricted because they're forced to include device yyyy even though yyyy doesn't apply to that new saw style. Imagine if car laws said "you will include a steering wheel airbag in all automobiles" - even if future cars did away with the steering wheel by using joystick controllers. Does that mean a dummy steering wheel has to be installed?

mpc

[woodturner]

The guts of the saw have to be strong enough to survive this jolt - otherwise the blade could exit the saw some other way... and that would defeat the safety purpose.

The point I was making earlier in the thread is that there isn't much of a "jolt" - it's just not much energy to dissipate. If we run the calculations, we find that the stress of startup is comparable and therefore that the existing saw mechanism is strong enough.

Imagine if car laws said "you will include a steering wheel airbag in all automobiles"

No imagination necessary - airbags have been mandatory since 1998.

In 1998, FMVSS 208 was amended to require dual front airbags

[Eagan]

Disposable Table Saw

Seems easy to me.

A cheap table saw with SawStop technology might cost 299 instead of 99. If it goes off, you'll have to pay 150 for a new blade and brake. (Or did you buy a really good blade for this thing?)

If I had to pay 150 to get a cheap saw working again, I think I'm more likely to just trash it and get a new one. (Heck, it was a piece of junk BEFORE it instandly stopped a blade - no telling what's left of it afterwards)

Me, I hope someone comes up with a cheaper alternative. But I really like my fingers; I've grown quite attached to them.