Comment by jtriangle
7 months ago
SawStop often breaks the saw itself, not just the blade. There's alot of energy being put into the saw all at once, and I've seen examples where it fractured the mounts of the saw itself when it engaged.
That's of course great, if you're in the business of selling saws, not so great if you're in the business of buying saws.
I have been associated with four hackerspaces that have SawStop's.
I have seen an average of about one false firing a month--generally moisture but sometimes a jig gets close enough to cause something. I have seen 4 "genuine" firings of which 2 would have been an extremely serious injury. This is over about 8 years--call it 10 years.
So, 4 spaces * 10 years * 12 months * $100 replacement = $48,000 paid in false firings vs 4 life changing injuries over 10 years. That's a pretty good tradeoff.
Professional settings should be way better than a bunch of rank amateurs. Yeah, we all know they aren't because everybody is being shoved to finish as quickly as possible, but proper procedures would minimize the false firings.
Part of the problem with false firing is that SawStop are the only people collecting any data and that's a very small number of incidents relative to the total number of incidents from all table saws. SawStop wants the data bad enough that if you get a "real" firing, SawStop will send you a new brake back when you send them the old one just so they can look at the data.
>That's a pretty good tradeoff.
Assuming of course, there is no possible way that you could otherwise reliably prevent those injuries that doesn't depend on a human's diligence. That is, of course, ridiculous, but, that's the nature of this regulation. You're also not accounting for the cost of the blade, which isn't salvageable after activation, and those can get spendy.
Realistically, SawStop wants the data so it can lobby itself into being a permanent player in the market, which will, of course, prevent anyone from innovating a no-damage alternative to SawStop, which is certainly possible.
> Assuming of course, there is no possible way that you could otherwise reliably prevent those injuries that doesn't depend on a human's diligence. That is, of course, ridiculous, but, that's the nature of this regulation.
Well, the saw manufacturers could have done that before this regulation. However, they didn't. Only once staring down imminent regulation have they been willing to concede anything.
Bosch even has a license to the SawStop technology and had their own saws with blade stops. They pulled them all from being sold.
Sorry, not sorry. The saw manufacturers have had 20+ years to fix their shit and haven't. Time to hit them with a big hammer.
> Realistically, SawStop wants the data so it can lobby itself into being a permanent player in the market
Realistically, SawStop is so damn small that they're going to disappear. They're likely to get bought by one of the big boys. Otherwise, the big boys are just going to completely mop the floor with them--there is absolutely zero chance that SawStop becomes a force in the market.
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Similar background and experience with sawstop. I'm a huge proponent of SawStops but it's important to be as upfront as possible. It's $100 for the cartridge and then another $60-$120 for replacement saw blade.
Sweat dripping on the work piece (especially NoVA in summer with AC on fritz) was responsible for a fair share of the cartridge firing without contacting flesh.
N=few, but thank you for sharing this actual anecdata for those of us interests.
This is a good amount of data but is $100 really the right cost for the replacement of a table saw if the saw itself is actually damaged, as OP says? Is it your experience that the saw is almost never damaged and the replacement cost is almost always the ~$150 dollar blade, or do you know how frequently these false firings damage the saw as well?
Well, only SawStop sells these saws, and I haven't seen anybody need to replace the saw after a firing. They just replace the blade and brake and get back to work.
Replacement cost is always brake and blade.
The blade is always dead. These things work by firing what looks to be an aluminum block directly into the blade.
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I ran woodshop at a makerspace with multiple SawStops. We went through lots of cartridges and blades but never experienced damage to the rest of the saw. I have no idea where OP is getting that information/FUD.
> So, 4 spaces * 10 years * 12 months * $100 replacement = $48,000 paid in false firings vs 4 life changing injuries over 10 years.
Certainly reattaching fingers would be cheaper than $48k. That's a steal of a deal in the US.
Divided by four, right, so $12k? I would think the medical, rehab, lost wages/productivity, and disability costs of an average table saw hand injury would easily exceed $12k.
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This is both factually incorrect and not funny at all.
In addition, last I checked, modern medicine cannot reattach nerves so you lose a great deal of functionality of your finger or hand even if you save it.
See: https://youtu.be/Xc-lIs8VNIc?t=1095
I hope I am simply missing the joke if someone would be so kind as to clue me in.
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If it engaged incorrectly, absolutely. If it saved my thumb and I have to buy a new saw as a result, it's hard to imagine a price point where I'd call the outcome not so great.
If it saves your thumb, sure. If you're ripping a wet piece of wood, no thumb risk at all, then, yeah, not so great.
Realistically, I don't like the tech or the methodology at all. Battle bots had saws that would drop into the floor without damage, and pop back up even, also without damage, and that was decades ago. That's the right model, not "fuck up the saw".
>Battle bots had saws that would drop into the floor without damage, and pop back up even, also without damage, and that was decades ago. That's the right model, not "fuck up the saw".
Might be wrong, but my own amateur reasoning has me believe that a table saw has far more kinetic energy than a battery powered battle bot, and that the SawStop must likely move the saw in microseconds, vs a battle bot which may comparatively have all the time in the world.
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Sawblades are consumables and cheap enough (some are ~10-12 bucks) that it's probably a worthwhile cost.
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I'm sorry, but this is a bizarre take to me. I don't care what happens to a saw if it would have otherwise cut my finger off.
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The point is that there's a (>1) cheaper solution that still saves your thumb, but it's (they're) being regulated out of the competition.
I tend to agree, assuming there are no false positives. Admittedly, I’m not sure how often that occurs, nor if we even can know that based on all the various work environments the cheap table saws are being used in today.
This is true, it can also fracture the motor mounts and not be noticed, until you are performing a difficult and aggressive cut and the motor mount breaks with a spinning motor attached and your board shoots across the room or into your face.
Your board shooting into your face has always been a concern with saws. Hence why you don't stand in the line of fire when making cuts.
I ran the woodshop at a local makerspace. We went through a lot of sawstop cartridges...easily 10-15 a year. The saw was never damaged because of the cartridge firing.
> That's of course great, if you're in the business of selling saws, not so great if you're in the business of buying saws.
OTOH (literally?) keeping your fingers but having to buy a new saw seems pretty reasonable.