Government REVERSES SawStop Decision

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I agree with the commissioner's statement about rent-seeking behavior. In my opinion, sawstop's claim that they would ease some of their patents doesn't go very far before rules are written if what they are isn't known. 

They have operated in their own interest lobbying, and someone tell me if I'm not correct here, but didn't the proposed rulemaking require flesh sensing technology of some sort rather than any other idea that would keep hands out of a blade zone?

I would imagine insurance will do a good job of making sure the saws in commercial and school environments are safer. as an individual, if I were a TS fan, I don't need Sawstop and regulatory agencies deciding what's safe for me as far as tablesaws go.

"Some were concerned about licensing costs, some feared that adopting it might implicitly admit their existing designs were unsafe, and some simply didn’t want to rely on an outside company for a critical safety feature."  Having to re-engineer existing internal parts like trunions to fit were too expensive for some companies.  

Then there was the potential costs for enforcement, that would probable have to include prohibitions for sale and resale of old saws sitting in garages.  

Plus where does it stop, jointers?, bandsaws?, jig/scroll saws?, miter/RAS?  Try that and you'll have the Don't Tread On Me crowd screaming "NANNY STATE" with hurricane force.  Doubtful that Congress would appropriate the money the CPSC would need for enforcement (assuming the CPSC even survives the current administration).

Probably the best economic course would be to let the marketplace and the insurance companies use their influence.

As usual, I don't much care about the fed regs or their reversal.  Usually they are poorly written and cannot possibly work in practice as they want them to work.  Lawyers (with apologies in advance to Mark) usually do not understand engineering realities.

At the time, I thought Sawstop going into manufacturing their own product was the smart thing to do.  They found that manufacturers would not change their patterns for casting to accommodate a technology that they felt was unproven by the marketplace.  The only intelligent options open to Sawstop at that time was to either develop retrofit kits for all those saws out there (huge can of worms) or to simply market their own saws.  They chose the much more simple option and appear to have done well as a result.  That is focusing their corporate efforts on a path where they have the most control, generally a good way to go about a business.  Whether or not the market would accept their products is the thing beyond their control, the same as for any other manufacturer.  I like to see innovation rewarded by market success, on the balance that tends to be a good thing.

When I hung around reddit for a while, I remember there were discussions of shops with fired brakes hung on the wall.  The vast majority were misfires, but having worked in a shop with the occasional accident, I thought it ironic that anyone would bother.  It takes hundreds of misfires to come up to the dollar cost to the employer of just one real accident!  The shop I worked for had two in the time I worked for or with them - one, the more serious one, was after I had left but would still come in to help them out or borrow their timesaver.  In that case, the worker lost a finger to a 12" jointer, so a Sawstop wouldn't have helped any.

In that case, the worker lost a finger to a 12" jointer, so a Sawstop wouldn't have helped any. 

But would increase the availability of school woodshop teachers.

Mark Mandell wrote:

In that case, the worker lost a finger to a 12" jointer, so a Sawstop wouldn't have helped any. 

But would increase the availability of school woodshop teachers.

Not sure I get it

The irony of both accidents is that both were the result of violation of shop policies - the shop had pushing devices available at every machine and the policy was to use them at all times.  The owner never complained when a guy would spend some slack time making spares out of scraps.  For the table saw sticks, we went through them fairly quickly so I often made a pile of extras and guys didn't have to use a mostly worn out one, there were six new ones under the outfeed table.  That shop was also where I learned a very good two stick method that allows you to easily control the wood on the outfeed side of the blade.  It was a good shop where the boss probably would have bought a Sawstop if those had been available in the 1980's when he was starting out.  By the time they were becoming the gold standard in the market, he was thinking of closing up and retiring.

Literally every shop teacher I ever had could not count to 10 using only his hands.  One actually had the nickname of "Toni Three Fingers."  Fortunately, he still had his thumbs. 

Mark Mandell wrote:

Literally every shop teacher I ever had could not count to 10 using only his hands.  One actually had the nickname of "Toni Three Fingers."  Fortunately, he still had his thumbs. 

Same for the really old farmers. My grandmother's next door neighbor would point with his middle finger because his index finger wasn't there. 

I don't personally know anyone who has ever cut off any significant portion of fingers with any saw blade, but I know two people who are missing a length of index and pinkie finger, respectively, to power jointers. 

i don't have a power jointer - did for a while, but I just never liked having my hands over the jointer blades even on a relatively sound piece of wood that's thick. Didn't like the push pads, either, that quickly lost grip.

Added later 06 min 35 s:

Mark Mandell wrote:

Probably the best economic course would be to let the marketplace and the insurance companies use their influence.

that's my sense, too. professional shop or school, i can imagine if insurance doesn't require a sawstop or a slider already, it's only a matter of time. 

My son is 12 - he doesn't have any interest in woodworking, and despite my view that sawstop has been rent seeking for a very long time and then touting their virtues as marketing when as I perceive it, it's not likely the engine that drives the machine ...

