I once read about some study somebody made about workplace wood shop accidents. (I suspect it applies equally to machine shop work and likely other endeavors.) They found that when interviewing the person who got injured, about 50% of the time they said, "they had a bad feeling about what they were doing before they did it." I think the lesson is that if you are being a little sketchy with your safety and experience a "bad feeling", STOP !!! Don't continue until you think things through carefully.
The problem with using A.I. for detection would be that it would think "nah, the human can afford to lose a single finger, they've got 20 on each of their three hands." 😉
The thing is I know people who have been seriously injured by tools that seemed completely harmless at first glance, for example drilling into/through the hand with a small cordless drill. And a saw stop cannot prevent all errors, a kickback and the saw throws the wood straight into the stomach or face - but nothing stops because the hands are far away from the saw blade all the time...
As a hobbyist, I think this should first apply or be offered incentives to businesses/shops for now until the tech or newer methods have been proven to be cost efficient for hobbyist like us. But as the legislation stands, this will just increase barrier to the hobby imo.
You can bypass the saw stop feature to cut conductive material. We do it all the time in our shop. The saw stop has saved the fingers of 2 guys in are shop already.
If you need electronic sensing devices to prevent fingers from getting cut off on a table saw, I think you need to hire some different employees and let those guys go. If they work in an unsafe manner on a tablesaw then they're likely to work in an unsafe manner with other tools as well.
@@goodun2974 A lot of table saw injuries happen to people who are very skilled and experienced. If you use one once a month and don't take any safety precautions, yes you're an idiot, but if you use one all day, fatigue, complacency, and just plain dumb luck become much larger factors.
An optical sensing system is practical, but expensive. See Altendorf for one example. Bosch developed a system using direct sensing, but their product line was stopped by a court ruling that it infringed on Sawstop patents in 2017. In 2018 Bosch acquired a license to use the Sawstop technology in the US, but never developed products to use the licensed technology. Speculation is that the required pricing to be profitable wasn't viable. Many have brought up that the market for higher priced table saws with better safety is too small and that Sawstop has so much of a market lead that any legal mandate would just create a larger secondary market for lower priced used table saws (and motivation for bootleg imports and for "reproductions" of grandfathered designs). There aren't any easy solutions. The costs of insurance leading to the demise of woodworking classes in American general high schools has created a generation of people using wood working power tools with only on the job safety training and it shows. My local maker space has a Sawstop and it being triggered is a regular occurrence. The higher acquisition cost and price of a new cartridge and often a new blade is well worth it for the number of accidents avoided. But that might be different for a single user or a small commercial shop.
I would never buy a table saw with a Sawstop. Too expensive for too little protection, I mean I have two mills, numerous chainsaws, two two lathes, planers not counting hand held power tools and I cut all sort of materials from wet firewood to steel...
its reported that Sawstop (SS) was willing to allow the Bosch unit to be sold in the US but Bosch chose not too. Bosch's tech simply ducked the blade with a CO2 charge ; there was no brake and thus no blade replacement. This system was likely quite cheap but all Mfg. (especially guns ;) are loath to include safer tech at ANY cost unless required. The fact that SS has just promised to abandoned their patent suggests this may really happen.
The way I understood the story was that when Saw Stop created the stop they approached all of the saw manufacturers and they all refused to license the technology. So Saw Stop started creating their own saws. I'm sure that this initial rejection is what drove them to fight competitors at every step. It makes sense to me. Also, I've had more stitches from hand tools than power tools ;)
The people who came up with the system serialize bullets and imprint a number/qr code on the primer with the firing pin had a similar problem. They had come up with and answer to a question no one was asking. When no manufacturers were interested in the tech, they then went to sell the idea to politicians. You can guess the rest.
Most injuries are caused by kickbacks. I’ve had a General 350 for about 40 years, chucked the spitter and “ guard” the first week I had it. Have all ten fingers. Just use a push stick when making sketchy cuts.
Yeah, but you[re falling into that WW2 fallacy with the returning airplane shot to bits, named survivorship bias. "Survivorship bias is a type of sample selection bias that occurs when an individual mistakes a visible successful subgroup as the entire group." In this case, you're confusing luck and potentially natural inborn carefulness or maybe even lack of use (by comparison to others) of power tools with the potential for sh!t to fly into the fan. For every person like you, who hasn't been mangled by a lathe or cut by a table saw or needing surgical reconstruction of their ligaments because the blade exploded and pierced and subsequently cut their tendons while using an angle grinder without a guard... there's 20 that are maimed for life. :D it do be like that. Nothing personal against you, just the last sentence irked me.
