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The U.S. government may finally mandate safer table saws
- tgsovlerkhgsel 3y ago> SawStop came onto the market in 2004 Which means it probably makes sense to mandate it now (and not earlier), because the patent should be expired by now.
- probably_jesus 3y ago[flagged]
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 3y agoThe idea is similar to minimum wage, if people are unable to unionize and negotiate for something, the government can do it for them. If it votes it floats ig. They should end the patents, though. A Sawstop monopoly would be stupid.
- sidewndr46 3y agoExcept in this case its a single patent attorney lobbying the federal government to mandate something for the past 20 years.
- onlytime 3y agoPatents only last 20 years in the US. Whenever this would go into effect, the patent would be expired.
- CogitoCogito 3y agoFrom the article: > However, one key patent — the "840" patent — is not set to expire until 2033. To stave off potential competitors, it describes the AIM technology very broadly. 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. At the hearing, he challenged them "to get in the game." So there apparently is still a patent in effect. They claim they'll dedicate it to the public, though it's unclear what that means in this case. Maybe they should preemptively do so before any laws are passed, especially if they're pushing for its widespread use anyway.
- h2odragon 3y agoI'm glad I got a $100 "Harbor Freight" table saw while they were legal.
- ChrisRR 3y agoI'm sure amazon and aliexpress is still going to be flooded with non-compliant tools. Hell, it's easy enough to buy a chainsaw conversion kit for your drill
- whatshisface 3y agoIn a world where "safe if you use it right," and "centrifugal killing machine" are equally non-compliant, aliexpress is going to sell the killing machines because they're cheaper and the expertise required to tell the difference is rare.
- CraigRo 3y agoPeople will disconnect the safety system, and we'll have a 500$ saw with a 300$ piece of useless gear There are lots of things you can't saw with a sawstop, and if triggered, it is very expensive to replace
- c22 3y agoYou don't need to disconnect anything, you can start a saw-stop up with safety temporarily disabled using a key that comes with it. A good thing to do any time you're cutting pressure treated wood.
- alistairSH 3y agoDoes the pressure treated wood trigger the safety device? And is the safety device "destructive" to the saw (requires expensive parts/repair/etc to reset)?
- throwup238 3y agoYes its destructive. Its a gunpowder charge that forces an aluminum block into the path of the saw blade. It works by detecting changes in capacitance so yes some treated wood and wet wood can set it off.
- SteveNuts 3y agoBut it's not destructive to the saw itself, the aluminum brake is a replaceable part.
- lazide 3y agoIt destroys the blade too. The replacement parts are often more expensive than an entire cheap table saw. If it saved your finger? Worth it. If you forgot to disable the feature and cut some wet or pressure treated wood and triggered it? Very irritating,
- bhhaskin 3y ago[flagged]
- AdamN 3y agoWhat's your recommendation for the CPSC to focus on as a higher priority?
- anonymousab 3y agoNo, given the amount of injuries caused by table saws and their importance to carpentry and job sites, this is quite literally one of the more important things for them to be doing. Education on existing safety features and measures just isn't enough to improve safety here. Much like seatbelts and air bags, we all benefit if the baseline technology can be transparently improved to prevent entire classes of injuries.
- alistairSH 3y ago1. This is why the CPSC exists. 2. The CPSC (and government and society in general) is capable of doing >1 thing at a time.
- floatrock 3y agoKey point here is the SawStop CEO is promising to open up the patent and make it available for anyone, so it's a bit more complicated than the typical regulatory-capture lawyer success story. The 3-point seat belt is another time this happened and probably one of the few feel-good "this should be available to everyone" patent stories: Volvo designed it, decided the safety-for-humanity* benefits outweighed patent protections, and made the patent open for anyone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nils_Bohlin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nils_Bohlin (*: at least the segment of humanity that drives cars) I'd be curious to hear the cynical take here. If I was to wargame it, I would guess something like: SawStop doesn't want to compete with Harbor Freight and cheap chinese tool manufacturers -- that's a race to the bottom, and power tools have turned into ecosystem lock-in plays which makes it difficult for a niche manufacturer to win in. So they'd rather compete on just the safety mechanism since they have a decade head start on it. They're too niche to succeed on SawStop(TM) workbenches, and they forsee bigger profits in a "[DeWalt|Milwaukee|EGo|...], Protected by SawStop(TM)" world.
- kaibee 3y ago> I'd be curious to hear the cynical take here. afaik the patent was basically expiring in the next couple years anyway, even the small ancillary ones. They've been making and selling SawStop saws for the last 20 years and already made their bag. So, since SawStop has the experience designing and building the systems they want to wring out some good will and see which Big Saw manufacturer wants to pay them to get ahead of their competition.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y agoMinor tangent- I view patents and especially physical invention as requiring more work yet patents last 20 years while copyright can last up to 120 years! https://www.copyright.gov/history/copyright-exhibit/lifecycle https://www.copyright.gov/history/copyright-exhibit/lifecycl...
- AnthonyMouse 3y agoCompare the difference in effect between having a copyright on iOS and having a patent on "mobile device with a touchscreen display". In one case you can do a comparable amount of work to make a competitor, in the other competition is entirely prohibited. Also, copyright terms are ridiculous. Historically patents and copyrights were both 14 years.
