Slashdot Mirror
Skin Sensing Table Saw
killabrew writes "Check out this article from Design News about a new skin sensing table saw technology that is on the verge of becoming a mandatory piece of hardware on every table saw. For years inventor Stephen Gass persevered in the face of legal, corporate and technical foes, he is forcing society to rethink its acceptance of saw blade accidents."
I want to order one.
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/06/3 0/131241
Which was probably duped again earlier.
Quick, go steal some +5 comments from that one!
Something tells me the next one will be G rated.
Where were you when the voynix came?
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/06/3 0/131241
At first I was very wary of reading the article, thinking how could it possibly sense that? Then I watched the video... very very nifty it barely cut into the hotdog they used as a test. Now, I would think this technology would be VERY welcome in all industries where moving parts like saw blades, robotics etc are used... Why wouldn't they want to embrace safety technology like this?
-- Josh
"Whoopie! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that's a long one for me!" - Pete Conrad
Here is a writeup of the saw's debut at the International Woodworking Machinery & Furniture Supply Fair (2000). I remember reading this back in 2000 thinking "great idea, but I wonder if it'll ever get adopted". Glad to see it's gaining traction - the table saw is the only piece of equipment in my shop that I'm nervous around.
Now if they can solve kick-back, I'll be a tablesaw fiend.
>> "What would the robut do? Frame someone!"
> For years inventor Stephen Gass persevered in the face of legal,
> corporate and technical foes, he is forcing society to rethink
> its acceptance of saw blade accidents."
Proof of why this technology is needed: the above sentence was horribly, tragically mangled in a comma splicing accident.
I saw this on TV a few years ago. It was amazing. He was using hotdogs as test subjects. He would have a hotdog on a piece of wood and be cutting the piece of wood, and evertyime there was even the slightest touch of the hotdog to the blade the whole thing would shutdown. It was pretty amazing.
Bret: "I only got a scratch from the blade, but I broke my foot when the whole table saw flipped over."
At first, I thought it would be a table saw that can sense our skins. That caused me to imagine what would happen to me in the wrong way with the table saw. That's a bad headline for the story.
Is this the one where the demo shows the weiner about to get lopped off?
This guy's the limit!
It looks like it couldn't stop the slashdot buzzsaw - it cut straight through their server.
"What do you think?" "I think 'What, do you think?!'"
This is one place I certainly approve of it. Hopefully this will also be added to devices such as bandsaws, routers, circular saws, etc. I enjoy woodworking/construction when I do it, but I tend to try to find ways to get the same type of cuts with hand-tools, so that I don't have to handle powertools. This is a really great step forward.
the more accurate the calculations became, the more the concepts tended to vanish into thin air. R. S. Mulliken
five or ten years later when the wiring for the mechanism fails and little Johnny Jr. cuts off his finger? Because you know it will come to that.
And if it is so great and reliable, why are they using hot dogs and not this guys hand?
Finally, they never show wet wood. We have to cut wet lumber sometimes. Does that make any difference with this mechanism?
Gone are the days of charming high school wood-shop teachers who hold up two hands' worth of fingers when counting off their five years' teaching experience. What's next, forcing them to shave their woodsman's beards and stop wearing flannel?
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
But what if I'm trying to cut meat on my table saw? I guess I'll be stuck with the band saw and the wood chipper...
I cant read TFA, probably slashdotted already...
Does it stop spinning once it tastes human blood?
Does it stop spinning once it encounters less resistance?
And what about slasher films? Are Jason, Freddie et al, going to have to look for vintage saws for their work?
I dont get it, please somebody explain
No sig for the moment.
So the free market didn't work, and now he's pushing the mommy-state on people?
If you're stupid enough to run a table saw in a dangerous manner, you deserive to get hurt.
As someone who was involved in evaluating this technology for a major US manufacturer of power tools, there are a number of issues which prevented early adoption. First and foremost was the inventor's demands for unreasonable royalties (including a percentage of the gross sales of table saws from preceding years!). I heard the director of the power tools group say that if the royalty had been reduced by 50%, it would have been a no-brainer. As it was, the proposed royalty structure was just unsupportable for a saw that sold for $500.
The second issue was that the product had great difficulty distinguishing the change in capacitance due to human flesh from that due to very wet lumber. This has undoubtedly been improved over the past few years, but people would have been somewhat unhappy to have false triggers that required them to a) replace the safety cartridge and b) their saw blade, which is consumed when the system triggers. Not to mention having the bejeesus scared out them when the system fires in error.
To talk about the inventor persevering in the face of corporate pressure is silly. This isn't a David vs. Goliath story. The inventor was a patent attorney that tried to bludgeon power tool companies with a 250+ page patent, and he could have sold his concept on day one if he hadn't been quite as greedy. There was no shortage of companies looking for competitive advantage in the power tool industry, which has been pretty stagnant of late.
This guy has been trying to force his invertion on us for years..
After the saw manufactures refused to pay his unreasonable licensing free (3-8% of the saw sale price)for his patented tchnology he moved on to lobbying for a law to make it mandetory (and still pay his licensing fee)
I have to agree the idea is cool but I don't like having it forced down my throat.
He did go on to start his own saw company and makes one of the best saws on the market...
If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur. --Red Adair
This would make a great practical joke to play on a cannibal who uses his table saw to slice up his victim.
As amazing as this thing is, and as remarkably fast as it stops the blade-- it's not going to eliminate injury. It will turn a finger loss into a nasty cut, though. And that, I suspect, is why the sales staff isn't karate-chopping the rotating blade during demos. The hotdog is always cut, just not cut in half.
Dunno about wet wood.
Finally, I can saw naked!
One of my tech teachers in high school only had 9 fingers you insensitive clod!
And scary enough, I'm not kidding (about the fingers)
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Professional carpenters will just find a way of disabling this, like the blade guards on circular saws and the 'safety' on nailguns.
Honestly, you're not a carpenter unless you have a few battle scars to show off.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
but alas the technology wasn't around in my 9th grade shop class.
insert inflammatory anti-microsoft comment here
If this thing gets installed on all table saws, where are we going to get our shop teachers from?
Hah! Take that Darwin!