On my very first day of a second shift job in the milling & drilling department of a well-known aerospace manufacturer, the foreman showed my a hank of hair, roots attached, that had gotten yanked out of somebody's head by a machine. The former owner of that hank of hair was lucky because if the hair hadn't pulled out, he'd be dead. I had fairly long hair at that time, and you can bet I tied it back behind me out of the way!
Steve Gass had an impressive investor's credentials, but he is also a patent attorney. He made money by people paying him to search the patent office and representing clients to sell inventions and ideas. It is well known in the invention industry that 99.999 % of ideas submitted for patent don't result in any net positive cash flow for the inventor -- it's the inventor that always pays to try and get it out there. One day Gass as an attorney receives from a client a patent application for the SawStop... then realizes he's looking at that rare 0.001% of inventions that cross his desk that is a genuine breakthrough and a real shot of earning big money. So he buys the full rights to the SawStop, cheaply but enough to get the real inventor to shut up forever, and claims it as his own.
In the interest of accuracy, the cost to replace the Sawstop cartridge and saw blade is not usually "hundreds" of dollars. The 10" cartridge is $100 plus the cost of the blade. Generally only cabinet makers and high end hobby or pro woodworkers use blades that sell for over $100. I have 8 good 10" blades and only one is over $100. The rest are $35-$80 and $80 will buy a very good blade. It's hard to imagine any technology that would make some tools like my milling machine and lathe, both commercial grade machines, safe. That's the operator's responsibility.
But I don't want to buy anything. What keeps me safe is the gray matter between my ears. I don't want to be forced to live in anyone's bubble wrapped world. Quit legislating away my freedom.
There was a guy who won a lawsuit against another tool company when he injured himself on his table saw because it didn't have the same mechanism as a SawStop saw. I don't remember all of the details as it was a while ago, but at my company we paid close attention to it because we manufacture cyclone dust collection systems for wood shops and had a lot of customers with SawStop saws.
The state of mind in the work environment is either focused and very deliberate and safe, or you're going to get hurt. I've seen it a thousand times. Some people don't have the genetics or something.
Thanks for addressing this subject Fran. I don't know how many people are injured yearly by table saws. I've been pretty lucky as a weekend carpenter not hurting myself. I always try to use the blade guard and anti-kickback rithing knife unless a cut just makes it impossible. If someone wants to pay for the technology like Saw Stop, more power to them. But to add hundreds of dollars to even the most low-end table saws for this technology makes no sense to me. If I had a saw like that, the first thing I'd do is disable the Saw Stop and use my normal wood working safety methods. And what about general contractors who are already cut to the bone on profits? These people can't afford stuff like this and would immediately defeat it. For those who do not know of the channel, check out Stumpy Nubs video he recently posted on this subject. And he's pretty much one of the most safety conscious wood working RU-vidrs out there.
I agree with all you said. I find the super cheap plastic guard that came with my Jet contractor saw works great for most cuts and I use it whenever I can.
When used correctly, blade guards are basically as effective as a SawStop, but everyone knows that the guard sometimes comes off any doesn't go back on.
Ive not looked at stats but id be willing to bet there are very few fatalaties from being cut by the blade. I expect there are many more instances of death from kick back and i dont think SawStop does anything for that!
I suspect AI doesn't have a fast enough reaction time for all cases. To work in every situation, I think detection and reaction and full stop have to happen before one tooth moves far enough to rip skin. I get about 0.3 milliseconds which isn't crazy fast but still may be pushing it if you want to decelerate the tool without damaging it either. I realize you are talking about a keep-out area around the blade, but body parts can sometimes move quickly, especially when the operator isn't being safe. Perhaps they are straining to hole something and the something suddenly breaks and the hand flys quickly toward the blade, or long hair, jewelry or clothing catch the blade. Also my gut just says it is too complicated for a reliable safety device. Not sure but I think improvements to the existing braking system might be a better approach for now. Perhaps an electric clutch and relay to remove the motor's momentum and power it off, and disc brakes off a car to clamp down on the blade. Not sure that is fast enough either and might still damage the blade. Anyway, can't see legislating a monopoly. If it turns out the patent holders have lobbied for the law, I'm the vindictive sort of SOB that would transfer all patent rights to the government and open source it along with internal company secrets not mentioned in the patents.
