Adam Savage's One Day Builds: Foot Switch-Powered Shop Tools! 

Love the idea, but...could have just added a stuffing gland at the ingress point, plus earth the box

Was gonna say the exact same thing ! Laughed a lot while seing that !

Also... those zip ties are nowhere near tied tight enough

He said "This is not a harsh environment". I would say, by the way he weathers his props, its among the harshest of environments XD

@@andrewgordonjardine2632 likely not needed as many mains power tools are earthed to their own chassis, thats why even in the UK where the fully earthed electrics are the basic standard now, you will still find mains drills and so on often only have live and neutral in the plug if you crack it open.

I appreciated how the time code in Premiere matched the time code in the RU-vid video.

17:13 Not sure if it want's me to applaud, or it things the bandsaw is applauding, or maybe both?

I'm always grateful when the editor takes the time to compress the loud noises. It seems like such a small thing until you watch a video where that hasn't been done and you have to scramble for the volume controls so you don't wake the entire house. @@SpaceSoups RU-vid's subtitle generator tends to think machines are either [applause] or [music]. Occasionally, you might get various thoughtful and/or confused noises -- "hmm" and "uh", for example. Interestingly, I've never seen it think a tool is [screaming].

When he said, I’m sure you’ve been yelling at the screen the whole time, I thought well at least he heard me, but I was in my head yelling about grounding long before he figured out the relay lol. I’m not an electrician, so don’t take my advice, but if this was a project I was doing for me, my two cents on his wiring are this: • Take a 15’ 3 prong extension cord of the appropriate gauge wiring. Measure about 3’ from the female end of the wire and cut it off. • Install appropriate strain relief clamp to open end of electrical box on foot switch, pass both cut ends of cable into box and strip all wires. • Male plug on an extension cord brings in power to the switch. •Female end of an extension cord leaves the switch. You plug in any devices using the foot switch to this. • Inside the foot switch box: ° Combine the two neutrals with a wire nut and electric tape it up. ° Connect the power in (black cable) from the male extension cord to the input of the foot switch, the one closest to the foot pedal. ° Connect the black cable from the female extension cord to the middle lug (the normally open lug) ° Ground the metal box junction box and combine all grounds with a wire nut and tape together like you did the neutral wires. This should bring three ground wires together. • Gently remove excess slack from electrical box as appropriate, and firmly secure tension relief, being carefully not to over tighten and crush cables. Doing it the way I described allows you to be able to easily plug/unplug devices so you can use it around the shop as desired. It should give some degree of safety in case a cable comes lose and shorts to the metal box and energizes the metal foot switch. It should also allow you to retain the use of the existing on/off switch or your device so you can turn it off there when not using and not accidentally step on the switch to energize the machine. I was somewhat disappointed that a person I see being generally safe and thinking through their problem solving was otherwise pretty unsafe in this video with their wiring approach. A lot of people watch these and regardless and copy your instructions.

@@adamdowney the lack of grounding is his choice given it’s a private shop but he is also doing a video on electrical wiring so I feel he shouldn’t ignore it either for the sake of giving good information. I am also not a fan how he strips back the cable sheathing as it’s much better to cut down the sheathing and pull it apart than across it and risk cutting into the wires but at least he addresses the need to be careful when doing that.

It looks like he wired it in place of the old switch. Do we know if the old switch was wired in-line with AC power, or was it just a leg off the bandsaw's built in switch mechanism? I'm asking because I assume the built in switch is a relay and doesn't need grounding protection.

Agree… ground fault protection won’t work if there isn’t a ground attached.

Seriously, who wants to call the San Fran electrical inspector to check out Adam's death shop?

i heard of a guy on a drill press panic when he drilled through his thumb and didnt get off the switch

Seems like it would be quicker to step off the switch in an emergency vs having to look for the switch and flip it while in a panic.

@@isthatjake Yup.

​@Juan Martinez I'm a fan of the emergency off buttons at forehead level lol

@@ethan91002 Lol. I guess that would work also. Headbutt it.

Great idea!

From a European standpoint, electricity in the US is like looking into the stone age...

