Amazed 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?
Key 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 (*: 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.
If you go listen to their CEO's testimony, he clearly states that the one single original patent behind the idea is now open but was expiring anyway. He brags about them spending a lot of money on R&D and needing to recoup that, reiterating that they have many other patents that aren't being opened that cover the exact implementation. He talked about them exploring those other methods, choosing not to patent them, and only patenting the best solution.
All his words. He's trying to explain that sure, the patent is open, but companies are still going to have to work harder than Sawstop because they have many more patents they refuse to open that cover the best and most logical implementation of this idea.
You're asking for a "cynical" take, but it's not really cynical! The CEO is trying to tell everyone, openly, and they're not listening. They are NOT altruistic, otherwise they would have opened the entire suite of patents. They are openly saying this singular patent is open, because it doesn't matter and that they will doggedly defend their other patents. Now, every other manufacturer will now need to navigate a minefield of patent litigation, and follow the path of subpar implementations that Sawstop ruled out during their R&D.
I don't know why everyone is ignoring his testimony and thinking the company is giving anything up, it's wild!
The cynical take is more that it's crappy blade guards that nobody uses that really should be improved, and it's not necessary to mandate SawStop-style blade breaking technology.
Bascially, mandating the more expensive blade brakes instead of standards around blade guards will eliminate cheap table saws from the market. And yes, this has happened before with radial arm saws - they are now basically non-existent in the US.
So it definitely benefits SawStop to give away this patent, as their saws will look a hell of a lot "cheaper" than competition.
I’m not utterly opposed to this regulation, but I do think SawStop stands to benefit. Even if the patents are open, it will take competitors a long time to develop new products. Meanwhile, SawStop will get the distribution that they don’t currently have. Just glancing at the HomeDepot website, I see that they sell SawStop but they are not stocked at my local store. I imagine that if this goes through, every Physical store in the country will need to stock their saws, at least until their competitors put out products. in the meantime, they can get much better economies of scale, and then try to compete on price
One thing I don't see mentioned with any of these discussions is that this massively increases the cost of using different kinds of blades on the saw. If you need to use a specialty blade that's a smaller diameter, it requires a matching special size safety cartridge. Dado stack? Another, even more expensive cartridge. I know most people typically have one blade on the saw and never change it or if they do, it's just another of the same size, but for those of us who do regularly swap out blades that aren't the standard 10" x 1/8", these types of regulations add both significant cost and time/frustration.
I'm all for safety and would love for there to be more options for this kind of tech from other saw makers, but I personally don't think regulation is necessarily the right way to do it. Just like there are legitimate cases for removing the blade guard, there are legitimate cases for running without this safety feature, especially one that would require several hundred dollars more investment even if the safety feature is disabled (On SawStop, you physically can't mount a dado stack unless you buy a special dado stack cartridge).
And if SawStop really wanted to improve safety for everyone... well I find it rather telling that they'll only open their patent if the regulation becomes law. Since they're effectively the only ones with the tech, with the regulation passed, buyers instantly have only one option for however long it takes for competitors to come to market with their own (which they'll be hesitant to do based only on a spoken promise by the patent holder). Instant pseudo-monopoly.
Cynical take is that the SawStop feature adds enough cost to budget table saws that they will no longer be economically viable and you can only purchase mid-high end tables saws going forward.
My first cynical reaction is to ask which politicians will benefit handsomely from stock trading with SawStop stock (assuming it's a publicly traded company) or through kickbacks of one kind or another.
I think SawStop table saws are terrific for woodworkers who work in their own shop. Less so for workers who have to bring their tools to the job site. Yes, I know that SawStop makes a portable table saw. When you're working at a job site, you have less control over the materials you're working with (as compared to the cabinet maker in his/her own shop). SawStop technology isn't compatible with all materials that need to be cut at a job site. A common example mentioned is treated lumber, but I don't recall ever having cut treated lumber on a table saw. When I need to cut treated lumber it's with a hand held circular saw. I'm a part-time handyman (some evenings and weekends).
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.
How about SawStop open their patent up first? They've already sued to prevent other tool manufacturers from making their own solutions to the problem, because they want theirs to be licensed. So even though they claim they will open their patent once the feature is enforced, what have they done in good faith to make us believe they won't move the goalposts to opening it, once they have captured the market?
The patent[0] is over 20 years old so it should have expired regardless - except it got 11 years of extensions. That's a bit of an odd situation because SawStop was selling "patent-pending" saws since the very early 2000's...I'm not sure the extension guidelines were intended to give companies 30 years of exclusivity and protection - it would make more sense in a situation where they couldn't start profiting on the patent until the patent was finally granted. There's a reason they're supposed to be 20 years from "date of file" instead of "date of approval". The current system could encourage companies to try to get their patent applications tied up in appeals for as many decades as possible.