I agree Fran, this argument is highly akin to that over "supplemental restraint systems" ! About 5000 deaths occurred between mandating SRS systems and the gov (finally ) mandating airbags about 10yrs later. Meanwhile the auto industry was getting seatbelt laws passed in every state and trotting out crappy inferior tech like "automatic seatbelts" but ask model Niki Taylor (and many others) how well those systems worked !
Oh yeah, simple image pattern recognition AI is perfect for this application. You don't even need a huge amount of computational power to process the input from multiple cameras to calculate the distance an object is from another object, and with a simple calibration, it can be very accurate. As for the non-destructive system, just have it retract the blade using a powerful solenoid. If you have it rotate away from the direction of feed, it could probably be done fast enough to allow for millimetres of margin. Someone get the dude from the Stuff Made Here RU-vid channel on this!
A decently made power tool is safe as long as the user has a good head on their shoulders. Quite honestly, that is the most important safety feature of all, and quite frankly at this point we should instruct people more thoroughly on the safe use of tools rather than continually making everything more and more ridiculously "foolproof". There's comes a point where the constant quest for safety and security becomes madness.
Legislating the Saw Stop seems similar to requiring airbags in cars. This ended up with most airbags being produced by Takate. The airbags installed over the years in many vehicles were eventually discovered to be defective and lead to one of the largest recalls ever.
Safety is an attitude not a reality. Using power tools correctly and safely is the key. Ive met many a carpenter missing one or more flanges on their hands because of avoidable mistakes. 🤔
Safety regulations are written in blood, unfortunately because of greed, this idea was never widely persued. Now, anything they do will just look like the pursuit of more money. There is no need for a law, when patents expire, they will become more widespread if the marketplace demands it. OR Sawstop releases all patents and let's see what the market does, they already have a commanding lead anyway.
I think the general invention of how the sawstop stops the blade is ingenious. Remember reading about it when it first appeared. But the finger detection is not perfect in that it can be too trigger happy which creates more business for sawstop. I think the market for this safety feature just isn't there, I would not buy a saw with this feature.
@@Axel_Andersen to be honest, if I were in the market for a table saw, I would include saw-stop in my evaluation of my options. If the build quality was there without too much of a premium for the tech, I would definitely consider the product.
dunno the safety stuff isnt really available on all things and if it was nothing would be affordable, why not just ban people working on anything? ex: say your under the car working on replacing some rubber hangers for a muffler that was clanging or something and the jackstand wasnt loaded properly/isnt sitting on a good spot and the car falls and pins you, what would they do to prevent that? have image recognition built into the jack so you cant lower the car onto the jack stand if its not in good working condition or the temp is low enough the tar wont get soft and have the thing shift under the car or the car isnt rusted near the spot? getting pinned under a car for possibly days, using a welder, even using a big wrench/breaker bar improperlly if you slip off the thing and it smashes into your face at really high force that could be bad too, have to have some kinda solenoid in the socket wrench so if theres a sensor that detects the nut might round off, or the socket isnt inserted all the way onto the bolt it will spit out the socket so you cant put force and suddenly slip off? have a utility knife that auto retracts the blade if it sees you are cutting towards yourself? what would a hammer or axe do if it seen itself swinging at your body shoot the head off the splitting maul so only the wood part hits your foot instead of the blade? and how would one repair any of these tools when even your socket sets have to have computers with image recognition and stuff? wouldnt this just be mandating that only the company or government people can work on stuff and regular people cant afford to work on anything?
Here's a rhymed couplet about our Fran Blanche if you don't think she's awesome, then get off the ranch. My dad took the tip of an index finger nearly off using a table saw, when I was a teen, and watching him redress the wound every night was a sobering and informative thing to behold. We lived in Louisville, home of world renowned microsurgeons Kleinert and Kutz, and they did the reattachment. Dad got off lucky, the saw just got the meat, not bone. I don't use power saws often (I say that as I am preparing to cut down a couple of small pine trees this afternoon) but I do solder, and every time I plug in the iron I remember the movie Brainstorm (1980) and say to myself, "Don't pull a Louise Fletcher", my private term for a soldering iron burn so bad that it makes you want to record your own demise in virtual reality.
