Stop Saw news

[Ed in Tampa]

I don't agree that the mandating of seat belts and airbags are in the same category.

Keeping within our automotive theme, government regulations requiring Saw Stop technology would be comparable to requiring that all automobiles be fitted with breathalyzers that must be blown into periodically to start and keep a car running. Blood analyzers to ensure the driver isn't under the influence of other chemicals. How about a series of of other tests to ensure the driver isn't sleepy, is in a calm mood, in good health, both mind and body?

In the end people who deliberately refuse to use the correct safety equipment and procedures must be responsible for their actions. The manufacturers are responsible for building a safe product that will perform to specifications, not for the actions of idiots. Otherwise we might as well hang it up, tools are dangerous, the only way to legislate out every possible way to do some damage is to ban them all.

This isn't about safety, it is nothing more than yet another case of greed and one man's willingness to say or do whatever is necessary to build a fortune.

Troy

Troy
I disagree Sawstop technology does not intrude into your personal being as do some of the things you mentioned. Which incidentially I tend to favor. Drunk driving and drug use is against the law and I believe anything that helps detect people committing those crimes is good.

Back to the Sawstop. It would be like mandating air bags to be in all cars when one company has patented the concept of air bags. The have patented the detection circuitry, they have patented the air bag deployment technology and they have patented the air bag construction.

In effect that is what Gass has done. And because he holds patents that I think were probably incorrectly issued he has a monopoly on technology he is trying to legislate into existence.

It would be like Edison inventing the light bulb and after people decided they didn't want one, having Edison going to congress and trying to get them to pass the law that for the safety of everyone all home owners must have at least one light bulb in every room, one outside their house in the front and one in back. Along with motion sensors for lights on the side of their houses.

All good ideas but not something we want to the Government to tell us we have to do.

[algale]

Funny that nobody ever seems to get worked up riving knives. The manufacturers and CPSC got together and decided that riving knives would be required equipment on all new table saws so now you can't buy a new table saw that doesn't have a riving knife, even though this must increase the cost of every table saw sold to some degree, this cost is presumably passed on to us, the users, and thus enriches the manufacturers who got together with CPSC to create this standard. While the riving knife standard is called a "voluntary" standard because it was proposed by the major industry players, it is really only voluntary to the manufacturers themselves. Even if you can work perfectly safely without a riving knife (as many woodworkers have done and still do) by using other responsible safety alternative such as splitters (some saws don't even have these, and still can be used safely) or push sticks or featherboards, you have lost the "freedom" to buy a saw that does not come equiped with a riving knife. Since this never seems to raise anybody's hackles i can only think of two reasons that make riving knives different from blade stopping technology. The first is cost. Of course, nobody will really know how much more table saws will cost with the inclusion of blade stopping technology on an industry-wide basis because right now only one small company is offering it and presumably costs would come down if the big boys all started obtaining the necessary components in bulk. The second difference I can see between the riving knives and blade stopping technology is that Gass is the only guy to have gotten one into the market and he has patents that may require the manufacturer's to license his technology. Everybody says this is reprehensible. But why? If it was perfectly ok for manufacturers to get together as a group and get the CPSC to issue standards requiring riving knives that the manufacturers get to charge us for and get to keep 100% of the profit, why is it reprehensible bottom feeding conduct for one manufacturer to get the CPSC to impose a different safety device standard where the costs still get passed on to us the users, but the manufacturers then have to pay a portion of the profits realized from the new safety device back to the inventor in the form of a royalty? I see no serious difference in the principles involved. In both cases, "freedom" is being taken away from somebody (the consumers in both cases; the manufacturers and the consumers in the other). But why are some people jumping to the defense of the manufacturers in the blade stopping technology case, when those same manufacturers took away your freedom (and charged you for the favor) in the riving knife example.

[dusty]

As I have already stated, it was not reprehensible until Gass began to take action with the government to make the technology mandatory for all table saws while he held control of all the patents and demanded a cut for himself.

If he had just registered all of his patents, built and marketed his SawStop, in competition with the other manufacturers, and let the market place take control - all would have been great.

Using the government, as he is reported to have done, to gain the upper hand in that manner is what I consider reprehensible.

I have viewed and tested the SawStop. It is a great tool. I would love to have a Unisaw but if I had been offered a SawStop in the right manner I might have given it serious consideration. Not now. The only way I would consider a SawStop in my shop is when Gass elects to give me one just to appease me.

[algale]

Yes, but why is that different than the other manufacturers getting together and using the government to impose a requirement that we buy riving knives (or their new blade guard) and getting all of us to pay for it and getting all that money for themselves? Why is one person using its monopoly power and the power of the government to impose a safety requirement that will allow it to make some money off of other manufacturers and us consumers ethically worse than an entire industry working in unison (something that restrains free trade just as much as a monopoly) to get the government to impose a safety requirement that will allow all of them to make money of us consumers?

I just don't see an ethical difference that makes Gass trying to get a blade stopping technology mandate worse than the Power Tool Institute consortia successfully getting riving knife/blade guard mandates that they have designed. Both Gass and PTI are using the government to make money off of us and will eliminate choice in what safety equipment we buy.