Just wait till representatives of the next generation of woodworkers accidentally trigger an older table... It'll be full slasher movie material. "Who could have expected this cursed antique would have such a thirst for blood? Who will it get next?"
Or, more seriously... "Accidents happen. Walk (hop) it off. If you foam cover the entire world then no-one will ever learn to cope with 'reality'" (Where reality is a dead chip in the machine for replacing dead chips).
kartune85 : Incapable of reason, observation or learning. A kind of dim, drab, flightless parrot.
I forgot the link to the SawStop site
http://www.sawstop.com
If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur. --Red Adair
The interesting thing is that the power tool industry refused the technology because it was too safe. They were afraid anybody without the technology would get sued for unsafe products, so they they collectively embargoed the technology.
From the NPR write up:
Pretty soon, they'll take all the danger out of life. I wonder if they'll finally come out with that new foam-rubber hybrid? Or maybe it'll be illegal to own a real knife (we'll only be allowed plastic wear like on the plane - to go with our unwashed hair and unbrushed teeth). Well - here we go, FIGHT natural selection! Go go go.
Give me a fish, I shall eat well for a day. Teach me to fish, and I will eat well until some idiot patents it.
The fact that this may be mandatory bothers me. It's like seatbelt laws, lawnmowers that stop running when you get off the seat, and coffee cups with warnings. I'd say, let the market sort this one out. Yes it's cruel, but feel free to give me a Nelson "ha ha" when I run my hand through a chop saw.
Cthulhu Saves.
I *have* had a finger get chewed through by a table saw.
I was cutting a piece of wood that was way too small for a table saw to cut safely and it got my index finger. An avulsion laceration about 1/8" wide, right across the fleshy pad of the finger, down but not quite to the bone.
My fault, I know. I didn't sue anyone, and wouldn't have thought to even if it took my hand. [For a cut that small and precise, I should have walked out to the workshop and used a band saw or built a jig. But I was lazy...]
This is a great idea, but like another poster said it has to be cheap, and it has to be non-obtrusive. The safety of the device is a trade off against its utility. If the saw stops working because of a faulty safety switch, the safety switch will get removed. If it's expensive to replace, it will probably not be replaced.
For example, my table saw has a kick-guard that goes over and behind the blade. It's an incredible pain in the ass because gets in the way, it's hard to see around, and makes some cuts damned-near impossible. It was removed.
Make it cheap and make it reliable, and then it'll actually save some fingers.
Get off my lawn.
Boy! Is my face red?!?
No Problem.. Get your $3,000 ready and go here
http://www.sawstop.com/
If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur. --Red Adair
Its been around for years, and has been shopped to the major power tool manufacturs [one of the largest, I used to work for, so i'm not talking out of my butt here.]
.. the guy whipped a raw hot dog at the blade as fast as he could, and there was only maybe 1-2mm of damage to the hotdog before the blade dropped down into the brakes.
.. at $50+ a pop .. kinda hurts.
..
All of them turned it down due to legal implications, as well as adding to the cost per unit price.
Leagally, if a power tool manufacturer added this to their existing line of table saws, it *COULD* be taken as an admission of guilt that their previous models were not safe, any accident cases (no matter how stupid) would then have another chance at a successful suit.
Also, the inventor has been lobbying for *YEARS* to get his invention as a required component of table saws. He hasn't even had success in California - the most liberal state for passing stuff like this - let alone elsewhere.
I'm not knocking his invention, I've seen it pitched first hand
Destroying the blade of course. which
Another reason this hasn't been adopted yet is that pressure treated wood also tends to cause the brakes to fire off
--Ne auderis delere orbem rigidum meum, non erravi pernicose!
Flesh has certain properties of electrical conductivity and capacitance different from wood. When the metal saw touches flesh, it senses the change in conductivity and sends a stop signal.
So is this more or less the same as a SawStop? I admit that their video documenting an attempt to saw a hot dog in half is pretty cool, although each use of the safety feature requires a new 40.00 cartridge. Worth a finger, sure, but I wonder how easily they're set off.
Posterity, my posterior.
I saw a similar review on one of the various wood craft magazines I subscribe to.
All we really know is that it's safe for hotdogs!
Will someone PLEASE think of those draft dodgers, using table saw accidents to get out of Military service. Someone please think how "A Prayer for Owen Meaney" Would be without unsafe table saws.
There are two problems with this invention:
- The inventor wants to extort 8% of the price of each saw
- This opens the door for all sorts of product liability lawsuits
Its interesting that this idea gets universal acclaim, while software inventions covered by patent are almost universally reviled. The reason that you're hearing about this at all is that the inventory is a savvy patent attorney who is going to eventually use government regulation as a club to make a huge amount of money.
The product liability thing is a real issue as well -- you'll probably see some tools drastically increase in price, include onerous safety devices or disappear from the shelf entirely once the lawsuits start flooding in. Anyone who has purchased a gasoline can for their lawn mower in the last 2-5 years has seen this first hand... some anti-spill devices make it nearly impossible to pour gasoline, and cost double the price of their predessesors.
I'm not arguing in favor of making tools more dangerous. But the current system of torts and injury liability discourage safety innovation by sticking product manufacturers with the potential of massive costs.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
For the non-woodworkers in the audience, this tech has been available for several years, and information on it was available for at least a year before the saw itself.
The "Sawstop" modifies the electrical potential of the blade, and can thus detect when skin hits the blade. Of course it also triggers if you cut metal, so it has a disable switch. Apparently wet wood doesn't trigger it.
When it detects flesh, it has an explosive charge that rams a chunk of aluminum into the blade stopping it within ~3ms. I saw it demoed in person at a wood show. The demonstrator slid a hot dog into the blade at a fair speed and there was a large bang. The hot dog had been cut into maybe 1/32" or so (a bit under a millimetre).
The main problem is that the inventor wanted huge royalties from existing tool companies, and tried to force through legislation making it mandatory to include the device on *all* table saws in the US. As you can imagine, people were less than impressed about having it rammed down their throats. Even now, the saw that incorporates this is a very nice saw, but they still charge about 30% more than for other comparable saws.
