Human finger in Saw Stop

[ERLover]

Ed, I agree, heck I lost a molar a year ago,

If that was a tablesaw accident, I want to hear all about it![/quote]

No it was bad tooth.

[JPG]

I posted not because of the virtue of the SawStop but because here is someone crazy enough to stick his finger into a turning saw blade. Imagine just for a moment if the SawStop unit was defective he probably would have lost a good chunk of finger.
No manufacturing is 100% perfect 100% of the time, that could have been the one failure.

Details, details, details!!!!

Gass did NOT stick his finger into the blade, he gently touched it from the side.

He is not a complete idiot!

[Ed in Tampa]

I posted not because of the virtue of the SawStop but because here is someone crazy enough to stick his finger into a turning saw blade. Imagine just for a moment if the SawStop unit was defective he probably would have lost a good chunk of finger.
No manufacturing is 100% perfect 100% of the time, that could have been the one failure.

Details, details, details!!!!

Gass did NOT stick his finger into the blade, he gently touched it from the side.

He is not a complete idiot!

The status of his mental acuity can be debated . I don't hold much hope for anyone that would stick his finger anywhere near the teeth of a spinning saw blade.
My opinion he values money over the well being of his finger.

[JPG]

I posted not because of the virtue of the SawStop but because here is someone crazy enough to stick his finger into a turning saw blade. Imagine just for a moment if the SawStop unit was defective he probably would have lost a good chunk of finger.
No manufacturing is 100% perfect 100% of the time, that could have been the one failure.

Details, details, details!!!!

Gass did NOT stick his finger into the blade, he gently touched it from the side.

He is not a complete idiot!

The status of his mental acuity can be debated . I don't hold much hope for anyone that would stick his finger anywhere near the teeth of a spinning saw blade.
My opinion he values money over the well being of his finger.

You are ignoring 'apparent*' facts.

No skin was broken in the making of that video.

A lot of editing took place afterwards though.*

[BuckeyeDennis]

I posted not because of the virtue of the SawStop but because here is someone crazy enough to stick his finger into a turning saw blade. Imagine just for a moment if the SawStop unit was defective he probably would have lost a good chunk of finger.
No manufacturing is 100% perfect 100% of the time, that could have been the one failure.

Details, details, details!!!!

Gass did NOT stick his finger into the blade, he gently touched it from the side.

He is not a complete idiot!

In my opinion he is an idiot. Would you touch the side of the teeth of a spinning saw blade?
I wouldn't because I'm not an idiot.

Then I must be an idiot!

I think I recall reading recently that SawStop is now the best-selling cabinet saw in America. That video was a very powerful piece of marketing, and it undoubtedly helped propel SawStop to #1. So if I were Glass, and I was 99.9% sure that the technology would work, I'd do exactly what he did. Even if the technology failed, he wasn't risking serious injury.

IMHO, that kind of marketing is exactly what Glass should be doing, instead of attempting to use the judicial system to circumvent the free market.

[ERLover]

From I have read over the last few years, Insurance companies have driven commercial shops to go to Saw Stop table saws, that is what has driven there sales.

[algale]

IMHO, that kind of marketing is exactly what Glass should be doing, instead of attempting to use the judicial system to circumvent the free market.

I promised myself I wasn't going to get into anymore SawStop debates, but I can't let that one go, Buckeye! Whatever you think of Gass' anti-free market actions, the other manufacturers are not exactly paragons of the free market either.

Allow me to explain. Gass has filed an anti-trust lawsuit against the members of the Power Tool Institute (PTI), claiming PTI members formed an illegal conspiracy in restraint of trade to prevent Gass' technology from getting to the marketplace.

The factual basis for this anti-trust suit is Gass' allegation that the PTI manufacturers got together and threatened to kick Ryobi out of PTI if Ryobi went ahead and honored an agreement Ryobi was about to sign with Gass to incorporate his technology into their saws. If that allegation is proven true, the PTI members will have illegally circumvented the free market system at least as much as Gass, if not more.

In the long run, none of this matters very much, in my opinion. We end-users may think this is a fight over the free market or choice or freedom but, really, the fight is over money. As it usually is.

SawStop is currently eating the other manufacturers' lunch. Ultimately, the other manufacturers will either figure out how to invalidate and/or circumvent Gass' patents (and there's a patent suit right now over that very issue), or they will license his technology. All the manufacturers will then begin putting some form of skin-sensing, blade stopping technology in all their saws (and charging us end users).

Then, to protect themselves from being undersold by newcomers who might try to sell saws without the technology, PTI will go to CPSC and insist on a new safety standard incorporating some kind of skin-sensing, blade-braking safety performance standard -- just like Gass has tried to do (unsuccessfully so far). And once PTI is on board, CPSC WILL issue the safety standard rules PTI wants because that's what CPSC always does -- it basically let's the big manufacturers decide what the safety standards should be.

I figure that's 15-20 years down the pike given the usual length of anti-trust/patent litigation. But mark my words: You will wake up one day and every saw at Home Depot and everywhere else will have some form of this technology. Just like every car today has an airbag. Hardly anyone remembers how the auto industry fought mandatory airbags for years (successfully) arguing it was too expensive and it was a matter of choice for the buyer. Once the auto-manufacturers decided it was a good marketing feature, they all offered it, relaxed their opposition and got the safety standards changed to make it mandatory (thus protecting themselves from being undersold). Now you can't buy a new passenger vehicle without them.

[BuckeyeDennis]

Well, considering that I even mangled Gass' name, I'm going to plead relative ignorance on the judicial issues, and defer to the legal expert. I really only had a strong opinion regarding Gass' injury risk vs. marketing reward, from putting his fingertip in harm's way.

In any case, market forces will ultimately prevail. Even the insurance-company pressure that ERLover mentions is just another market force, convoluted though it may be. Their actuaries presumably calculate a reduction in claim costs for shops using SawStops, and price their premiums accordingly. If it's less expensive for the shop owner to buy new SawStops than to pay for insurance on conventional saws, then he or she would be an idiot not to buy SawStops. I don't see this as "pressure", it's just Business 101. As a side benefit, it produces a healthy supply of perfectly good used cabinet saws, for us amateurs to buy on the cheap!

[ERLover]

algale,
I cant dispute anything you said, I dont have that knowledge of the subject that you have, and BD has a good point too, and I bet the lawyers and acuariars will figure it out and drive the market.
Now to my point, for air bags, it was the insurance companies that drove that, just like the auto industry fought mandatory seat belts, until the insurance companies put the pressure on them, same thing with mandatory driving lights on now. I dont have numbers on the things I just stated with out searching them and I am watching the Laugh Show right now, but I am sure, seat belts, air bags and 24 hour on driving lights have save accidents and lives, just like if it goes mandatory for Saw Stop technology, but the consumer pays for it at the end of the day.

[Ed in Tampa]

Not to advance the Saw Stop discussion I will make my prediction of what the future will bring.

I think in the very near future commercial shops will stop using table saws. They will switch to CNC machines, panel saws, guided saw systems.p, enclosed milling machines.

Eventually manufactures of table saws will stop making them. The home hobbist will use track saws, CNC machines, Bandsaws to rip wood.

Wood product manufactures will use remote operated enclosed saws to accomplish their cutting needs and/or CNC.

Construction contractors will be forced to go to guided saw systems by the increased cost of their insurance. If they keep a table saw it will be small unit easy to transport that Insurance companies will demand non removable safety shields, or technology similar to saw stop. Very expensive compared to guided saw system.