Well there’s a turn up for the books…
SawStop release their patents
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Yep, I saw this last week as well
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That has been on the cards for a while
If accurate/true, the history of this is pretty awful. It’s also quite surprising that companies were held liable for things like a radial arm saw being unsafe rather than treating it as a risk assessment issue for the consumer.
I would be interested to see what BOSCH and FELDER do in Europe, I believe PCS in the FELDER range uses a very different system, and BOSCH’s was slightly different from SawStops too.
I like that he calls out the safety issues are also because of incorrect use of tools without riving knives, anti-kick back devices, and guarding.
The YouTuber talks about prices going up but the SawStop system is basically just a high frequency capacitive touch sensor and a pyrotechnic charge, similarly the PCS and BOSCH systems seemed to use a the kinetic energy of the blade to fling it down (non-destructively) but also used a relatively simple sensing system.
Obviously, there’s cost in engineering and designing it to be fail proof, and most tools are just NVR, power lead and motor, but I don’t see how this increases the price by hundreds of either currency?
Still an interesting discussion.
Just as an aside to this - a some while ago SawStop and its technology was acquired by TTS, who also owns Festool, Tanos (for which, read ‘Systainers’) and the amazing Festo robotics.
Also, the SawStop tech is not applicable to battery-powered saws (and the methods used by the likes of Felder are likely not viable for a smaller/cheaper/portable unit) so that’s a product category which might see problems ahead.
And, of course, flesh-to-blade contact is not the only safety concern with a table saw…
Is there a timeline for this hitting the UK or is our law on the use of using guards enough for it to not affect the UK? As the dude said on the video flesh-to-blade contact tech is not the only solution.
oh cool I was just looking up the Festo robotics recently regarding the animals showing people the flying autonomous fish I saw in 2008 or so