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And this right here is the key bit. SawStop was started by patent attorney Steve Gass. He has spent years claiming that other vendors won't talk to him while

by luma 3y ago

And this right here is the key bit. SawStop was started by patent attorney Steve Gass. He has spent years claiming that other vendors won't talk to him while leaving out the actual terms of his licensing (which, by some rumors, was somwhere around "extortionate"). Bosch released a saw with similar tech in the US and then SawStop sued the product off of the market. Every step of the way Glass has not acted in good faith and instead acted like a patent attorney. We have little reason to believe that he has all of a sudden found goodwill toward man in his heart when there's a dollar somewhere he could instead put into his wallet.

chx 3y ago
Yeah but in 2017 TTS (the parent company of Festool) acquired SawStop. https://www.sawstop.com/news/sawstop-to-be-acquired-by-tts-tooltechnic-systems/ https://www.sawstop.com/news/sawstop-to-be-acquired-by-tts-t... TTS is a magnitude bigger than SawStop and they might have different ideas than a narrow minded patent attorney.
- luma 3y ago
  Sure, but who exactly did they send to congress to make the case? Our good friend, Steve Gass, Esq. TTS owns the shop but Gass clearly still has influence here.
- romwell 3y ago
  >a narrow minded patent attorney. He's got a PhD in Physics, and invented the core Stop Saw product after dabbling in woodworking as a hobby for many years. Call him anything, but narrow minded isn't one of the descriptors that applies.
meowface 3y ago
He also has a PhD in physics and was the person who designed and engineered the product: https://www.machinepix.com/p/machinepix-weekly-30-dr-steve-gass https://www.machinepix.com/p/machinepix-weekly-30-dr-steve-g... >Gass: I was out in my shop one day, and I looked over at my table saw, and the idea kind of came to me. I wondered if one could stop the blade fast enough if you ran your hand into it to prevent serious injury. >I started puttering around on how to stop things quickly. The simplest would have been a solenoid, but that would have been too slow and weak. I had come from RC airplanes—so I used the nose landing gear torsion spring from an RC airplane for an early experiment, that spring provided the force and I held it back with a fuse wire, a maybe 10 thou diameter fuse wire. I set up some capacitors to discharge through the wire and melt it in a few milliseconds, and I was able to generate maybe 20 lbs of force against a blade. So this isn't one of those cases of a patent attorney taking over an existing invention/company. >Gass: Now that SawStop is established, any royalties Grizzly might pay would be less than what SawStop could earn by selling the same number of saws itself, and therefore, as I have explained, a license at the present time is far more challenging because of the risk it creates to SawStop’s business. This, of course, changes should the CPSC implement a requirement for table saws to include active injury mitigation systems. Should that happen, we have said we would offer non-discriminatory licenses to all manufacturers.
- luma 3y ago
  Yes, he has a PhD in physics as well as being a practicing patent attorney, a skill he put to use over and over in the past 20 years. We don’t have to guess how this org will behave, we have plenty of history upon which to judge their sincerity. If they want to give the patents (note the plural there) for the benefit of mankind, they can do so. They are not doing so.
  - staticautomatic 3y ago
    Ok but why would he just “give” them? Patents can cost like $20k a pop to prosecute.
    - luma 3y ago
      Because he's pushing to have the technology covered by his remaining patents to be required by law. Do you think this is OK?
      - staticautomatic 3y ago
        No, but I don’t think he should be forced to give them away for free either. That’s literally an unconstitutional “taking”
        lazide 3y ago
        How, if he is the one pushing for them?
- resolutebat 3y ago
  Insightful quote: > The fundamental question came down to economics. Almost a societal economic structure question. The CPSC says table saws result in about $4B in damage annually. The market for table saws is about $200-400M. This is a product that does almost 10x in damage as the market size. There's a disconnect—these costs are borne by individuals, the medical system, workers comp—and not paid by the power tools company. Because of that, there’s not that much incentive to improve the safety of these tools. Societally if there was an opportunity to spend $5 to save $10, we’d want to do that. But in this chain there's a break in people that can make those changes and people that are affected, so it’s not done.
diggernet 3y ago
The Bosch design wasn't just similar, it was much better, by being non-destructive. Bosch instantly retracts the blade into the table using a $5 gas cartridge. Replace that cartridge and get back to work. By contrast, SawStop destroys a $100+ brake module PLUS your $$ saw blade every time it triggers (including false positives due to damp wood). To this day, I wish I could buy the Bosch design in the US.
- solomonb 3y ago
  Nitpick: It doesn't destroy your blade. You just have to get it resharpened and possibly get some new teeth brazed on. Otherwise, yeah i agree its annoying to pop the break on a wet piece of wood or a missed nail.
  - jjav 3y ago
    > You just have to get it resharpened and possibly get some new teeth brazed on. This looks quite destructive to the teeth that contact the stop: https://youtu.be/Ibp2Gy2CFrY?si=Pa98Vey2oE0Atx1e&t=7 https://youtu.be/Ibp2Gy2CFrY?si=Pa98Vey2oE0Atx1e&t=7 I can't imagine it will ever be cost-effective the labor of repairing a blade after that instead of just getting a new one.
    - solomonb 3y ago
      When I ran a woodshop we would get our blades resharpened for about $30 and new teeth were a few dollars each. Its absolutely worth it when your blades are $100+
      - shaftway 3y ago
        I wouldn't re-use a blade that SawStop triggered on. I assume the blade itself will go out of true based on the forces. It's a lot more damage than a few teeth.
        solomonb 3y ago

by luma 3y ago

chx 3y ago

Yeah but in 2017 TTS (the parent company of Festool) acquired SawStop. https://www.sawstop.com/news/sawstop-to-be-acquired-by-tts-tooltechnic-systems/ https://www.sawstop.com/news/sawstop-to-be-acquired-by-tts-t... TTS is a magnitude bigger than SawStop and they might have different ideas than a narrow minded patent attorney.