I cut the fingerprjnt pad of my index finger off on a meat slicer at a angle (just missing the bone) while working in a deli as a teenager. It was my own damn fault because I did something stupid. I was lucky to have a local surgeon who had interned in Japan during the Vietnam war and specialized in reconstruction of damaged hands and fingers; he literally sewed the tip of my index finger to the flesh at the base of my thumb, and let them bond together for a couple months, and then separated them, taking a bit of the meat of the thumb base to be the new pad of my index finger. I did lose a small amount of sensation in the tip of the finger and the fingernail has a tendency to split and become ragged, but the finger is perfectly usable for pretty much everything.
At 04:15 - Isn't there a structure called a RAND, where the patent holders are obliged to share their technology for a nomnal fee or a sharing of patents with other RAND members? Admittedly legally enforcing RAND seems sketchy in the USA, the most famous example of failure is Apple being allowed by your courts to essentially steal GSM technology without a fee or exchange of patents, from the GSM Consortium (headed by Nokia in the court filing).
I don't think you can make any power tool where you can get your hands near the fast moving or spinning blades completely safe. Careless people should avoid messing with such tools. I should probably include myself in that category 😂 Having said that, table saws do seem to be particularly hazardous and we do have solutions that work (for most purposes). Going to make table saws more expensive.
Saw stop could be done as a disc brake, either by using the blade itself or adding another smaller disc on the shaft, with an electromagnetic brake acting on it. When engaged, the electromagnet would pull a pretty massive armature placed on the opposite side of the disc, clamping it and causing friction leading to stopping the blade. This mechanism could optionally be used for quick stopping on motor power down. Might even work the opposite way, the electromagnet wired in parallel with the motor and disengaging a spring-loaded brake, thus adding to reliability and safety. Making patented tech mandatory? Meh. Sounds very corrupt to me. ALL safety-critical tech required by law should be patent-free, in the public domain. If a company wants to implement their own version of it, then sure, patent all you want, but it should never be the other way round, legally forcing manufacturers to use a particular patented technology. Camera and AI? Please, no. But hmm, if we used a passive infrared sensor to discriminate between living tissue (not necessarily on metal endoskeleton) and wood... If the operator's hands got too close to the cutting area, it would trigger the emergency stop.
It's not likely to be as simple as you might imagine, given that the system needs to accommodate various thickness of blades, including dado set ups. And you would destroy the reusability of a blade if the frictional heating warps it even a half a millimeter. The desired stopping distance is one half of the blade pitch, so it's a lot of energy to absorb in a very small time increment.
@@TheErador Right, long time ago, but I remember thinking that this really ingenious how they stop the blade, countles people have had the idea of emergency brake for a table saw but these people solved it. Actually it is so long ago that I'm surprised that the patent is still preventing others from implementing this.
I could actually see it working if a heavily spring-loaded brake calliper was used. Would probably need to hydrauliced it off. Such fail safe brakes are used in industry. I used to work on a funicular railway that used them. When one of those clamped by accident it would stop the entire railway, the 2 carriages, winding drum and cables in just a few inches. I have no doubt a spinning blade could be stopped real quick. It could definitely act directly on the blade and be designed to tolerate different thickness of blade.
@@Ed.R another idea crossed myy mind: immediately dropping the whole saw blade together with the motor below the table, where it's out of harm's way. It only takes a locking mechanism which would be activated by an electromagnet.
Doubtful an AI vision system could be fast enough. Some back-of-the-envelope math: assume 4000RPM to zero, in what looks to be about 10 degrees of rotation... that's less than a millisecond, most of which is the occupied by the blade coming to a stop after the device has triggered. That leaves microseconds for detection/decision/triggering - easy for a simple circuit, a tall order for computer vision. Maybe a better idea would be better "hands-off" tooling - better guides, pushers, and guards that avoid the need to put hands in harms way altogether
In Europe, especially Iceland you will not see blocked dangerous routes/spots. You will see signs with clearly worded warnings, and that's it. You fell to boiling geyser - we warned you. People have brains, and should use them more often. If not, government will "help", and block/price prohibit everything, including welder's equipment and soldering irons.
Well the normal way to do it is with licensing agreement. It's not that complicated. Or wait until the patent expires. Patents don't last that long and if this were that important the safety feature would have been mandated before the patent. Oh wait, the technology wasn't available. See how that works?