Fantastic tech, but needs some improvement. It uses a fusible wire to activate the blade brake, which must apparently be replaced when it gets a "false positive" (which is apparently common when cutting wet wood). If this is to be adopted on a consumer scale, it needs an easily-resettable safety system, more like a circuit breaker than a fuse. Depending on the scope of his patent claim, there may be room for a number of competing improved safety mechanisms based on his idea, which could solve some of the problems with government's mandating use of an exclusive patented product.
Out of curiosity, can the government use an "eminent domain" style procedure to take control of a patent or force it into the public domain, in the interest of public safety or national security?
This guy has a great product that will generate a lot of income. I don't understand why it's taken so long to get to market. But then what do I know? Maybe improving the safety of one's product is not a selling point.
Now if they can solve kick-back...
Keep your blades sharp and don't allow that cut measure to sit angled on the table, causing blade binding when you use it as a cutting guide.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I want to see that guy try his own invention first. And no the hot dog is not convincing enough.
This device was designed to kill the hotdog cutting business. All "safety" benefits of this product are masking the true intention.
I saw this demonstrated once, on the Tonight show, with Johnny Carson (yes, I'm that old and yes, this thing's been around that long!)
So, when I finally had a reason to go buy a tablesaw for my business, and I saw the horrible cost of insurance, I tried to buy the auto-shut-off table saw. Of course, I searched the web. Then I called the big saw distribution importers and distributors. It took some effort, but I finally got an answer why they were not, and probably would never be available.
It's not a perfect product. It is still possible to get your fingers cut off, and it is possible to have it "jam" on plain old wood too. When it jams, you have to replace the blade and the whole blade jamming mechanism- it can take most of a day to do that, if you have the parts, and it's expensive. It can cost as much as a whole new table saw each time it goes off.
All those things are solveable, but I was also told that the insurance companies hate the thing. It sounds counter-intuitive, but you know that a table saw is dangerous. If you believe that it's less dangerous, then you might be more careless too. The car companies had a similar argument against seat belts back in the 1960s.
There are better solutions in industry. CNC automated machines are used where lots of similar parts need to be made. There are very few, if any, one-off parts in manufacturing environments. So the only real market for this machine is the hobbyist or general contractor and cabinet maker, and the professionals have really good stafety rules anyway (at least the ones where I worked did).
But, as it stands, nobody has a case if he tries to sue the manufacturer because he cut off his finger. But put an auto-brake on the saw, and every time it fails the manufacturer and insurance company have a dismemberment case to settle.
-------------------
Use your table saw today! Get catapult and trebuchet kit plans at http://www.trebuchetplans.com/
Keep your frickin' hand out of the blade.
As a Machinist for the past 40 years, I recall what I was told on the first day of my apprenticeship"As long as you remember that any of the machinery you work on or with can seriously injure or kill you, you'll be fine" Guess what, they were right; I still have the default number of fingers and toes; THINKING ROCKS>
but the product was not rejected as "too safe." The patentattorney-inventor wanted a ridiculous amount of money (a percentage of the gross) for use of his patented product.
When it comes to stories about business, you'll generally find that NPR is on the side of the "poor, downtrodden" patent attorney, rather than the businessman that's out there trying to make a living. I've always wondered where the tin-foil hatted idiots over there think that products and services come from, and why they're so hostile to capitalism and small businesses...
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
How sensitive is it. Would it be able to detect the skin inside the soylent green wafers?
Where were you when the voynix came?
Marvelous. We certainly do need more mandatory complexity. Really we shouldn't stop at skin sensors on saws. We need breathalyzers on every car ignition, a licensing and permit structure (with fees of course) for posession of a baseball bat, and locking safes in every bathroom to keep pills away from children. Because those of us who don't drink, who only play baseball with our bats, and don't have any children should be willing to bend over and take it in the form of great cumulative expense and inconvenience for the sake of the statistically small number that would benefit. Like the safety nazis sa, "if it saves only one life, it's worth it!"
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
If you leave the pivoting guards in place it works perfectly fine, skil saws or table saws. That and knowing you are using a tool that has no pity...
Now what I would like to see is a lightweight integral sensor for chainsaws that will let you know there's an old piece of barbed wire embedded deep in a tree, or a nail or staple or even the odd bullet. Yep, found one of them once, but not cutting, splitting, right there on the break, some old jacketed rifle bullet.
You can *guess* if you see obvious marks in the bark if there's wire in there, but that's it, a guess. I imagine you could take the time with a hobbiest metal detector, but I've never done that.
I would have HATED to be one of them!
Perhaps this will be adapted to the chainsaw next - it's hard to see where you're swinging when you're wearing a hockey mask...
I remember seeing a saw just like this, maybe was this, several years back in my shop class.
How are evil geniuses supposed to slowly, ever so slowly, kill suave British spys now?
Sigh. That reminds me of the time that my dad and uncle came up with the brilliant idea of cutting frozen salmon on our table saw.
In the basement.
The finished basement.
After all was said and done, walls and ceiling were covered in fine salmon shavings. Gross. Mom was less than thrilled.
You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.
Out of curiosity, can the government use an "eminent domain" style procedure to take control of a patent or force it into the public domain, in the interest of public safety or national security?
This is the best damned idea ever. If the government mandates the use of something (broadcast bit, this safety feature, etc), they should force the ideas, patents, etc, of the product into the public domain, so that anyone can benefit.
Otherwise, they shouldn't be able to mandate its use.
That would get rid of a lot of unnecessary "mandated" regulations, and keep people from trying to force their patent down everyone's throat for their own benefit, rather than the good of society.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Power tool industry refuses to license techology for the table saw from that amazing video. (Anyone really surprised by this?)
You're worried about the blade? What about your finger?
I for one can't wait to upgrade my saw with this device.
This type of safety device will not become mandatory on all table saws, that is a ridiculous assertion. It adds 1000$ to the price of the saw. How on earth would you put that on a 250$ craftsman? I
NT
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
Doom suddenly became a lot less fun :(
You can't cut green wood (wood that hasn't sat around long enough to get down to 10% water). I've gotten construction grade lumber that would easily have tripped this.
Most accidents on the TS aren't from people accidentally putting their hand in the path of the blade, it's from them either slipping (in which case they are essentially slapping the blade, and will still get a very serious cut), or from kickback. I believe (though I don't have a source) that most accidents are from kickback.