- ChoGGi 3y agoI do like the idea of the sawstop, but in Canada at least. They're quite a bit more then a few hundred dollars: 700 CAD vs 2200 CAD. https://www.amazon.ca/BOSCH-GTS15-10-Jobsite-Gravity-Rise-Wheeled/dp/B0CKS6G6TC https://www.amazon.ca/BOSCH-GTS15-10-Jobsite-Gravity-Rise-Wh... https://www.leevalley.com/en-ca/shop/tools/power-tools/saws/table-saw/110699-sawstop-jobsite-pro?item=95T0142 https://www.leevalley.com/en-ca/shop/tools/power-tools/saws/...
- nricciar 3y agoquestion is how much are your fingers worth
- legitster 3y agoThe vast majority of tablesaw users don't lose fingers. How much is avoiding a 1/100000 chance of losing a finger to you? Probably a lot less than $500.
- alistairSH 3y agoNot just loss, but permanent damage. A good friend jammed his thumb into a table saw, only lost the "fatty" tip, but there's permanent nerve damage, so increased risk of burn or other future injury. So, that was on the mild end of possibly injury, but still cost a small fortune to fix (still required surgery) plus a lifetime of lost function (albeit only a small loss).
- bsder 3y ago> The vast majority of tablesaw users don't lose fingers. Practically every single person I know who does "woodworking" has some finger injury from a saw--generally the table saw. It's north of 75%.
- ChoGGi 3y agoAlmost 20 years of never coming close to losing a finger, I pay attention when I'm doing anything dangerous.
- anonymousab 3y agoI hope they find a way to bring costs down. It seems like a very hard problem - you seem to need fairly high quality materials for the braking system to not bust up the machine itself, and the circuitry is a non trivial expense. But if folks can't buy a $100-200 table saw, and they can't afford anything higher, then ideas like affixing a circular saw in an upside-down jig might start to become more common. And then they'd lose the baseline safety features of even a cheap table saw, such as the blade guard and riving knife, which might be even worse for overall injuries.
- wisemanwillhear 3y agoIndeed... "Build A Table Saw In 10 Minutes" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhORUN6oCUc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhORUN6oCUc
- mschuster91 3y ago> But if folks can't buy a $100-200 table saw, and they can't afford anything higher, then ideas like affixing a circular saw in an upside-down jig might start to become more common. FTFY: then they shouldn't be in business as the business model is unsustainable. Even for purely private usage - if you can't afford to buy a SawStop saw, then rent one. Your fingers should be more than worth it.
- ApolloFortyNine 3y agoOp didn't mention businesses so why are you? Plenty of regular people own them as well, woodworking is a very popular hobby. >Even for purely private usage - if you can't afford to buy a SawStop saw, then rent one. Dunno why some people decide they get to nanny everyone else. There's plenty of other dangerous tools (when misused) to come after next if you go down this path. The op here is right, the most likely path is rigging a circular saw into a table saw from some internet tutorial. People have done worse to save less.
- mschuster91 3y ago> Dunno why some people decide they get to nanny everyone else. There's plenty of other dangerous tools (when misused) to come after next if you go down this path. We mandate safety features on plenty of dangerous machinery, most importantly cars - seatbelts, airbags, brake anti-locks, lane-keeper assists... or we ban stuff entirely, even if it is completely safe to use when one has the proper equipment and knowledge like asbestos. The key thing is 30.000 accidents a year. Each of these probably costs society around 50k, and that's just the medical cost, not to account for (permanent) loss or reduction of income. I agree that some will rig up completely unsafe "alternatives" but honestly, doing that rather than renting a safe saw for a dozen bucks... those people at least know of the danger.
- bragr 3y agoRelated: Woodworking Injuries in Slow Motion [1], including an interview with a person who experienced each type of injury, because these kinds of injuries are just so common. Lots of missing fingers at wood working meetups. [1] https://youtu.be/Xc-lIs8VNIc https://youtu.be/Xc-lIs8VNIc
- shrubble 3y agoThey are forcing these guardrails because the safety culture is being obliterated in the pursuit of cheap immigrant lavor. Since the businesses won't implement it due to extra cost and the person harmed will be on Medicare and not any company health care plan. They will hide behind subcontractors etc like they do now. So to avoid the govt being on the hook for medical care and permanent disability...
- adolph 3y agoThis 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-safety-sawstop-cpsc 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. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SawStop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SawStop
- meragrin_ 3y ago> 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.
- delichon 3y agoI agree with Stumpy Nubs on this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxKkuDduYLk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxKkuDduYLk He is opposed to this but expects it to pass. His best argument is that it would effectively outlaw affordable low end "contractor" portable job-site style table saws. I have one of those, a cheap $150 Ryobi. It would be more like $450 with the SawStop feature and I would not have been able to afford it. I'd be using a circular saw instead. Maybe that is a bit safer, and at least it's more affordable until they require the same tech in circular saws. But shouldn't I be the one to weigh the value of a risk to only myself against the value of my fingers?
- evancordell 3y agoThis video is a great overview of the history and the recent hearings, came here to link it. Not sure I agree with his conclusion though - once all manufacturers are required to include the technology, surely they will still compete on price and find ways to get cheaper models to market? They will be unencumbered by the risk of patent violation to innovate on cheaper approaches to the same problem. He also argues for riving knives and blade guards as an alternative, which are great, but not all cuts can be made with them in place. As a hobby woodworker that sometimes makes mistakes, I've wanted a SawStop for a long time but have been stymied by the cost, so maybe I'm just being optimistic.
- Delphiza 3y agoThat's a good point. I would think that a circular saw or track saw is more dangerous. You tend to be hunched over the blade in an awkward position. I use a table saw over a circular saw because, for me, it seems safer.
