Comment by adolph
7 months ago
This is a pretty interesting problem. At what point of an ongoing tragedy does a relatively expensive mitigation become a mandate?
I'm grateful that SawStop is releasing their IP. This doesn't address the issue of added implementation cost, but does address the concern about rent-seeking. It would have been a better world if Ryobi and others had licensed the technology 20 years ago.
In a surprise move at February's CPSC hearing, TTS Tooltechnic Systems North America CEO Matt Howard announced that the company would "dedicate the 840 patent to the public" if a new safety standard were adopted. Howard says that this would free up rivals to pursue their own safety devices or simply copy SawStop's.
https://www.npr.org/2024/04/02/1241148577/table-saw-injuries...
Steve Gass, a patent attorney and amateur woodworker with a doctorate in physics, came up with the idea for SawStop's braking system in 1999. It took Gass two weeks to complete the design, and a third week to build a prototype based on a "$200 secondhand table saw." After numerous tests using a hot dog as a finger-analog, in spring 2000, Gass conducted the first test with a real human finger: he applied Novocain to his left ring finger, and after two false starts, he placed his finger into the teeth of a whirring saw blade. The blade stopped as designed, and although it "hurt like the dickens and bled a lot," his finger remained intact.
> This doesn't address the issue of added implementation cost,
It does not address that people will likely disable the "feature" and never re-enable it. SawStop saws have a bypass "feature" so they can cut conductive material.