Also, many people take the blade guard that is included with their saw off becuase they think it gets in the way (which I've never really understood). If you were to look at the number of accidents on the TS, I would be willing to bet that most accidents involve a TS without a blade guard.
Most damning though, is that when this unit does go off, your saw blade (that you pay $100 a pop for) is rotated down into a block of aluminum, and gets welded there from the heat. Even if you can extracate the blade from that block, it wouldn't be safe to use it again, so you have to buy a new blade, and a new cartridge.
Table saws have been around for at least 100 years in their various forms and most woodworkers can still count to 10.
Since when did operating systems become a religion?
OK - but every model only approaches reality - who were the beta testers?
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
I was looking at buying one of these saws. Surprised they got mentioned on /. as this is hardly new. The brake needs to be replaced any time it fires, apparently the saw blades don't always break. But, would you want to trust that the blade didn't have a flaw that might grow and cause it to fail later on? If you cut anything conductive (wet wood, aluminum, ...) you need to bypass the circuitry. For pushing things into the saw blade at reasonable speeds, it is supposed to work very well. If you were to throw something conductive at the blade (high feed rate), the fact the saw blade gets pulled back under the table comes into play, and lots of damage can ensue. If you ignore the brake mechanism, the specs on this saw are very good. Probably not worth as much as the saw costs, but it is still a very fine saw. While the idea of a high speed brake being next to a piece of equipment is very useful, this specific implementation is very tied to a table saw application. A big part of the way it works is due to the blade pulling itself under the table if the blade suddenly stops moving. Things like mitre saws, bandsaws, etc. do not operate this way.
But, as it stands, nobody has a case if he tries to sue the manufacturer because he cut off his finger. But put an auto-brake on the saw, and every time it fails the manufacturer and insurance company have a dismemberment case to settle.
An well-said, although unfortunate, point.
It's seemed to me for a while that we need -- if we can't actually accomplish all-over tort reform -- some sort of a "good samaritan" law for corporations as well as individuals.
There shouldn't be any liability reasons for not putting a safety device like this on your equipment. But the system as it stands doesn't encourage it, for exactly the reasons you mention. Without a safety device, and as long as they're not "expected," when someone takes their finger off, it's just their own damn fault. But with the safety device, they'll be a massive lawsuit whenever it doesn't work perfectly -- even though it might work very well most of the time.
This reminds me of the situation in many states prior to the introduction of "good samaritan" liability laws. You'd have doctors and off-duty paramedics driving past the scene of an accident and not stopping, because nobody wanted to risk getting sued. It was only after some pretty ridiculous and unfortunate situations, where it became clear that as a society, we shouldn't be encouraging people to leave their fellows bleeding to death in a ditch because of fear of being sued later, that many states have changed the law.
A company which makes it's products safer than the norm shouldn't be liable for suits when the safety mechanism fails, if the result of the failure is that the product is only as dangerous as the device would normally be expected to be (assuming the manufacturer has not advertised it as being much safer, or that less precautions are necessary).
Any time you have the law encouraging the creation of more-dangerous products for perceived liability reasons, you have a problem. The goal of the law should be to encourage and reward productive behavior, not discourage and punish it.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Although only having two and half fingers on his left hand and three fingers on his right hand didn't seem to slow him down any. . .
What?
-b.
-b.
All the other comments aside as I understand it the device uses an explosive charge to shove a piece of metal into the saw blade to stop it cold.
This seems like a pretty stupid way to build a safety device (using explosives and ruining the blade).
Why not just have something shove the blade backwards and downwards into the table at high speed while using a bit more traditional breaking?
I don't know where the rest of Slashdot buys meat but most of my Butchers use table saws or belt saws to slice meat.
Lets add a tempreture sensor so it knows cold, dead meat from the live kind your hand is made of.
To clarify
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
This is a fantastic saw. I don't know about the skin-detection feature, but it is the first american saw with a riving knife (before PowerMatic), and it has a European style shrowd covering the entire blade. Not to mention the beefy trunion. Even without the safety feature it is a great saw. Now if we could start getting some sliding top saws like they have in Europe...
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
"Do you expect me to talk?"
"No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to get a 1mm cut and ruin my blade..."
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
As someone who was involved in evaluating this technology for a major US manufacturer of power tools, there are a number of issues which prevented early adoption. First and foremost was the inventor's demands for unreasonable royalties (including a percentage of the gross sales of table saws from preceding years!). I heard the director of the power tools group say that if the royalty had been reduced by 50%, it would have been a no-brainer. As it was, the proposed royalty structure was just unsupportable for a saw that sold for $500.
So, you were involved in evaluating it- but have absolutely no specifics about "the inventor's" demands? How much was the percentage? How many years back? What was the royalty "demand" on products sold with his technology? Do you have any evidence to back up your claims?
The second issue was that the product had great difficulty distinguishing the change in capacitance due to human flesh from that due to very wet lumber. This has undoubtedly been improved over the past few years, but people would have been somewhat unhappy to have false triggers
People don't cut wet lumber. Firstly, you shouldn't use it, unless it is dry, or you'll get problems when it dries out (and/or mold when it gets covered up.) Second, because the blade binds in wet wood.
Please help metamoderate.
It's a #*&$ing table saw! Seriously, I used to run a shop that built arcade cabinet kits. There wasn't a tool in the place I wasn't nervous around- and that's a good thing, because even after working there for quite some time I still have all of my digits. There's a real problem in this country with safety. People want things to be safer, only because they are too lazy to think about their actions before performing them. If we took all the safety equipment out of modern cars, what kind of fuel mileage could they get? If you cut your finger off, well, I'm sorry for you, but you effed up. Take responsibility for it, and don't do it again. Don't expect someone to come up with a new kind of table saw that stops when you screw up. All that does is let you be more complacent, and gives you someone to sue when the real blame should be placed on you.
I could be wrong but is it possible this could almost make it worse, if the blade starts to slow but is still moving it would give a much messier, jagged cut which might make re-attachment of fingers etc. a lot more difficult. !RTFA though.
!sig
Again, it's an interesting technology, but there is much hype by the inventor. The Power Tool Institute published a comment on SawStop a couple of years ago that was very interesting -- unfortunately, I can't seem to dig it up right now.
Exactly... The riving knife is at least as important to saw safty as the stopping feature. The absolute worst table saw accidents come from kickback, not fingers touching the blade.