- rimunroe 3y agoI would love if someone could chime in with actual statistics here, but I've always heard that table saws are the most dangerous common power tool in the US by raw injury count alone. I have a weak assumption that more people have circular saws than have table saws. This seems unsurprising to me, because both track and circular saws are used with the blades faced away from the person. I can't speak to track saws, but I've never had a board launched at me by a circular saw. People also tend to over-extend themselves over tablesaws, and have their hands inches from the blades.
- throw7 3y agoI'm all for safer equipment, but the tech is expensive. I am hesistant if a gov't mandate wipes out cheaper alternatives.
- ne8il 3y agoYou hear a lot from long-time woodworkers that this is unnecessary, as they are perfectly capable of using a table saw safely with just the riving knife/splitter and proper technique. Which is anecdotally true, but hard to accept with the actual data of 30k injuries a year. So it's not a question of _if_ there's a cost to society here, it's a question of _where_ we put the cost: up-front on prevention, or in response to injury in the healthcare system. Is the trade-off worth it to force all consumers to spend a few hundred dollars more for a job-site table-saw, if it means the insurance market won't have to bear several thousand for an injury? I'd say yes.
- AlotOfReading 3y agoThere's a second aspect to the "tradeoff" that's worth emphasizing: it's not an equal trade. A significant percentage of those injured never fully recover regardless of the insurance money spent. Even a 1:1 trade of prevention vs response dollars means we have tens of thousands fewer permanent injuries.
- nprateem 3y agoIf you look on YouTube, almost all US woodworking channels remove the riving knife and blade guard. That just encourages new woodworkers to do the same. They then demo rabbit blades which are illegal in the EU due to being so dangerous.
- Nifty3929 3y agoAnother example of making it harder to produce one unit of economic output (a saw, in this case). When we make it harder to produce things, we will have less of them, or less of something else if we re-direct our efforts from something else. It's death by a thousand cuts this way, as our overall economic productivity slows. In the current world, people have a choice to purchase a saw that took more effort to produce, if they think that it's worth it for the additional safety it provides. This new law would eliminate that choice, and those who don't think it's worth it will have to purchase the high-effort saw or go without.
- banannaise 3y agoA lot of people don't have that option; their employer buys a piece of equipment and tells them to use it. As much as anything, this is a mandate on worker safety.
- meragrin_ 3y agoCan't they just mandate what the employer is allowed to buy?
- marcusverus 3y ago> The Consumer Product Safety Commission says that when a person is hospitalized, the societal cost per table saw injury exceeds $500,000 when you also factor in loss of income and pain and suffering. Seems fishy[0][1], so I checked the study: > Overall, medical costs and work losses account for about 30 percent of these costs, or about $1.2 billion. The intangible costs associated with pain and suffering account for the remaining 70 percent of injury costs. So the actual cost of each injury which results in hospitalization is (allegedly) $150,000, and they only get to the $500,000 figure by adding $350,000 in intangible "costs" tacked on. Totally legit. > Because of the substantial societal costs attributable to blade-contact injuries, and the expected high rate of effectiveness of the proposed requirement in preventing blade-contact injuries, the estimated net benefits (i.e. benefits minus costs) for the market as a whole averaged $1,500 to $4,000 per saw. There is no cost to the regulation, but rather a "net benefit", because the cost (in real dollars) of the saw-stop devices is more than offset by the savings (in intangible pain-and-suffering-dollars)! Based on this obviously, intentionally misleading "math", they include this canard in the summary: > The Commission estimates that the proposed rule's aggregate net benefits on an annual basis could range from about $625 million to about $2,300 million. Did you catch that? They didn't include so much as a hint that these dollar savings are, in fact, not dollars, but pain in suffering, measured in dollars! In this life, only three things are certain: death, taxes, and being lied to by the United States federal government. [0] https://hcup-us.ahrq.gov/reports/statbriefs/sb261-Most-Expensive-Hospital-Conditions-2017.jsp https://hcup-us.ahrq.gov/reports/statbriefs/sb261-Most-Expen... [1] https://www.ziprecruiter.com/Salaries/Day-Laborer-Salary https://www.ziprecruiter.com/Salaries/Day-Laborer-Salary
- kube-system 3y agoThere's nothing dishonest about it. If you want to measure something, you need to pick a unit. For many people with serious injuries, and especially disfiguring or life-altering injuries, the hospital bill is an afterthought in terms of impact. You're not point out a lie, you're pointing out that there's no direct conversion between dollars and happiness.
- marcusverus 3y ago
- throwitaway222 3y agoI've been tracking this closely, I don't know if I should wait to buy one in a year or so when the technology is available or buy one now so I get a cheap saw. I am not a cabinet maker so it would be for various building projects (like finish work).
- sidewndr46 3y agothis tech has been on the market for decades
- throwitaway222 3y agoSorry should have been more concise. If I buy one now, I pay $150 for a cheap saw without the tech. I can of course buy a saw-stop for $1000 right now. If I wait a year or so, this legislation would probably allow me to get a saw-stop capable saw for $450ish, but it's a gamble, because they COULD be over $1000. We don't know.
- kelchm 3y agoMaybe think about going with the cheap table saw and spending the remainder of the money to get a nice track saw. Of course, there are some things that you really do need a table saw for, but track saws are amazing and inherently safer in comparison to a table saw. Particularly for sheet goods, I’ll never use anything but a track saw at this point.
- sidewndr46 3y agoThis has been my particular position for a long time now. We don't need safer table saws. If you want a safe table saw, just use a different type of saw.