luma 3y ago
Sure, but who exactly did they send to congress to make the case? Our good friend, Steve Gass, Esq. TTS owns the shop but Gass clearly still has influence here.
romwell 3y ago
>a narrow minded patent attorney. He's got a PhD in Physics, and invented the core Stop Saw product after dabbling in woodworking as a hobby for many years. Call him anything, but narrow minded isn't one of the descriptors that applies.

meowface 3y ago

He also has a PhD in physics and was the person who designed and engineered the product: https://www.machinepix.com/p/machinepix-weekly-30-dr-steve-gass https://www.machinepix.com/p/machinepix-weekly-30-dr-steve-g... >Gass: I was out in my shop one day, and I looked over at my table saw, and the idea kind of came to me. I wondered if one could stop the blade fast enough if you ran your hand into it to prevent serious injury. >I started puttering around on how to stop things quickly. The simplest would have been a solenoid, but that would have been too slow and weak. I had come from RC airplanes—so I used the nose landing gear torsion spring from an RC airplane for an early experiment, that spring provided the force and I held it back with a fuse wire, a maybe 10 thou diameter fuse wire. I set up some capacitors to discharge through the wire and melt it in a few milliseconds, and I was able to generate maybe 20 lbs of force against a blade. So this isn't one of those cases of a patent attorney taking over an existing invention/company. >Gass: Now that SawStop is established, any royalties Grizzly might pay would be less than what SawStop could earn by selling the same number of saws itself, and therefore, as I have explained, a license at the present time is far more challenging because of the risk it creates to SawStop’s business. This, of course, changes should the CPSC implement a requirement for table saws to include active injury mitigation systems. Should that happen, we have said we would offer non-discriminatory licenses to all manufacturers.

luma 3y ago
Yes, he has a PhD in physics as well as being a practicing patent attorney, a skill he put to use over and over in the past 20 years. We don’t have to guess how this org will behave, we have plenty of history upon which to judge their sincerity. If they want to give the patents (note the plural there) for the benefit of mankind, they can do so. They are not doing so.
- staticautomatic 3y ago
  Ok but why would he just “give” them? Patents can cost like $20k a pop to prosecute.
  - luma 3y ago
    Because he's pushing to have the technology covered by his remaining patents to be required by law. Do you think this is OK?
    - staticautomatic 3y ago
      No, but I don’t think he should be forced to give them away for free either. That’s literally an unconstitutional “taking”
      - lazide 3y ago
        How, if he is the one pushing for them?
resolutebat 3y ago
Insightful quote: > The fundamental question came down to economics. Almost a societal economic structure question. The CPSC says table saws result in about $4B in damage annually. The market for table saws is about $200-400M. This is a product that does almost 10x in damage as the market size. There's a disconnect—these costs are borne by individuals, the medical system, workers comp—and not paid by the power tools company. Because of that, there’s not that much incentive to improve the safety of these tools. Societally if there was an opportunity to spend $5 to save $10, we’d want to do that. But in this chain there's a break in people that can make those changes and people that are affected, so it’s not done.

diggernet 3y ago

The Bosch design wasn't just similar, it was much better, by being non-destructive. Bosch instantly retracts the blade into the table using a $5 gas cartridge. Replace that cartridge and get back to work. By contrast, SawStop destroys a $100+ brake module PLUS your $$ saw blade every time it triggers (including false positives due to damp wood). To this day, I wish I could buy the Bosch design in the US.

solomonb 3y ago
Nitpick: It doesn't destroy your blade. You just have to get it resharpened and possibly get some new teeth brazed on. Otherwise, yeah i agree its annoying to pop the break on a wet piece of wood or a missed nail.
- jjav 3y ago
  > You just have to get it resharpened and possibly get some new teeth brazed on. This looks quite destructive to the teeth that contact the stop: https://youtu.be/Ibp2Gy2CFrY?si=Pa98Vey2oE0Atx1e&t=7 https://youtu.be/Ibp2Gy2CFrY?si=Pa98Vey2oE0Atx1e&t=7 I can't imagine it will ever be cost-effective the labor of repairing a blade after that instead of just getting a new one.
  - solomonb 3y ago
    When I ran a woodshop we would get our blades resharpened for about $30 and new teeth were a few dollars each. Its absolutely worth it when your blades are $100+
    - shaftway 3y ago
      I wouldn't re-use a blade that SawStop triggered on. I assume the blade itself will go out of true based on the forces. It's a lot more damage than a few teeth.
      - solomonb 3y ago