Regardless, it would have made sense for them to agree to FRAND [1] licensing >5 years ago which might have accelerated standards adoption.
> I am a patent agent and I just took a look at the patent office history of the 9,724,840 patent. It is very interesting because it spent a long time (about 8 years) being appealed in the court system before it was allowed. While patents are provided with a 20 year life from their initial filing date (Mar 13, 2002 for this patent) there are laws that extend the life of the patent to compensate the inventor for delays that took place during prosecution. The patent office initially stated that the patent was entitled to 305 days of Patent Term Adjustment (PTA) and that is what is printed on the face of the patent. But the law also allows for adjustment due to delays in the courts, which the patent office didn’t initially include. So SawStop petitioned to have the delays due to the court appeal added and their petition was granted indicating that it was proper to add those court delays to the PTA. So the PTA was extended to 4044 days, meaning that this patent doesn’t expire until 4/8/2033!
> The other interesting thing about this patent, is that its claims are very broad. Claim 1 basically covers ANY type of saw with a circular blade that stops within 10 ms of detecting contact with a human as long as the stop mechanism is “electronically triggerable.” It would be VERY difficult to work around this patent and meet the CPSC rules. So the fact that SawStop has promised to dedicate this to the public is at least somewhat meaningful.
> BUT, SawStop has many other patents that it has not dedicated to the public. I have not analyzed their overall portfolio, but is is very likely that the other patents create an environment that still makes it difficult to design a saw in compliance with CPSC rules. So it is entirely possible that the dedication of the one broad patent was done to provide PR cover while still not creating a competitive market.
If I had 3 years to implement a safety feature based on a patent to meet new legal requirements I would be concerned about getting sued for edge cases the patent holder worked out.. Injurues are reduced but buyer beware may no longer apply to the remaining injuries especially if even other new implementations avoid edge case largely by accident, I.e. slightly different materials and other factors not considered when only one manufacturer was attempting the feature.
1. Many of SawStop’s patents either expired or about to expire.
2. Bosch already has a similar tech but was prohibited to sell their saws with it in the US. I think soon all the patents that were basis for this ruling going to expire.
3. SawStop already by acquired by TTS(same company that owns Festool). They may have plans to integrate it in their line up somehow and safety tech becomes less of a differentiator.
And my even more cynical take is that FTC only considered requiring safety tech after a nod from the industry leaders.
If the technology is allowed under free-use or a free limited license, that'll change things.
Right now, no one can put it on their saws without having to either risk the patent fight or pay whatever Sawstop wants, with the later probably being so high, there is a reason other brands don't have "Equipped with sawstop technology!" badged on them.
There's some amount of altruism, but no one is cutting their own throats either. At least some corporations are run by humans.
A patent expires, but forcing competitors to adopt a technology you already incorporate raises everyone else's costs, so it's not always bad for business.
It's idiotic that health insurance companies aren't clamoring to buy out SawStops and hand-deliver them to everyone with a table saw, asking them to install them at no cost in exchange for an insurance discount.
It's idiotic that health insurance companies don't pay for gym memberships and reduce your premiums if you deliver them screenshots of your workouts and pictures of making healthy food at home.
That's what a sane insurance company that wants to increase profit margins would do. Get out there in the field and reduce the number of times they need to pay.
Confession: The 3-point seat belt always feels like an eyeroller to me. It's not complicated, and the kind of thing that many others would have come up with soon enough anyway. The real injustice was in classing it as the kind of deep, mind-blowing, hard-won insight that deserves a patent.
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?
I'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.
Since 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.
You 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.
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
SawStop saws don't cost what they do just because of the brake technology. They're just, in general, even if you took away the safety technology, built to a high end standard. Certainly the safety tech will add to the cost, but probably not as much as you'd think.
Which is a point frequently raised by those not supporting this regulatory action - will this cause the base price of a saw to skyrocket beyond what average individuals can afford?
My guess is probably not. The brake cartridge is roughly a hundred bucks, retail. The sensor system can’t possibly be more than a hundred bucks. And there will have to be some quality improvements to the rest of the saw in order to be better withstand the crazy decceleration forces. The bottom end of saws will proportionally be more expensive, but even this will quickly race to the bottom.
Just to add; they do have a cheaper portable for 1100. I think it's a great idea for hobbyists with properly dried wood.
On a jobsite pretty much all your wood is wet, it'll be standard practice to leave the safety off or 150 CAD for a new stop (and time wasted). Not to mention you don't stop working just because of a little rain.