- roflchoppa 3y agoI slipped when using a table saw when I was around 15, I remember catching myself with my face in front of the saw blade. I still don’t use that machine alone, almost 20 years later.
- bamboozled 3y agoI’m going to guess you were putting a lot of pressure on the wood, pushing it through the blade ?
- roflchoppa 3y agoI’m not sure what happened to be honest. I’m just glad I caught myself… Mom would have been pissed.
- bamboozled 3y agoIn the past I've found myself pushing wood quite hard into the blade. I don't really do it anymore usually it means there is some problem. But the few times I've done it, I've thought about ending up in a similar situation to you.
- throw0101a 3y agoNPR article from 2017 on this, "Despite Proven Technology, Attempts To Make Table Saws Safer Drag On": * https://www.npr.org/2017/08/10/542474093/despite-proven-technology-attempts-to-make-table-saws-safer-drag-on https://www.npr.org/2017/08/10/542474093/despite-proven-tech... Per above, the way SawStop® works: > Gass is a physicist and he designed a saw that could tell the difference between when it was cutting wood and the instant it started cutting a human finger or hand. The technology is beautiful in its simplicity: Wood doesn't conduct electricity, but you do. Humans are made up mostly of salty water — a great conductor. > Gass induced a very weak electrical current onto the blade of the saw. He put an inexpensive little sensing device inside it. And if the saw nicks a finger, within 3/1000ths of a second, it fires a brake that stops the blade. Gass demonstrates this in an epic video using a hot dog in place of a finger. The blade looks like it just vanishes into the table.
- porkbeer 3y agoIt usually works too! Usually.
- lenerdenator 3y agoThis is gonna put so many hand surgeons near high schools with shop classes out of work.
- RyanAdamas 3y agoThe US Government doesn't give a damn about safety, the individuals who pass these laws have money at stake. Hence the financial windfalls that come to all the Reps in the House that just happen to sit on specific committees that oversee certain agencies which promulgate rules which have no real basis in law, but sure help them make money off building barriers to entry and functional mono/duopolies. It's long past time for peaceful revolution.
- gosub100 3y agoWhy not just tax table saws and drills and put the money in a pool that doctors and hospitals can claim from when uninsured people cut their hands off?
- danols 3y agoDoes anyone know why SawStop never bothered to enter the EU market?
- dboreham 3y agoEU always had stricter safety standards for table saws. I moved to the US in the late 90s, sold my table saw in the UK and got a new one in the US. It lacked the quick stop feature that my UK saw had.
- Freak_NL 3y agoThat makes this whole SawStop thing so confusing to me. I'm sure some fingers are lost in Europe by table saws, but that doesn't seem to be anywhere near the 'must mandate auto-breaking saw tech' level.
- pubby 3y agoSo here's the problem: you can buy an older cast-iron table saw with good precision and a large bed for $50-$150 on craigslist, or you can buy a cheap piece of made-in-china plastic at home depot for $500. The cheap piece of plastic checks off more safety features from a regulatory standpoint, but tiny size and poor tolerances results in more kick-back and accidents.
- cityofdelusion 3y agoThis will kill off the cheap table saw. It will be interesting to see how the hobby and industry adapt to $700 being the bar to entry — and that would be RYOBI grade stuff. The added cost isn’t from the mechanism, the cost is from needing to build a real frame around the blade instead of plastic and thin aluminum. The SawStop trigger is incredibly violent, the braking force will sheer the carbide tips off the saw blade from inertia alone. Cheap saws are almost all plastic and would be horribly deformed after a trigger. I anticipate a return of something that used to be more common, the upside-down circular saw bolted to a table top.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> Cheap saws are almost all plastic and would be horribly deformed after a trigger Isn’t this fine? Buy an expensive saw and only lose the blade. Either way, keep your fingers.
- oslem 3y agoThe “cheap” saws in this scenario are still several hundred dollars. A SawStop is made well enough to withstand multiple activations and costs $100 for a new cartridge plus the cost of a new blade. It’s kind of a situation where it’s “cheap to be rich.”
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> a situation where it’s “cheap to be rich.” Sure. Sort of like methanol. As a society, we sometimes raise the (legal) floor even if it helps those at the margin. Not commenting on this policy alone. But one could make the same argument about seatbelts, airbags, flame-retardant bedwear or anything else purchased privately with lethal consequences.
- garbagewoman 3y agoThere are many ways to trigger it that don't involve your fingers, and many people don't have unlimited incomes. So no, not fine, in many cases
- 3y ago
- hk1337 3y agoWe had a hole in the cinderblock in school where someone let the wood get away from them and the table saw kicked it back. This was in shop class, not a random wall in the school. The sharp blade isn't the only thing dangerous.
- sojournerc 3y agoMost amputations on a table saw are because of kickback pulling the worker's hand into the blade. Riving knife, a well adjusted fence, and knowing which cuts have potential for kickback can mitigate this.
- mvdtnz 3y agoEnjoy your dado stacks while you can. I for one think countries outside of USA have gone way overboard regulating an inherently dangerous tool, and the productivity dive is real.