Riving knives protect from most types of kick-back, and yet the saw-stop is one of the few US saws to have them.
If you care about safety, you absolutely have to see this great lift truck safety video. Unfortunately it is in German, but you will definitely get an idea why safety regulations are so important :-)
Open Source Alternatives
My dad once butchered an animal (beef, I think) and left in the barn to cool. He couldn't get to it for a few days and it froze solid (Minnesota winter). He needed to cut it into smaller chunks to be able to carry it inside for cutting up. So he thinks: chainsaw!
:-(
Much of it had to be thrown out due to all the bone chips.
science is a religion
SawStop is not new. This guy has been trying to get tool manufacturers to license his technology for about 4 years now. The makers determined that it would increase the price of their saws by about 50%, and most of them surveyed their customers (me being one of those customers). The overwhelming response was "Yea, it's a great idea. But if it means I can't get a table saw for under $2000 then I guess I won't have a table saw."
When he couldn't get the companies to license it, he started working the government to require all table saws to use his system. Note that every time the emergency stop kicks in you have to buy a whole new brake set and saw blade (to the tune of about $500).
For myself, I've been using table saws for about 20 years now. And I'm often a bit careless. I've never even come close to getting cut, nor do I know anyone who has been. It's a solution in search of a problem. The only place I see this as being really appropriate is in a high school shop class, where the users are much more likely to get hurt.
I note that of the dozens of reviews I've seen in the various woodworking mags, they all think it's a nice system, but they are all still using their prefered powermatic or dewalt ot whatever saw instead...
this is getting old and so are you
blog
Way back when in the 1870's trains and uneeded e's were all the rage people had to join train cars by hand using a link and pin. This was the cause of many accidents. So many that you were called a greenhorn if you had all your fingers intact. The companies were actually more worried about the pins being sold off for scrap than the damage done.
,however, because they saw the old way as cheaper.
In 1873 the Janey automatic coupler was invented and had the potential to save many lives. Mnay railroad companies didn't change
It wasn't until two decades later, when the government mandated automatic couplers and air brakes, that this method became standard and reduced coupling accidnets from being 38% of total to 4% of total.
Thanks History Channel and Wikipedia for making me appear intelligent.
And how long before your car won't run if it senses a human behind the wheel ? ;-)
Power feeders have been available for years. They keep hands away from blades or bits, and prevent kickback.
See some here
Yeah, I'm sure the guy making these would like that. Nice thought, but you have to consider the fact that not only are these saws expensive, but every time one of them executes a "save", whether it's protecting someone's hand, or just an innocent piece of lunchmeat, it destroys itself a little bit, and you have to replace big $$$ worth of parts to get it operational again. First reaction is "of course it's worth it", but could every business really afford the setup fees, and does it pay in terms of insturance costs?
I grew up in a manufacturing. The large presses were controlled by a panel with two large buttons on it. You had to press both buttons to run it. The panel was a safe distance away from the press. Since holding your hands on the buttons for 8 hours was tiresome, there were c-shaped pieces of metal above the buttons. So now you just put your hand between the metal and the button and the metal would hold your hand to the button, holding the button pressed as long as your hand was there. Of course, you could also wedge something in there instead. But there really was no reason to do so.
This plant was like this at least through the end of the 80s, and it was inspected constantly. It passed OSHA.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Mirror
It's this kind of attitude that keeps contractors from making it big.
These guys are skilled craftsmen who rely on their bodies and brains to make money, and any decent woodworker, mason, electrician or plumber has the right to charge the high fees that they do.
Unfortunately, as a rule, these guys haven't picked up good business practices along the way, and end up netting a lot less than they should.
Honestly, you're not a carpenter unless you have a few battle scars to show off
You would never say, "Honestly, you're not a programmer until you've had a couple traumatic brain injuries." It's nonsense, but a lot of guys feel like either they're too good to make a mistake, or consider reasonable safety constraints (like nailgun safeties) to be a hinderance. What they don't think about, beyond the pain of, say, a 16d ring shank nail through the foot, is the cost of medical treatment, the time and wages lost, and the possibility of losing their entire livelyhood to a disabling injury.
According to the insurance companies, if a roofer injures himself severely enough to collect worker's comp., he has a better than 50% chance of never returning to his trade. Building will always be more dangerous than desk work, and I can't count the number of times that I've smashed my fingers with a hammer or gotten cut up demolishing something. But a good contractor works to work as safely as possible, if not for his fingers, then for his wallet.
Does your company have any openings? My wife is looking for a job.
1. become patent attorney 2. design product and patent it. 3. make law to force manufactures to buy product 4. PROFIT!! 5. ????
Well how am I going to cut up body parts with this mandatory safety feature on my table saw?
I say 'Nay'.
(Sorry... it had to be said!)
When you are cutting a piece in a milling machine, it is generally either held in a vise or clamped down to the table. Your hands are well away from the rotating cutter when you are cranking the handles or engaging the powerfeed to make the cut. The biggest hazard would be flying chips or raking your hand across the cutter while breaking down a setup.
With a table saw, you are pushing the material by hand toward the blade, and one slip can be disastrous. If the stock gets cocked between the rip fence and the blade, it kicks back toward you violently. Cutter speeds tend to be a LOT faster for cutting wood, as well, and will do a lot more damage a lot faster.
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... only outlaws will have table saws.
It'll be like the wild west.
But with table saws.
(No, I didn't RTFA.)
This was cool when I first read it 2 years ago..
What I wanna know was who was the guy stupid enough to test this thing out on weiners? Think of the potential losses if it didn't work!!!
In the thread about the blood pressure/other polygraph-like test for a response to the question "are you a terrorist," there's a large contingent out there that the 8% "false positive" rate is unacceptably high. The notion being real terrorists are few, so almsot everyone caught is a false positive, so this is hugely inconvenient, and therefore a dumb idea.
I find it interesting that people are highliy critical of this idea, though, which has similar characteristics. Actual injuring saw accidents are few and far between (with adequately trained personel). As noted, one big concern here is that it's possible for this setup to have a number of false positives--wet lumber, conductive materials, etc. Given that (though they're tragic) actual accidents of this kind are relatively rare, it's likely most of the times this is triggered, it's a false positive, which is a huge inconvenience. However, in this case, the conventional wisdom isn't "dumb idea," but "yay! About time!"