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.
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.
> 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.
I 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.
Related: 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.
This 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.
> 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.
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.
the 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.
Here'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.
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.
It 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.
As 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.
[+] [-] TSiege|1 year ago|reply
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?
[+] [-] floatrock|1 year ago|reply
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 (*: 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.
[+] [-] traviswt|1 year ago|reply
All his words. He's trying to explain that sure, the patent is open, but companies are still going to have to work harder than Sawstop because they have many more patents they refuse to open that cover the best and most logical implementation of this idea.
You're asking for a "cynical" take, but it's not really cynical! The CEO is trying to tell everyone, openly, and they're not listening. They are NOT altruistic, otherwise they would have opened the entire suite of patents. They are openly saying this singular patent is open, because it doesn't matter and that they will doggedly defend their other patents. Now, every other manufacturer will now need to navigate a minefield of patent litigation, and follow the path of subpar implementations that Sawstop ruled out during their R&D.
I don't know why everyone is ignoring his testimony and thinking the company is giving anything up, it's wild!
[+] [-] mr_tristan|1 year ago|reply
I tend to agree with Jim Hamilton, Stumpy Nubs on youtube, who was quoted in this article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxKkuDduYLk
Bascially, mandating the more expensive blade brakes instead of standards around blade guards will eliminate cheap table saws from the market. And yes, this has happened before with radial arm saws - they are now basically non-existent in the US.
So it definitely benefits SawStop to give away this patent, as their saws will look a hell of a lot "cheaper" than competition.
[+] [-] bobthepanda|1 year ago|reply
Heinz was the first company to make shelf stable ketchup without any of the chemical stabilizers that had been in use before, and then successfully lobbied against preservatives. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/history-of-heinz-ketch...
[+] [-] dtnewman|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] 0x0203|1 year ago|reply
I'm all for safety and would love for there to be more options for this kind of tech from other saw makers, but I personally don't think regulation is necessarily the right way to do it. Just like there are legitimate cases for removing the blade guard, there are legitimate cases for running without this safety feature, especially one that would require several hundred dollars more investment even if the safety feature is disabled (On SawStop, you physically can't mount a dado stack unless you buy a special dado stack cartridge).
And if SawStop really wanted to improve safety for everyone... well I find it rather telling that they'll only open their patent if the regulation becomes law. Since they're effectively the only ones with the tech, with the regulation passed, buyers instantly have only one option for however long it takes for competitors to come to market with their own (which they'll be hesitant to do based only on a spoken promise by the patent holder). Instant pseudo-monopoly.
[+] [-] humansareok1|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] neverartful|1 year ago|reply
My first cynical reaction is to ask which politicians will benefit handsomely from stock trading with SawStop stock (assuming it's a publicly traded company) or through kickbacks of one kind or another.
I think SawStop table saws are terrific for woodworkers who work in their own shop. Less so for workers who have to bring their tools to the job site. Yes, I know that SawStop makes a portable table saw. When you're working at a job site, you have less control over the materials you're working with (as compared to the cabinet maker in his/her own shop). SawStop technology isn't compatible with all materials that need to be cut at a job site. A common example mentioned is treated lumber, but I don't recall ever having cut treated lumber on a table saw. When I need to cut treated lumber it's with a hand held circular saw. I'm a part-time handyman (some evenings and weekends).
[+] [-] kaibee|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] dessimus|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] reaperman|1 year ago|reply
Regardless, it would have made sense for them to agree to FRAND [1] licensing >5 years ago which might have accelerated standards adoption.
From https://toolguyd.com/sawstop-patent-promise/ :
> I am a patent agent and I just took a look at the patent office history of the 9,724,840 patent. It is very interesting because it spent a long time (about 8 years) being appealed in the court system before it was allowed. While patents are provided with a 20 year life from their initial filing date (Mar 13, 2002 for this patent) there are laws that extend the life of the patent to compensate the inventor for delays that took place during prosecution. The patent office initially stated that the patent was entitled to 305 days of Patent Term Adjustment (PTA) and that is what is printed on the face of the patent. But the law also allows for adjustment due to delays in the courts, which the patent office didn’t initially include. So SawStop petitioned to have the delays due to the court appeal added and their petition was granted indicating that it was proper to add those court delays to the PTA. So the PTA was extended to 4044 days, meaning that this patent doesn’t expire until 4/8/2033!