....I'd still have a sawstop or something where my son's hands couldn't get to the blade. that sawstop claimed they would ease a patent or part of one later after the regulations were written also provides more clarity as to their motives. If the intention was just to get the technology out there, relinquishing some control would be defined so the regulation could be written with good context and then options for anything else acceptable in the future. 

I have zero interest in a sawstop for myself, and do have a portable (bosch) TS. Once in a great while, I use it - i'd not have anything at all if sawstop was the only option - and I don't use it without push sticks and featherboards. There's no great reason for me to given the risk for relatively little time savings.

Added later 07 min 48 s:

Peter Martin wrote:

When SawStop’s founders (notably Dr. Steve Gass, a patent attorney and physicist) developed the technology in the late 1990s, their initial business plan was not to become a saw manufacturer. Instead, they wanted to license the brake technology to established power tool makers.

The reasoning was straightforward:

• Table saw injuries are both common and severe.

• Manufacturers (and their insurers) face liability exposure from these injuries.

• By adopting SawStop’s “flesh-detection” brake, manufacturers could lower injury risk, reduce lawsuits, and cut insurance costs.

• SawStop, in turn, would collect royalties.

After years of rejection, SawStop decided to enter the saw market themselves (launching their first cabinet saw in 2004). The strategy was essentially “prove the technology’s value by selling it directly to end-users.” Once the saws gained traction — especially among schools, shops, and safety-conscious professionals — SawStop established itself as a serious manufacturer.

However, when they approached major manufacturers like Ryobi, Delta, Bosch, and Black & Decker, those companies declined. Some were concerned about licensing costs, some feared that adopting it might implicitly admit their existing designs were unsafe, and some simply didn’t want to rely on an outside company for a critical safety feature.

peter - was that AI written? This was going on right around when I started woodworking. My recollection was the issue was cost. 

My recollection of the injuries was also that they were highly tilted toward completely unqualified workers using tablesaws in an unsafe way on job sites, and of the portable type in most cases. however, the marketing was aimed at getting people to believe that the target was a typical guy who worked wood for 30 years and on the 31st, cut his fingers off diagonally. 

I'm sure that happens due to working while tired, a lapse or an unexpected situation. But I'd bet it's fairly infrequent. 

Showing a guy with a TS at the top of a set of porch steps, leaning over and cutting a 2x4 down the center with no fence at all would've not done much good - it's the affected segment, but the victim isn't the buyer. 

I don't remember anything at all that suggested any charitability in sawstop's moves, but they are a company and you can market or write that you have great intentions and make business decisions only - it's not illegal. 

Lucky for SS - the saw market was going overseas, their original ICS wasn't so exorbitantly expensive as it is now, and as the quality of the domestic branded saws was going down, it made an opening for them to make a really good saw that *also* had the device in it.

asked only because the combination of facts in the response seemed like they originated from AI, even if you curated them. They are a bit rosey. 

and yes, the device is a safety feature, and the TS by all accounts, at least the ICS, is a very good one. I'd pay the price for it in any environment where more than my hands are involved. 

One of my earliest experiences with a TS was a kickback. A brisk one, let's say, in a very strong 5 HP PM saw. Brand new at the time for the most part and a friend who watched a lot of norm and insisted on no splitter. Stuff happens and you figure out what it was after the fact. 

Kids these days, at least in suburbia, do not seem to have a concept that there are consequences that can't be reversed. 

However, Sawstop's rent seeking is over the line for me, it's in self interest in my opinion, but that's what businesses do. I recall someone mentioning the reg stated "flesh sensing" as a requirement, and it strikes me as dim witted narrowness at best. 

It leads to questions for us like who is the owner now, and what is motivating them. In the back of my head remains "ok, in the future, you can drive a motorcycle on an interstate with no helmet, but you can't choose to use push sticks and a splitter in your own garage, so whatever you do DIY is now tripled in price in some cases?"

If something is really truly risky in an environment where there are employees or schools involved, insurance will take care of it. Even eons ago at my high school, the answer was simple - anyone who was taking the mandatory intro to shop class before entering high school could not touch any power tools. I was shocked two years ago when my daughter came home now more than 30 years later with a lamp base that she made at school, which included using a roundover bit with a router. Shocked that insurance allows it. 

my opinion is pretty strong, but I have a real serious distaste for lobbying for legislation when you can't convince an open market. IT's part of everything now  -I'm on board with Rossman where it comes in to everything on the tech side, and the term "Safety" is always involved in what is "we want control of the revenue". You can't have someone replace parts on your mac because it's "not safe". You can't get information to repair a farm tractor because if someone has access to it, "it's not safe". It's misdirection. putting your hands into the blade of a table saw is definitely *not safe*, but it's like mental errors in baseball  - using a tablesaw does not have to include needing to be able to touch the blade, and you're not required to make mental errors in baseball to play fair.