- 486sx33 3y agoWhen sawstop engages it destroys the blade and ruins the stop cartridge. So you need a new cartridge and a new blade, which is better than a finger but not cost free. Wet (damp) wood, aluminum, and any other material that is a bit conductive can trigger the sawstop. However sawstop has a bypass mode, which allows you to cut conductive items (and your finger). This article is pretty aggressive with this statement “ Woodworking has been a nearly lifelong passion for Noffsinger, and he was no stranger to power tools. Back before his accident, he'd seen a demonstration of a new and much safer type of table saw at a local woodworking store. Marketed under the name SawStop, it was designed to stop and retract the spinning blade within a few milliseconds of making contact with flesh — fast enough to turn a potentially life-changing injury into little more than a scratch. Noffsinger's table saw wasn't equipped with the high-tech safety feature because manufacturers aren't required to include it.” Actually his saw wasn’t equipped with sawstop because he chose not to equip it. He knew of its existence, it’s readily available (online and also at Lee valley tools), but he chose not to get the safety device and somehow that’s the manufacturers fault? Cmon man. This same jerk will be the guy who buys the thing, turns on bypass mode, cuts his finger off and sues the manufacturer. We don’t need safety devices mandated on personal table saws. Maybe osha should require saws on jobsites to be retrofitted with saw stop to protect workers, but it is most certainly not the manufacturers fault if you cut off your thumb. I suppose chain saws and motorcycles should just be straight illegal then ?
- thereisnospork 3y agoI'm surprised to read so much controversy, this feels like a textbook example of desirable regulation to me. If the societal cost (injuries, lost wages due to loss of function) meaningfully exceed the implementation cost then it should be done as it will make society/the economy safer and more efficient. Both sides of which should be easy enough to measure. That sawstop would benefit shouldn't enter into the equation.
- causality0 3y agoDamn SawStop. You create a product that you can not only lobby the government into forcing people to use, but activating it destroys not only the SawStop but also the saw blade, necessitating replacing two products. What a perfect grift.
- JonChesterfield 3y agoI don't know where to stand on this one. I've got a table saw. The extent of my training on how to use it was my design tech teacher saying very clearly that none of us were ever to use it and some YouTube video of dubious information content. I bought it from Amazon, nothing approximating a check that I had any idea what to do with it. I am very frightened of it and thus far only slightly injured. An automated stop thing would make me much less frightened. Possibly more frequently injured as a direct result. Having the option to buy a more expensive saw which slags itself instead of your finger is a good thing. Making the ones without that feature illegal is less obvious. I think I'd bolt a circular saw under a table if that came to pass. A gunpowder charge shoving a piece of aluminium into the blade on a handheld circular saw would be pretty lethal in itself. Lots of angular momentum there - jam the blade and the whole thing is going to spin. It seems dubious that I can buy things like circular saws and angle grinders without anything along the lines of some training course first. That angle grinder definitely tries to kill me on occasion. That might be a better path to decreasing injuries.
- EasyMark 3y agothe more expensive saw is 4 to 5x as much as a standard issue table saw of similar capabilities (barring the safety part). I don't think this will pan out when Congress critters get the details and tradeoffs.
- paulddraper 3y agoThat's funny, I was just thinking about how affordable things are nowadays; we should really make them pricier.
- pyb 3y agoLooking at this from the UK : it's always astounding that US has an such a ligitious culture, and, at the same time, such a backwards health-and-safety culture. At least that's the impression I get from watching American tradespeople on Youtube.
- wil421 3y agoI hear this a lot but it’s a myth. Germany is the most litigious county in the world. We are very close to the UK per capita 75 vs 65 per 1,000 people. The UK is #5 and the US #4. Here is one of many Google sources: https://eaccny.com/news/member-news/dont-let-these-10-legal-myths-stop-your-doing-business-in-the-u-s-myths-6-and-7-the-u-s-is-very-litigious-and-that-is-too-threatening-to-a-small-company-like-ours-as-a-result-the-risk/ https://eaccny.com/news/member-news/dont-let-these-10-legal-... The UK and other commonwealth states are more nanny states than the US is. I’m not surprised it’s taken this long.
- gorkish 3y agoI'll forever remain skeptical of SawStop. I understand their mechanism works quite well and they sell a very high quality saw, but I will never in my life buy it. It's amazing how the discourse online has shifted. SawStop's original focus after having their patent granted was super-litigious IP-troll type behavior. They were able to win some cases and force other manufactures like Bosch to remove alternative safety they had engineered to compete. SawStop was lobbying heavily for a regulatory requirement to mandate their patented technology be installed on all table saws. The online opinion of them was ... not good. Look up the old SawStop stuff on Slashdot if you want to see it. Now that their patent is about to expire, it's "oh look we have changed" -- they haven't. It's just a desperate bid to get themselves insinuated in front of manufacturers who will be suddenly charged with a mandate to ship safety devices -- and of course SawStop will be there with the business shortcut. Sorry, no. Fuck them. Let the patent expire.
- jrwoodruff 3y agoColor me jaded, but isn't this just business as usual in the U.S?
- gorkish 3y agoColor me jaded, but isn't this just a typical dig on the US that also applies to businesses acting predictably in their best interests the world over?
- alilleybrinker 3y agoSince they actually make a product using their patented technology, they would definitionally not be a patent troll. Even if they’re litigious, that’s exactly how the system is supposed to work when you’ve invented a valuable technology which you sell to recoup the costs of R&D plus the profit of your invention.
- gorkish 3y ago> Since they actually make a product At the time they were up to their original shenanigans they did not sell the saw. They did not sell a saw for the first five years of their business being open. It was a pure IP play. God damn do people have short memories.
- whartung 3y agoI take it that simply dropping the saw (and then braking it afterward) is not fast enough to reduce injury? I saw a demo of another safety saw, which was using very sophisticated monitoring systems. It was essentially dropping the saw if it detected the hand getting too close to the blade. Saw Stop waits for contact. So the detector system has more time to move the saw out of the way, than the Saw Stop does. I guess having to move the blade and the motor is too much energy, even or particularly, if its spring loaded, compared to springing the jamming piece that Saw Stop uses.