I'm sure (this being slashdot) a million people will come out of the woodwork to argue my comparison isn't valid because of X, Y, and Z (with Z misspelled horribly). Fine--you're welcome to that opinion. I just find it interesting that there's a degree of groupthink in what's considered "dumb" and what's considered "a terriffic idea" round here.
How does something that has been around for this long, make it on Slashdot? slow news day?
I listened to a radio interview with the designer of this saw some time ago. He mentioned that none of the major tool manufacturers would integrate this into their saws because of the added cost of production.
He then went on to quote the monetary costs to the tool manufacturers arising from injuries from the use of table saws... and it significantly exceeded the cost of simply fitting all of their table saws with this technology *without passing the cost to the consumer*. Crazy.
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
How did they test it?
Are the researchers missing a few fingers now?
I still don't understand how they're going to get a saw blade with 100 teeth on it to stop in time once the capacitance change is detected ... a typical saw blade rotates at 1750 RPM.
The bottom line is to use table saws for what they were intended: rips and cross-cuts. I was trying to use mine to shave a 1/64th inch off of a piece of oak. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I paid the price for it, though. Bleed and learn.
If there's an 'idiot' mod, I'm gonna catch it :-)
Founding member: He-Man Windoze Hater Club
Antitiedown prevents exactly that. Somebody has already mentioned zero-force palm buttons. Before all this technology was available, press operators had leather straps tied to their wrists: There's a bar above the press that goes up and back when the press closes. Attached to this bar are a pair of cables that go behind the operator. The cables are attached to the straps. If the operator's not back from the press when it starts down, he'll be well clear of it in very short order. Yeah, it was an old plant.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
But in this case there's really no point to putting them in. This system works fine if someone doesn't go out of their way to defeat it. There's no reason to defeat it, as the parts are fed in an out by an automated picking system. The only time to approach the press is if it jams, and then you're gonna have to stop it to clear it anyway.
Since any system can be defeated, a system like this that requires defeating to create danger is as good as any.
These systems were in a pressed metal plant of a major auto manufacturer. They had enough labor problems that I'm sure OSHA was called on site at least 1 day a week.
My father's cousin (i.e. my first cousin once removed) lost one and a half fingers on one hand and three fingers on the other because he bypassed safety guards on a press (not in this plant, in another). The worst part is that it happened in two separate incidents. You just can't make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
OK, let me ask a stupid question.
I've seen video after video of this, and it's darn impressive.
I'd buy it if the guy was willing to demo it on HIS OWN HAND.
-Styopa
Grizzly H6246
Built-in sausage grinder!
Language students: Don't try to learn English here. This ain't it.
An 8% royalty per saw is outrageous. Note that this fee is the royalty charged merely for the [em]license[/em] to use the technology. The manufacturer still has to engineer and adapt the saw to use it -- so the burden of all costs to employ the device is still on the maker. I can well imagine that they might have been intrigued by the idea, but were forced to back away and rationalize why it had problems once they they learned the price tag.
I don't think the manufacturers are guiltless either. As the article points out, the manufacturers have a certain level of immunity granted to them against lawsuits associated with injuries -- so they realize have very little incentive to make them safer. They do have an incentive for keeping them from children, which is why most stationary power tools now have some sort of key -- so that children can't start the machine if they try to play with it (at least all my stationary power tools have this).
There are far cheaper ways to protect ones fingers from table saws. Woodworking catalogs sell all sorts of devices -- but the low-tech devices seem to work best. Just push the wood through the saw using an old stick so that your fingers never come near the blade (this is what I do). There are hold-down devices to keep the wood securely traveling through the blade so that you don't need to get your fingers near. Some of these include "feather boards" (looks like a giant plastic hair comb which rides on an angle against the wood to hold the workpiece steady, though there are many variations and many wood workers make their own) to hold-down devices that look like spring-loaded roller-skate wheels to hold the wood firm. They're reasonably cheap. They never fail.
What surprises me is that to look at some of these safety accessories, it's obvious that they cost pennies to make -- and yet the manufacturers not only DO NOT include them with the saw, they don't really make a good standard way to mount aftermarket accessories to the saw. This always puzzled me because I realized that for a few pennies (or even nothing at all) they could make the saw drammatically safer, and yet they don't. Once I read the article and learned that the legal precidents basically grant them some fairly good level of protection from these sorts of lawsuits it makes sense as to why they just don't care.
I don't think either side has the consumer's best interest at heart.
... when both sides are so despicable it makes you want to puke?
On one side, you have a patent lawyer who invents and patents something with incredible legal ramifications. (Being a laywer, I'm sure that thought hadn't crossed his mind at all. ;-) When no one wants to pay his ridiculous licensing fees, he gets the law changed to force them all to pay. Keep in mind that he wasn't planning to manufacture anything, so he's asking for 8% per unit for the idea alone, and all per unit costs would be paid by the manufacturer. Of course, since the manufacturer would actually build the safety device, any lawsuits from failures of that device would also be paid by the manufacturer. The lawyer gets filthy rich on his legally enforced extortion while the manufacturer has to eat added manufacturing costs and law suits.
On the other side, you have manufacturers who should have added safety features similar to this a long time ago, but wouldn't because they fear that the safety features themselves will open them up to lawsuits.
Ooh, I almost forgot about the third side. It's the lawyers and judges that award millions of dollars to complete morons in frivolous lawsuits, making the manufacturers afraid to add safety features to their products. It kind of makes me ashamed to be an American.
I hope that every time a worker loses fingers to a traditional table saw, their employer gets hit with a big lawsuit. Endangering yourself in your home workshop is your choice, but you shouldn't be able to impose that decision on your employees. I have an Uncle who was almost killed by a poorly maintained saw at his workplace. He lost part of one hand. It was pure luck that it didn't cut him in half.
You can't assume that the equipment is in good working condition, and that the operators are properly trained and alert. You have to take active steps to regularly inspect the equipment for problems, perform preventive maintenance, train the operators on how to safely operate it, and make sure that everyone is actually following the safety rules. Any machine that relies solely on operator alertness to prevent an accident is an accident waiting to happen. Real people get distracted and have off days.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
you can just press the conductive material override... the down side is that I hate getting cut when I'm disposing of a busload of people who left their turn signals on.