@@januszkszczotek8587 I’ll get back to you on that, first gotta go fly a kite in a thunderstorm. ⚡️

Even in the U.S., that metal box should be grounded. And once he screwed it to the floor, I bet it became a building code violation.

@@jimk5307 😂

the spade lugs can also work loose.

I was thinking the same thing, but I realized he's basically replacing a rocker switch.

@@spiranomad Yes but still a class 1 mains appliance, so it really needs to be grounded, so that if say tramp metal gets in through that missing gland, and shorts out the wires, the GFCI would operate before Adam becomes a glow in the dark ornament.

​@@SeanBZA I almost sure that there was a bolt inside that pedal for earth wire.

@@MSP_TechLab There is, I have even seen the grounding bolt position on pneumatic foot switches, because there are areas which they are used in that are required to be intrinsically safe, and thus, even though there is no electric connection, there is still a risk of a spark arising, so all metal in those areas needs to be ground bonded. Even the all plastic bodied ones have the moulding in them to accept a ground wire, just to hold it in position to carry through the chain.

Right, the pedal had a ground lug and it wasn’t used. Not a great practice, especially after the lecture on nicking insulation… Funny that it was actually equal or extra effort to not use it after he added the spade connector and later cut it off.

Man you'd go absolutely insane if you looked at some of the residential wiring here in the states, specifically in rural areas. A lot of houses in my area that were built in the 50s and 60s show huge amounts of electrical incompetence. For example, in my bedroom when I was 15, I could take the chain for the light in the ceiling fan, touch it to the slightly exposed metal base of the light bulb, and the light would turn on. One whole half the house was wired to a single 15 amp circuit breaker as well. That's not to mention our actual standards. You couldn't try to design a plug that's more unsafe than what we use. Then we use extension cords with thin little wires in them. They get warm if you plug anything too big into them. Our 220 setups are usually a bit safer with locking plugs (no insulation on the base of the prongs though) and the plugs themselves aren't usually in easily accessible places.

Normally that is the case but this portable bandsaw is only 120V

@@whatbroicanhave50character35 I think that is why I binge r/electricians. Regards, Etna.

Same here over in Australia, American electrical seems bonkers and 30 years behind the rest of the world.

liking this idea

@@littlehills739 Foot pedals are great for machines with variable speed motors. You can just buy them.

@@GoingApeCostume ....You can just buy them...... u cant just buy something you havent thought about or been exposed to. thanks for your input. like if you dint know the name to a "Chicago bolt" to make a paracord fib.

He hurts himself all the time haha

It’s normal every day stuff for most of us. Also we do get hurt lol

More power, bigger wheels, a visit to a foundry to have a larger table made

That's a great idea; I have plenty of seam rippers about, so I'll be reaching for one of them next time I'm stripping some cable!

I will need to try that. Awesome idea

He has a second small bandsaw that is fully portable (it’s showing in another video).

Sometimes they can be a bit jarring for me, but I do like the cuts that allow Adam to warp across spacetime instantaneously. For some reason those are immensely satisfying, especially when cleaning or gathering. It's a 4th-dimensional montage sequence!

Lol i laughed at that too, seems like he forgot he was working on a bandsaw 🤣

Sounds like what I do. I bend the cable and start cutting slowly. That pressure causes it to finish pulling the insulation apart when you cut away enough of it without having to actually cut all the way through. Then you just pull it from the end and it slides off with a little effort.

Try cutting along the cable lightly then pull the inner wires apart from the cable starting at the end. It’s fast and for all but the heaviest cable works very well.

@@richardh6964 there's a good reason why electricians use wire stippers. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Reinventing the wheel here.

@@peterkallend5012 I learned that trick from a electrician.

@@richardh6964 good for you. I don't know any electrician that use that technique. Low voltage wires are likely to break if you do that kind of thing, as the copper conductor has a lower tensile strength that the insulation that surrounds the internal wires. I'm of the opinion that if there's the possibility of breaking the continuity of the wires, don't do it. Cheers.

That really breaks the "walk to the tool and use it" need

@@dirtdart81 It does, but only if he doesn't have enough of them. Making them modular could be a little extra flexibility and still end up being stable for the high-use machines.

@@JosephDavies just add them to the high traffic machines then? I'd hate to interrupt my flow to go find a footswitch