- TSiege 3y agoAmazed at the amount of people here who would clearly be against seatbelts if they were to be made a legal requirement today. So many people are certain it won't happen to them. Accidents happen, even to experts. My dad had a table saw he'd been using for over a decade when he had an accident. Luckily they were able to stitch up the finger and he missed the bone, allowing the finger tip to regrow. But my family friend who's a professional carpenter isn't as lucky and is missing the tips of three fingers from a jointer. These tools are dangerous and table saws cause upwards of 30k injures a year. Everyone's talking about how this will kill the industry. Are businesses not innovative around costs, new technology, and regulations? Seems like everything from cars to energy have all improved with regulatory pressure And to all the people saying this will keep hobbyists away. Ever think of how many more people would be willing to buy a table saw if they knew they weren't going to cut their fingers off?
- slackfan 3y agoI am not against seatbelts. I am against government mandates in regards to seatbelts. >Ever think of how many more people would be willing to buy a table saw if they knew they weren't going to cut their fingers off? If you think this is a factor in people buying or not buying a table saw, I have a bridge to sell you.
- pwthornton 3y agoPeople are driving on public roads, using public first responders, being taken to the emergency room, etc. Not wearing a seatbelt costs society time and money.
- jstanley 3y agoWithout regard to the merits of this particular case, in general, the offering of public services shouldn't be used as a pretext to infringe on freedoms.
- Schiendelman 3y ago
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- dugmartin 3y agoIt is stuff like this that makes people think NPR is a Democratic Party organ: > Over the years, Republicans on the commission have sided with the power tool industry in opposing further regulations. Maybe they are siding with poor people that can't afford SawStop or people that see the heath and safety nanny state example in the UK as something to avoid? I wish people would consider that every new regulation as an additional cost in both money and freedom. I use a table saw (with the blade guard removed) many times a week as a hobby woodworker and DIYer. I understand the risks and I'm not endangering anyone but myself. I'm an adult and fully capable of making that decision.
- hakdbha 3y ago[dead]
- garbageman 3y agoWhen you make decisions that favor an industry while also take money from them, it's safe to assume they're 'siding' with that industry.
- hilbert42 3y agoHooray, it's about fucking time.
- fortran77 3y agoI'm all for the Saw Stop, and I wouldn't use a table saw without one. (I prefer not to use table saws at all now!) However, I'm pretty sure than the vast majority of the pressure to mandate the "Saw Stop" comes from the "Saw Stop" corporation, who hold exclusive rights.
- pksebben 3y agoDon't like it. There are systemic problems with nanny-state thinking - you either solve all cases of danger at once, or you make the problem worse. I was close to a story recently about a kid in a climbing gym who mistied their harness. Competent climber, but got careless and no one caught the faulty safety loop and they fell 40 feet on descent. Nothing broken, in a turn of miracle, but could have been fatal for them and others had there been someone underneath at the time. Now, I'm sure that this will garner some conversation, but IMO this is an example of the Safe Playground Effect; that is, because we put soft corners on everything we deem to be risky, we implicitly teach people that the world has been made safe for them. Without the risk of mild harm (on the playground) we don't develop the sense to be cautious with major harm (like at the climbing gym). The unconscious, innate instinct is "it can't be that bad, I've existed for X years sort of carelessly and I've never gotten hurt". Problematically, this is the sort of effect that is nearly impossible to analyze with any reliability. Too many connected, confounding factors even in the most controlled environments. I think it's fairly intuitive, but there's a lot of room for me to be wrong and I'd be the first to admit it. IF this is the case, however, then what we are effectively doing by adding these mandated safety measures piecemeal, is lowering the personal shelf of responsibility whilst leaving other risks at the same level of probability and effect, making them that much worse because now people as a whole are less vigilant re: their own safety. One actual example I can think of to back this stuff up is the Burning Man festival. It's a city of 75,000 with precious little in the way of medical resources in an extreme climate peppered with dangerous art made of metal and splintered wood and fire, and yet the injury rate is far lower than that of a normal municipality of the same size (in the past decade, there have been 2 fatalities IIRC, which is way lower than the national average per pop.) My (admittedly hand-wavy) guess about the why is this: people who go there know that there are risks, and despite being largely chemically altered this awareness translates to a lower risk of injury even considering the added risk factors. But, you know, that's just like, my opinion, man.
- jlawson 3y agoGood comment but, >in the past decade, there have been 2 fatalities IIRC, which is way lower than the national average per pop Is this controlled for age? And other obvious confounders like SES, race, etc?
- chung8123 3y agoEverything is a balance and you have to decide how much risk you want to take. People hate it when we use money or resources to injury and life but that is reality. How many injuries are we going to prevent? How much does it cost in productivity? In general I am against government regulation here unless it is really an issue. We spend a lot of time preventing injuries to some things and then not to the most important ones (like our eating habits).
- mplewis 3y ago30,000 people are injured by table saws a year. That’s a material issue.
- paradox460 3y agoA good idea on paper, marred by reality First, this would basically grant Sawstop a monopoly. They say they'll release the patent, but I'd like to see that requirement built into the bill Second, it doesn't seem to allow for alternative safety systems. Bosch has a system that competes with Sawstop, and is arguably better, as it doesn't destroy the saw, blade, or carriage, but is currently unavailable in the US due to Sawstop parents If the bill were to allow for the Bosch or other systems on us soil then I'd have far fewer qualms over it
- rkagerer 3y agoIs SawStop the only current manufacturer of a brake product?