Outside of those items, the SawStop is also very well balanced, it has almost no vibration, even less that most other Cabinet Saws. The trunions are solid and move the blade into position with little effort from the user. It also has a magnetic cutoff switch positioned right above the users knee for quick shutdown. It also includes a Biesemeyer style fence. Its only real drawback is that it is very expensive at $2800 for the basic saw. Options can run well over $5000. While I still like it, that money could be better spent on a European Combination Machine such as the Laguna or a Delta Unisaw with alot of money left over for other tools.
There is nothing inherently safe about liberty. That's why so many people died protecting it.
Does your company have any openings? My ex-wife is looking for a job.
The real reason the tool industry won't buy it is buried about 20 paragraphs in to the article:
Moreover, they say, Gass is asking for an 8 percent royalty on each saw sold
8% makes this guy a patent troll, trying to extort money from the saw manufacturers. If he was honest he'd license the patent for $1 per consumer saw and $10 per industrial saw, flat rate. In 10 years, even the cheap saws would have it in order to avoid the injury lawsuits.
Which is a pity really, because it sounds like the guy started with a really good idea that should be used.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
"Why wouldn't they want to embrace safety technology like this?"
...and did I mention that EVERY time the "safety" is triggered you have to buy a new saw blade and parts (both of which are outrageously overpriced)
Because this is expensive junk that doesn't work well.
You can't cut anything that conducts electricity with this system (on). This includes metal of course, but also things like wet wood and even a few paints and plastics.
Even if you only want to cut dry wood, it isn't safer. The blade reflex isn't fast enough to stop most accidents. Few people are spaced enough to slowly push their hand into a moving saw (this is the only accident this system prevents). Most accidents involve sudden fast movement (where this system will do almost nothing useful).
Even though it does almost nothing people with THINK it is safer, so they will mess around more and have more accidents.
I don't believe this system will be as frustrating as the blade guards.
I'm all for the guards - I'm quite happy they're mandatory on new saws. I believe that under the right conditions, they're very useful. I know that guard would have helped 20 years ago on my first woodworking job when a saw tossed an 8" triangle of 2x4 into my face - fortunately it missed my eye by 1/2 inch. The guard and its anti-kickback fingers would have stopped that from happening. As it was, all I ended up with was a bruise and quite a new respect for the saw.
However, as a frequent woodworker, I can tell you that they are hideously inconvenient and actually DECREASE the safety of the saw in various situations. That's exactly why they are designed to be removed.
I believe if they were EASY to remove and replace, they'd be used more often. The tighter you integrate them, however, the less likely they will be replaced. It's like passenger side airbags without a kill switch - if you have small kids, you probably would get them deactivated. That doesn't help the adult passenger who rides sometimes. But if you make it easy, either automatic or key-switched, then most people will use them correctly. Same thing here.
Bottom line, there are many times I remove the guard - it just doesn't work for a lot of the harder, more complex cuts I need to make. But I put it back on when I can, because that saw really scares me, even when I use the guard. I have met too many mangled woodworkers over the years. But this system (as far as I can tell) doesn't affect the basic operation, use, or flexibility of the saw, and thus won't be subject to the "leave it off" problem of the guard.
--Brandon / Split Infinity Music
You'll have to excuse me if I post anonymously, my department would likely dismiss me were it to appear I represented it in any way.
Good Samaritan laws specifically do not include trained providers. An off-duty Paramedic or off-shift Doctor passing an accident scene who stops to assist, or even asks such an innoculous question as, 'How are you?' - regardless of answer - could be construted as initiating a patient care relationship.
Once that relationship has been established, the provider is now legally liable, and has both the onus and duty to act in accordance with all applicable protocols, laws and standard(s) of care.
Good Samaritan laws protect, with some notable exceptions, John Q. Public from non-, mis- and/or malfeasence in the above protocols, laws and standards of care with respect to rendering care to the sick or injured in a state of emergency.
Example:
A car has been involved in a crash, and an unresponsive driver is slumped over at the wheel.
John Q. Public pulls over, rushes to the vehicle and shakes the driver's shoulder to see if he is concious. Unfortunatly, the driver has sustained a lasting spinal injury - neither the driver nor driver's lawyer would have no claim against John Q. Public, regardless of John Q. Public's actions which may or may not have been proximal to the injury, due to the Good Samaritan law(s).
Same scenario as above, but change it to an off-duty Paramedic. The Paramedic, by virtue of his training, ought to be aware of cervical spine considerations, and precationary measures to be taken when circumstances dictate them likely and prudent. The Paramedic, by acting, now bears the onus and duty to act, has performed an act incorrectly as per the action(s) of other similarily trained providers, an injury resulted, and is arguably proximal to the damaged. By any measure, the off-duty Paramedic bears a significant liability which will certainly be argued in front a judge and/or jury.
The only Good Samaritan exemptions enjoyed by trained providers are those in which either (1) the trained provider does not function to his level (i.e., extraordinary measures - a field C-section), or is not functioning in his realm of expertise (e.g., a Paramedic with no fire fighting experience attempting to supress a fire), or (2) performs all skills correctly and within the accepted standard of care. The legal rigor of 'all' in (2) is extreme, to be generous.
And yes, we spend a tremendous amount of our time continually studying not only new science and medicine, but also medicolegal subject matter to protect ourselves, our departments and our profession.
"Much of it had to be thrown out due to all the bone chips. :-("
mmm prions..
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
Whoever puts up link on slashdot to the sites with sound should perhaps mark them down [with sound], as some of our levels aren't adjusted. Websites with sould should be banned. *gah*.
Skin sensing saw eh? No more thriller movies with slicing people up?
It can happen so quickly and easily that when it happens you don't even know that it has happened. The cut doesn't hurt as badly as you would imagine, in my case it felt like I was touched with a feather. It was just a very light brushing sensation although my mind knew immediately what had happened.
I was very lucky, I did not cut any bone and I only lost a strip of tissue about an inch long, maybe 3/8's of an inch deep and 3/32's of an inch wide out of my thumb. Still it was a sobering experience that left a piece of expensive oak ruined (not to mention the blood rushing out of my thumb). What happened is that I was making numerous identical cuts and I got a bit bored and for just a moment I didn't think.