[dusty]

Yes, but why is that different than the other manufacturers getting together and using the government to impose a requirement that we buy riving knives (or their new blade guard) and getting all of us to pay for it and getting all that money for themselves? Why is one person using its monopoly power and the power of the government to impose a safety requirement that will allow it to make some money off of other manufacturers and us consumers ethically worse than an entire industry working in unison (something that restrains free trade just as much as a monopoly) to get the government to impose a safety requirement that will allow all of them to make money of us consumers?

I just don't see an ethical difference that makes Gass trying to get a blade stopping technology mandate worse than the Power Tool Institute consortia successfully getting riving knife/blade guard mandates that they have designed. Both Gass and PTI are using the government to make money off of us and will eliminate choice in what safety equipment we buy.

I don't know that anyone said there was an ethical difference between the two sets of circumstances that you present. BUT, is there a move on by someone who stands to gain from the existence of a riving knife or splitter. More specifically, is there someone working to convince the CPSC to make riving knives (or anything else) mandatory while an individual holds all the patents for those items.

Just a thought in passing! How long has Shopsmith offered saw guards and a riving knife and an upper blade guard? I think for as long as SHOPSMITH, INC has been selling the Mark V, i.e. for ever.

[algale]

I don't know that anyone said there was an ethical difference between the two sets of circumstances that you present. BUT, is there a move on by someone who stands to gain from the existence of a riving knife or splitter. More specifically, is there someone working to convince the CPSC to make riving knives (or anything else) mandatory while an individual holds all the patents for those items.

Just a thought in passing! How long has Shopsmith offered saw guards and a riving knife and an upper blade guard? I think for as long as SHOPSMITH, INC has been selling the Mark V, i.e. for ever.

Interesting question, Dusty. Let's stick with just the riving knife example. The manufacturers who make up PTI (who have the largest market share of saws on the market in the US) did want and did get CPSC to put the riving knife standard that they wrote into effect. Did they (PTI) stand to gain from the riving knife standard? I can't say with certainty, but I can think of at least one reason why this was advantageous to them. If it was left to the individual manufacturer whether to introduce riving knives on all their saws, the companies that decided to put the new riving knives on their saws would potentially find themselves at a competitive disadvantage if even one company elected not to put a new riving knife on their saws. That is because PTI consortia members retooling their saw designs to include the new riving knives would have greater expenses bringing those newly designed saws to market than a manufacturer who decided not to retool and to continue to offer saws with older designs, such as one that included only a splitter. That is because the average Joe buying a table saw might say, why pay $X more for these saw with the new-fangled riving knife when I can pay $X less for a saw with a good old fashioned splitter which I know is good enough for me because I am safety conscious already and know how to use push sticks and feather boards. By getting CPSC to adopt a riving knife standard, PTI could be sure everyone would be offering a riving knife and would likely have similar expenses in retooling their saws to accommodate a riving knife. Thus, they could be sure to recoup their expenses from the saw buying public instead of just leaving individual companies to make the investment in riving knife technology in the hope that consumers would see the benefit of the improved safety design and buy the more expensive saws with riving knives. So all the PTI folks benefited from getting mandatory riving knives on all new saws because they guaranteed a return on their investment rather than leaving it to the market.

[JPG]

There is little difference between a monopoly(GASS) getting the government to mandate a product and an oligopoly(PTI) doing the same thing(IMHO).

Comparing the costs of riving knife to saw stop is like comparing apple seeds to apple trees. Not on the same scale!

In the sawstop case, the existence of a single patented design adhering to the 'requested' mandate alters the balance. I do not believe the riving knife requested 'mandate' involved a single design, but was a more general requirement that was met by each individual manufacturer's unique design.

[chucks]

Funny that nobody ever seems to get worked up riving knives.

What's so funny? That is something that has already happened, that we today do not have a say in... The Saw stop question is different. It should be debated on it's merits..not by arguing about other topics.

[dusty]

This discussion is no different than many we engage in here on the forum. There is much we (the forum as a whole) do not know about what is going on in the manufacturing arena.

The riving knife is an example. Riving knives are much more prevalent now than they were a couple years ago. The rules have changed somewhere. I say this because I believe Shopsmith was driven to produce the new riving knife. I do not believe that they just thought it would be a nice thing for all of us to have. If the profit margin was greater you might convince me they did it for that reason. The profit margin a a couple bucks per item. Not enough to cover engineering and documentation costs to say nothing of start up manufacturing costs.

Back to SawStop. Does anyone know if the buzz at CPSC involves only new equipment manufactured after some (yet to be defined) manufacturing date OR are they proposing a mandatory retrofit or prohibition of existing equipment AND are they talking only about table saws in commercial shops?

[kalynzoo]

There are multiple sides to the arguments regarding the forced adoption of the SawStop technology. In the drug industry, a widely used, life saving or changing drug may have been on the market for many years with few if any complications. When the drug becomes generic (in public domain) suddenly a new and improved brand drug is submitted and approved. Strangely, the FDA may suddenly find the older drug has a major problem requiring withdrawal from the market. Yes, it has happened.
Currently there are probably hundreds of SawStop units in use, just a guess. What will happen when thousands are in use and one or more fails. The user, now relying on advanced technology for safety, uses less common sense, since "the tool will protect me."
Have you noticed that cars do not yet have radar assist braking, even though the technology is available.
Personally I have greater faith in a free market economy. A better product, at a reasonable price, making its use cost effective in reducing the risk.
Then again, if insurance companies start evaluating and rating woodworking systems, and base rates accordingly, perhaps others will find different ways to create work safe environments.
JMHO