I'm curious ... did the demonstrator actually wet his hands before doing the SawStop demo?rbursek wrote:I usually am the devils advocate. Just last week saw a saw stop demonstration. It is base on conductivity, a salty hot dog, wet hands. I worked at a major electrical producing utility, depend on what you did and exposure to electricity, they tested/measured your bodys conductivity!!! Everyones is different. What about when the air is dry and your skin is too as in fall and winter, and a shop full of air born dust? When do you take personal responsibility for yourself? Depending on the Saw Stop, and if it fails??? Then what, you call Huebby and Abrams?
Not to many baby boomers or the X generation buying WW equipment, just whatch CL and it is full of the older Boomers selling it off, as they retire to the condo in the South, The Xers can barely make there mortgages, with 2 kids, a Harley and no time for anything. I just bought 4 SS, 2 with jointers, one with a band saw, belt sander and 6" jointer SS cone, a free standing 6"x 52" jointer, a Delta floor TS, and a 12" band saw, for a total of 1200.00, and have about 200.00 into them and 100 of that was for bearings and belts on the Greenie. Yes, at the moment I am jointer fat!!
I dont believe the sale # of Saw Stop. You can d0 anything with #s. In the late 60s, early 70s, I believe it was Yale, previously an all male university. Head lines read, " 33% of female coeds at Yale are pregnant out of wedlock" 3 paragraphs into the article they mentioned there were only 3 female coeds registered at Yale. That makes one pregnant!!! They did not lye, but sure exploited it.
The SawStop marketing materials that I've seen oversimply the sensor technology, quite possibly contributing to the concerns about its reliability. An article in AutomationWorld confirmed that it's actually a capacitive sensor, like the iPad touchscreen that I'm typing this on. The sensor triggers when it detects the capacitance of a human body. Skin conductivity is much less critical than it would be with resistive sensor. The hot dog in used in a demo is functioning as a capacitive stylus -- an ordinary stylus will not work with my iPad.
A digital signal processor analyzes the sensor signal to try and discriminate between body contact and wet wood. That's got to be the tricky part. It would take actual test results to convince me that wet wood won't give false triggers.
But then again, would I really care if I couldn't cut fresh pressure-treated lumber on my expensive table saw? I probably use a different saw for that job in any case.