I try not to be stupid around power tools; I am not a professional, just a hobbyist and am very aware of my relationship to my tools. While I have learned to trust them, I have also learned to distrust them and always try to be as safe as possible. I think that the table saw is probably one of the more dangerous tools in the typical wood shop simply because there are so many times when you have to work with this guard removed or you are tempted to make a fine adjustment with the power on.
I am frankly a bit offended by the industries lack of enthusiasm for this kind of product (although on the flip side, I also understand that it would make every new saw much more expensive). The power tool industry is very aware that their products can cause serious injury (up to and including the loss of life). When they have an opportunity to make their products cheaper, they are morally obliged to do so. While this high-tech solution my have some shortfalls, it is obviously a step in the right direction. I suspect that the industry can find ways of making similar safety devices that work in different ways if they want to or are "encouraged" to. .
What article about table saws would not be complete without a reference to Beavis and Butt-head?
The Rapture is NOT an exit strategy.
Yes, all that is true, but the wood can bind if it has internal flaws and splits during the
cut, or if a knot comes loose, or if it just isn't completely straight. You can surface all four sides
of your wood only for a few pieces before it turns the lovely woodwork hobby into a chore.
And the guard is removed for any dado cuts, and the splitter/riving knife has to be
removed if you want to reverse cut (it's nearly obligatory when dealing with melamine
coatings to make a reverse cut to nick the veneer, and makes for a better finish in lots of
plywood situations too). There's so much reconfiguring required for safe table saw operation
that most folk don't always do it. Some even get angry at the safety fittings (no, not me; I've had
a couple of tutors who could hold up 9.5 fingers).
The capacitive-sensor with DSP processing sounds like a good idea, ESPECIALLY because it
doesn't have to be bypassed for normal operations. Another doesn't-get-in-the-way item is
to periodically degunk the saw blade with a mild lye solution. I like to follow up with a buffing wheel
in a Dremel tool; you can get carbide teeth nice and clean with a little emery compound.
RTFA, the technology may have been mentioned before, but the article talks about a new U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission safety recommendation that may make saw manufacturers have to adopt such technology. The summary does a piss poor job of highlighting the recommendation, but the recommendation is new.
Ok, I like being safe as much as the next guy, but there's an inherent problem with this particular level of safety. Actually there are a couple problems, but they stem from the same one.
First, getting used to such safeties will lead to a lack of common sense. Sound stupid? Not really. Think of the first lesson you learn in shop class, about how NOT to cut off your fingers. Well we can just skip over that one right? In fact, we'll probably demo how the saw will stop before mulching your fingers. Yay. So 1) no common sense, 2) no respect for the machine that can hurt you.
Second, and I think anyone who's ever used a machine, or electronics of any kind will understand this one, what happens when the system fails? Do NOT tell me it's fool proof, I will laugh at you, right before your digits go flying in separate directions. If people start to rely on this sort of thing, it could easily lead to a much greater number of injuries.
Society has an odd concept about responsibility. It tries to protect everyone from everything always. This is actually detrimental. The truth is that the responsibility for your safety is yours, the responsibility for your child's safety is yours. We've gotten so used to pointing fingers when people get hurt or worse, we've forgotten to hold ourselves accountable.
If you cut off your bits, you should have been careful, if your child gets hurt wandering into some one's yard, you should have been watching them. etc. etc. Don't get me wrong, if you're walking along, and a piano falls on you, that's not your fault, but there's a certain amount of self sufficiency we're losing.
That having been said, if this sort of system is used only as a backup to proper training and common sense, then it's a good idea.
--Not to be worried, Pitr fix.
This is another example of how market inefficiencies are maintained for a profit, and where the disconnect between the theory of a "free market" and the reality of the actual market are so far apart.
And small businesses are even more extremely inefficient in even more areas, especially in their supply chain. Businesses consolidate to increase efficiency. The reason they're able to put money into "passive storage" is due to increased profits thanks to increased efficiency. And I can't think of a better way to put money into a local economy than by paying employees--something that larger businesses are very adept at doing.
Also, this "silly free market mantra" is what allows small businesses to eventually come up in the world and dethrone those currently in power. Governments invariably just try to preserve the status quo, as the status quo is who is currently paying their salaries.
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
they can leverage the increaing supply of second and third world labor and the decreasing cost of moving plants to force people to take risky jobs. Back in the 1900's, 1700 dead a year in a mine was considered 'higher than industry average', these days 24 dead is a nation mourning, and those 1700 died earning subsistance wages. Has humanity evolved enough that this can't ever again be the way things are?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
These things have been available in industry for a few years now. My wife works as a chemist for a major wood products company. They got this table saw last year.
The replacement parts expense isn't nearly as bad as it's been made out to be, either. They accidentally triggered the 'quick stop' feature the other day -- not with a finger, but sawing some wood that was too wet and therefore coincidentally had the right electrical properties. Replacing the blade turned out to be about sixty bucks.
ESCAPE POD - The Science Fiction Podcast Magazine
According to TFA, if you get cut by the safety saw, it really hurts and bleeds alot -- its just that it doesn't cut through. I think that is a good thing in discouraging complacency,
I operate my saws with lots of chain bar lube -- don't know if I want to mix it with my hamburger.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Is there really any good reason for this to destroy the blade when it triggers?? Why not have a retractable blade & just move it out of the way? Safety systems are all well & good, but nobodys going to use it if its expensive and time consuming to get the machine running again after it triggers.
"If it hasn't been christened with blood, it hasn't been done properly" :)
remember to loot and pillage before you burn!
Dropping a block into the saw blade? Can't anyone imagine a PROXY blade on the motor shaft that can accept the stopping block. It should be either (1) cheap to replace or (2) able to survive multiple hard stops.
I recall a story from the dark ages about controllers for tape drive rewind motors. They had been controlled by gas/vaccuum tubes. The first test replacements using solid state electronics stopped the motor so fast and so hard that the tape reel kept turning and twisted the shaft.
Is there an electronic solution to this halting problem?
And as for detecting an impending dis-fingerment, is this finally the killer application for machine vision?
I almost wet myself after having beverage spew from my nostrils!
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?