> The other interesting thing about this patent, is that its claims are very broad. Claim 1 basically covers ANY type of saw with a circular blade that stops within 10 ms of detecting contact with a human as long as the stop mechanism is “electronically triggerable.” It would be VERY difficult to work around this patent and meet the CPSC rules. So the fact that SawStop has promised to dedicate this to the public is at least somewhat meaningful.
> BUT, SawStop has many other patents that it has not dedicated to the public. I have not analyzed their overall portfolio, but is is very likely that the other patents create an environment that still makes it difficult to design a saw in compliance with CPSC rules. So it is entirely possible that the dedication of the one broad patent was done to provide PR cover while still not creating a competitive market.
0: https://patents.google.com/patent/US9724840B2/en
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-discriminat...
[+] [-] bennyhill|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] YeBanKo|1 year ago|reply
1. Many of SawStop’s patents either expired or about to expire.
2. Bosch already has a similar tech but was prohibited to sell their saws with it in the US. I think soon all the patents that were basis for this ruling going to expire.
3. SawStop already by acquired by TTS(same company that owns Festool). They may have plans to integrate it in their line up somehow and safety tech becomes less of a differentiator.
And my even more cynical take is that FTC only considered requiring safety tech after a nod from the industry leaders.
[+] [-] sschueller|1 year ago|reply
It appeared to work just as well but I believe it pulls the blade away instead of stopping it.
Sadly I currently can't find it.
Edit: I think it was this one https://www.felder-group.com/en-us/pcs
[+] [-] clutchdude|1 year ago|reply
If the technology is allowed under free-use or a free limited license, that'll change things.
Right now, no one can put it on their saws without having to either risk the patent fight or pay whatever Sawstop wants, with the later probably being so high, there is a reason other brands don't have "Equipped with sawstop technology!" badged on them.
[+] [-] legitster|1 year ago|reply
A patent expires, but forcing competitors to adopt a technology you already incorporate raises everyone else's costs, so it's not always bad for business.
[+] [-] HeyLaughingBoy|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] dheera|1 year ago|reply
It's idiotic that health insurance companies don't pay for gym memberships and reduce your premiums if you deliver them screenshots of your workouts and pictures of making healthy food at home.
That's what a sane insurance company that wants to increase profit margins would do. Get out there in the field and reduce the number of times they need to pay.
[+] [-] SilasX|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] FredPret|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] delichon|1 year ago|reply
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?
[+] [-] gorkish|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] alilleybrinker|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] jrwoodruff|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] ne8il|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] paradox460|1 year ago|reply
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
[+] [-] ChoGGi|1 year ago|reply
https://www.amazon.ca/BOSCH-GTS15-10-Jobsite-Gravity-Rise-Wh...
https://www.leevalley.com/en-ca/shop/tools/power-tools/saws/...
[+] [-] avemg|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] xkqd|1 year ago|reply
My guess is probably not. The brake cartridge is roughly a hundred bucks, retail. The sensor system can’t possibly be more than a hundred bucks. And there will have to be some quality improvements to the rest of the saw in order to be better withstand the crazy decceleration forces. The bottom end of saws will proportionally be more expensive, but even this will quickly race to the bottom.
[+] [-] ChoGGi|1 year ago|reply
On a jobsite pretty much all your wood is wet, it'll be standard practice to leave the safety off or 150 CAD for a new stop (and time wasted). Not to mention you don't stop working just because of a little rain.
[+] [-] nricciar|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] adolph|1 year ago|reply
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SawStop
[+] [-] meragrin_|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] throw0101a|1 year ago|reply
* 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.
[+] [-] CraigRo|1 year ago|reply
There are lots of things you can't saw with a sawstop, and if triggered, it is very expensive to replace
[+] [-] anonymousab|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] bragr|1 year ago|reply
[1] https://youtu.be/Xc-lIs8VNIc
[+] [-] cityofdelusion|1 year ago|reply
I anticipate a return of something that used to be more common, the upside-down circular saw bolted to a table top.
[+] [-] meragrin_|1 year ago|reply
We'll probably see more DIY "table saws" using circular saws. I'm sure that'll be great.
[+] [-] JumpCrisscross|1 year ago|reply
Isn’t this fine? Buy an expensive saw and only lose the blade. Either way, keep your fingers.
[+] [-] EasyMark|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] marcusverus|1 year ago|reply
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-Expen... [1] https://www.ziprecruiter.com/Salaries/Day-Laborer-Salary
[+] [-] JonChesterfield|1 year ago|reply
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|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] analog31|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] roflchoppa|1 year ago|reply
I still don’t use that machine alone, almost 20 years later.
[+] [-] ickwabe|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] dugmartin|1 year ago|reply
> 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.
[+] [-] rekabis|1 year ago|reply
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.