- CivBase 3y agoIf I'm understanding this correctly, the problem here is other saw companies aren't implementing a safety feature because SawStop has a patent on the relevant technology. Now the US federal government wants to make that safety feature a requirement and SawStop pinky swears to release the patent. Why don't they just strike down SawStop's patent on the technology instead? Bosch apparently already tried to implement the tech but was scared away by SawStop's lawyers. There's a proven interest in the tech from other industry players. Is there any evidence that the proposed regulation is even necessary? Seems ridiculous to me that they'd even allow a company to prevent other companies from implementing safety features in the first place.
- Mawr 3y agoWell that's a lame video. Watch this: https://youtu.be/SYLAi4jwXcs?t=139 https://youtu.be/SYLAi4jwXcs?t=139
- adamcharnock 3y agoI see so many videos of (predominantly USA) carpenters using table saws without even the bare minimum of safety features (even just a riving knife, for example). Is there no way to just enforce basic low-cost low-effort safety features rather than just jumping all the way to a very costly commercial saw-stop-like solution?
- loufe 3y agoIt's crazy how many people experience these injuries. I have a great uncle and know a friends dad who have both lost fingers to table saws.
- AugustusCrunch 3y agoI can't support any business that tries to make their product mandatory. Someone says here he's not scum, he is absolutely delusional scum. Does anyone else think having the government mandate what you can buy is a good idea? Another company designed a saw which did the same thing and which didn't destroy a $200 cartridge and the blade. He said he'd sue them into oblivion. He's a greedy prick who would see people maimed before he'd give up the profits on his half-assed, shitty, Chinese made trash. Use a blade guard, ffs. Don't support this asshole.
- mattmaroon 3y agoI get the opposition, but this is a huge savings in the long run, both in terms of sheer money, and pain and suffering. The math on table saws is staggering (as pointed out in this comment section.) It's hard to stomach allowing several amputations a day to save people $50-100. I know a table saw is as safe as the user; I am so terrified of mine that it's probably commercial air travel level of safe. But stats have consistently shown the average user isn't, and there's no reason to expect that to change. I think we can expect added costs to come down a lot when every table saw has one. They will be more expensive than they are now, for sure, but I don't think it'll be 3x. And I'm not worried about beginners being unable to afford one. There's a thriving used table saw market that'll still happily amputate your digits, these things live forever. You'll be able to get one of those really cheap when every new table saw also has anti-mangling tech built in, as nobody but the knuckle draggers will want the old ones. In fact I'd expect a flood of people (myself included) selling their crappy old table saw without brakes for the first affordable table saw with them. And if you just really don't like your limbs, I saw a radial arm saw at Menard's for pretty cheap.
- redm 3y agoI'm a woodworker, and i've suffered some injuries over the years (but not on a tablesaw). This seems like more of a political issue, those for and against regulation. I'm surprised to see this on HN and there is too much drama in this thread to otherwise comment.
- laborcontract 3y agoI too am predisposed against regulation. Knowing nothing about the issue, I actually expected to support the regulation. Reading on, it basically seems to give Saw Stop defacto monopoly over the table saw industry, shifting the value capture entirely to them. And seeing that swings me against it. Unless they commit to releasing their full patent portfolio in favor of this effort, it seems like the legislation vastly favors an economically motivated actor, which rubs me the wrong way. The irony here is that the same government wonders why manufacturing doesn't come back to the United States and this case is a microcosm of something the issue of a whole.
- analog31 3y agoHere's the first thing I noticed when I just looked up SawStop. They have a reasonable saw for $2k, in the same "class" as my 1970s Sears, based solely on size. And not all that much more expensive than other brands. Looking at the picture, the saw is safer than mine even without the brake, because of the quality of the fence and other fittings. Unfortunately, a mandate won't get saws like mine out of circulation. What's keeping me from going right out and getting a new saw is that mine is only used sporadically, and is mainly a "horizontal surface" in my garage. I'm done with the big projects that made my house livable. My safety rule for now (this is not professional advice) is that I don't attempt tricky cuts at all. The biggest risk I've noticed is trying to hold onto a workpiece that's too small, and I'd rather just scrap it and use longer stock. My hands are never closer than several inches away from the blade. And I have other tools for other jobs, such as a chop saw, so I don't try to do "everything" with the table saw.
- at_a_remove 3y agoAn acquaintance of mine was a professional carpenter for a theater company. Thoughtful, careful guy. Never in a rush. He of course used a table saw all the time. I asked if he had Sawstop. They were too cheap. He still has no idea what happened, he simply came to holding the bleeding stumps of his fingers. Surgeons managed to reassemble some functioning digits out of the chunks. It is my opinion that the government should purchase and "open source" safety patents as they come up, then manufacture replaceable safety parts to sell at cost.
- petee 3y agoMy two bits as a carpenter w/18yrs table saw experience -- there are plenty of safe ways to use a tablesaw, fingers nowhere near the blade. SawStop's trip randomly, and the saw itself just sucks to use, its a bad design top to bottom. And you still have to let the operator disable it at their will. If they are so dangerous, then make it licensed and mandate training, which is really what makes saws unsafe -- the untrained.