It's just not necessary, lots of things in life are dangerous, we will get complacent by relying on safety features instead of actually practicing safe use of a dangerous tool.
Seatbelts and air bags are also not necessary, since cars drive perfectly fine without them. The staggering number of accidental amputations remains a serious issue.
@@FranLab that's comparing apples and oranges. Tablesaw use is (mostly) one person and one tool, there's no expectation of any outside influences like other people shoving wood at you from the side...
@@tedmich I don't think it is about money. Although money is certainly involved. But there are wider dimensions to all of this beyond money. I survived without seatbelts, airbags and ABS brakes. If everyone had a roll cage, H harness and wore a helmet and Nomex suit then we could all drive like we're on the track then, right? Or no?
This is completely absurd. Tools are only as safe as the person behind it. For that reason, I propose instead that users be required to get regular safety training; every tool must contain a cloud-connected interlock that validates the user's safety currency against their fingerprint.
I think we need to stop "mandating" everything. I'm in my late 50s and have been using every imaginable type of power tool out there. When I use my ancient table saw I realize that I have to pay absolute attention...and I have a secret disable switch in the event one of industrious kids decide to try to use until they learned how to use it. Pay attention instead of paying a small fortune for some idiot proof saw stop. I'm just old and cranky I guess...shaking my head.
It's Un-enforceable. At least with old tools. Good luck telling Joe woodworker to buy in to spending a dole to reset their saw. The market will determine the safety technology we will use. And there will be 'modifications' to tools as well. As every handyman does. Can power tools be safe? It depends on the operator.
If the system is easily reset-able, wouldn't the user be more likely to become complacent, and rely on the feature to keep them safe? I'm thinking of those automated car driving features that say, still keep your eyes on the road, but then we see videos of people taking a nap or reading while they're supposed to be driving.
That's a different problem. In self-driving, there's nothing to do, just waiting, waiting, and more waiting until you need to react with a split-second of warning. With an easily-resetable system, you are still feeding wood into the table saw, which is something to pay attention to. You can't start browsing your phone while also feeding wood into a table saw, and expect to get anything useful out of the other end.
Seatbelts in cars is not a good analogy. This is a complex technology that was not available and was only MADE available by this company. Seatbelts were not complicated and were widely available and not patent restricted. before any legislation.
Except seatbelts _were_ under patents. The modern seatbelt was patented (US3043625A) in 1959-1962. In a somewhat famous move Volvo released the patent for anyone to use.
I think the product is cool but nothing is 100 percent safe. I also think that the government should be legislating things like this. If a person makes something the market and people want that is whats desirable, not stupid government laws and regulations.
SawStop didn’t start out making saws, they attempted to license the tech to existing manufacturers. The manufacturers had no problem with the price, but wanted SawStop to bear the legal costs (if a cheaply made saw was unreliable, SawStop would pay, not the maker of the saw). So SawStop started making saws, and the companies who refused to license the patent before wanted to copy it illegally now.
Clearly, the only safe solution is for humans to not be the ones operating the saw at all. Instead, each table saw will come with a robot. When you want to cut something, you hand it to the robot, and it will operate the saw for you. Since a table saw is apparently too dangerous for people to operate, this is the only solution.
Personally, I don't think there should be a law that one has to wear seat belts or helmets for motorcycles. However, I'm okay with laws that require vehicles have seat belts. Also, I 100% wear seat belts when driving and helmets when riding. But that is a personal choice. I don't think the government should protect me from myself. So, I am against such "safety laws" for power tools. Ultimately, this will simply drive manufacturing over to countries that can simply train employees rather than spend extra money on equipment US manufacturers don't have to spend.
I don't understand your stance. AFAIK the proposed legislation would be requiring equipment to have the feature (like requiring vehicles to have seat belts), NOT requiring the feature to be used.
In fairness, I wouldn’t put it on a scroll saw…I think it would require me to intentionally push my fingers into the blade. Many of my fretwork projects would be impossible with such a feature.
New Hampshire is the only state with no mandatory seatbelt laws for adults. Car dealers in the state routinely disable the warning chime as a service for their customers. In return, they get a license plate that says "Live Free or Die" .
I agree I have a healthy fear of the table saw at work. It has no guard, a huge 3 phase motor, 4 belts driving the blade and probably nails instead of fuses. It stops at nothing.