- jimnotgym 3y agoI'm in the UK, I used a tablesaw professionally for some years, often in very basic circumstances. I have never ever come close to an accident with a tablesaw. The reason: 1) UK tablesaws all come with a top-guard and a riving-knife fitted. The riving knife stops the timber from closing on the back of the blade, causing a kick back. In many designs it also holds the top guard up. 2) During my apprenticeship training there was a mandatory table saw course. We were taught how to set the guards and safely use the machine. 3) a riving knife based guard gets in the way of cutting grooves and rebates. If you take it off to do this then you replace it with a guard or jig to keep it safe. Then you put it straight back on. 4) I sometimes watch American 'makers' on YouTube and they terrify me with their working practice. My hands never went closer than the edge of the saw table. I used push sticks and jigs to handle everything close to the blade 5) I have never seen a sawstop over here, and it looks like a stupid hitech solution to a problem better solved by guards.
- tptacek 3y agoI think it was 'DannyBee who pointed out years ago that the total cost of treating table saw injuries in the US exceeds the entire market for table saws themselves.
- mberning 3y agoI just bought a job site table saw for some home improvement projects. I’m so friggin wary of it. Bought all the safety upgrades I could find. Nice push sticks. Micro jig gripper blocks, feather boards. Try to run the guard at all times as well.
- elihu 3y agoI can see some potential issues with this: 1) Patents. The article goes into this a bit -- supposedly the folks behind SawStop have said they'd open up a key patent, but I wouldn't want the U.S. government to mandate this without reading all the fine print and making sure that this can't be used by SawStop to crush all their competitors. 2) Materials. I often cut aluminum on my table saw, using a non-ferrous metal cutting blade. (It works fine for wood too.) As I understand it, SawStops are activated when they detect high conductivity materials. How does this work for cutting metals? 3) False positives, repair costs. Replacing the blade periodically due to accidentally cutting wood with slightly-too-high moisture content would get tiresome. (For that matter, so would putting off a project for months if I have to wait for the wood to dry out.) I'm generally in favor of safer tools, but it seems like there are some significant trade-offs involved here.
- oslem 3y agoFor (2), I believe SawStops do have an override switch to disable the protection just for this reason.
- greedo 3y agoSS wants this to become a requirement because it elevates the cost of all table saws up towards their entry level gear. Their cheapest saw is $899, when you can get a comparable saw (sans flesh sensing tech) for around $499. If their competition now has to sell a saw at $899 (less licensing fee to SS), then they'll be at a competitive disadvantage since now the pricing floor has been lifted up to SS's level. And you know SS will be advertising that they invented this tech, blah blah blah. SS is acting in their own interests, or they never would have used the patent system to prohibit this technology.
- non-chalad 3y agoOr just use some scrap wood to push the work?
- seany 3y agoEverything about this is awful. There must be some kind of personality distribution to opinions on this kind of thing. Government paternalism instantly causes visceral negative thought processes for me, but there are plenty of people that seem (?) to be all for it.
- ickwabe 3y agoThis will be lost now in the conversation, but this video by woodworker Stumpy Nubs is worth watching for key context: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxKkuDduYLk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxKkuDduYLk Yes SawStop sued Bosch for patent infringement and won. But they also then immediately offered to allow Bosch to have a license for free to continue distributing in the US. In the safety commission meeting,they also annouced they would not puruse any lawsuits for the key technology still under patent if the rule was passed. Does this fully address the potential cost issues for beginning woodworkers? No but I very much think the video is worth a watch to make a more nuanced judgement.
- exabrial 3y agoI survived a childhood regularly using a radial arm saw. My dad was very clear I was not old enough to use it until I was 12, and then we did a full afternoon of what the proper way to use it and how to get hurt using it. These are literal power tools with spinning blades of death. You shouldn't use these without training and you should understand how you get hurt on one of these. I see this as government overreach yet again. I'd only be ok with this if the requirement has an expiration date so that way it doesn't block future innovation.
- egberts1 3y agoOooooh, the new finangle pour-spouty gas can, part deux. Won't be long before the safety thingie gets ripped off and short-circuited.
- balderdash 3y agoAre there other good examples where laws have mandated the use of a new patented technology for an industry with mature incumbents that turned out well?
- simple10 3y agoHere's a good in-depth video from a woodworker YouTuber that explains all the drama and pros/cons of the law. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxKkuDduYLk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxKkuDduYLk
- dehugger 3y agoMy dad has three "pointy" (meaning the corners got cut off) fingers on his right hand, and at least on his left, courtesy of tablesaws. At the very least this technology should be mandated for the large non-portable saws like you find in most commercial wood shops. I'm glad to see action being taken on this finally.
- rekabis 3y agoAs much as I would love to see this kind of tech added, our current “greed is good” economic climate that is eviscerating the 99% will mean that this change will disenfranchise most who would have gotten such a saw. Sawstop isn’t going to open up their patents like Volvo did out of the goodness of their heart. Those patents will be monetized to the hilt, to extract maximum possible revenue from the consumer. The only reason why I even have a table saw is because of a convergence of events: renos on the apartment to make it more saleable, better job with more income, Bosch putting out a new model such that the old model had steep clearance pricing, and so forth. Had that table saw cost even $100 more, I would have been doing the work with wildly inappropriate tools that likely would have made the work even more dangerous. Or used an old, pre-owned, beat-up tool that could have malfunctioned in dangerous ways, or have had safety features removed by the prior owner. Yes, let’s implement that law. But let’s also force SawStop to pull a Volvo, especially if they aren’t working in good faith. They have already been compensated by that product many times over, it’s just a cash cow at this point. And the public interest must always come before profit. Not remuneration and RoI -- profit.
- porkbeer 3y agoAll my garage would be illegal. Tools have risks, you cant idiot proof everything without making an objectively worse world.