Sawstop--the wrong marketing approach?

[Scott Lurndal]

Why?

scott

[Scott Lurndal]

You mean like your supposition about the reasons that manufacturers don't put SS on their saws?

Are you really a SS employee? You're certainly pushing them pretty hard here on the group (and you seem to be the only one, too).

scott

[Tim Douglass]

Don't know about airbags, but I know a whole boatload of people who drive more recklessly because they have 4WD. I have been passing them upside down in ditches for years. Ask any cop or tow truck operator and they will tell that more 4WDs end up off the road in the snow than anything else.

This may or may not be a relevant data point.

Tim Douglass

[J]

Yes, it is clear that Sawstop's marketing approach is failing due to my comprehension of the English language. I shouldn't have been sleeping through the part when they were talking about the gerund. My apologies to you and Sawstop.

-j

[J]

dangerously.

Can someone here help me spell facetious?

-j

[Tim Douglass]

Let's see, a replacement cartridge is supposed to be about $70, and replacement WWII will be somewhere around $100. That is starting to push the limits as far as what most people (or even a lot of shops) want to have sitting around "just in case".

It's a bit misleading, in that he totally ignores all the injuries that don't involve pushing fingers through the blade. By far the majority of table saw accidents involving contact with the spinning blade (the only ones that matter for SS) do *not* involve amputation. My guess (based on experience of people I know) is that the majority don't even make it to the doctor or e-room.

I think that there is some sort of fundamental design issue with SS. It relies on stopping the blade by interacting with the blade and drops the blade below the table as a backup. I suspect it would be quite easy to make a device that uses a similar detection methodology that employs spring loaded trunnions that will snap the entire trunnion assembly down into the saw at a touch. If properly designed it should be easy to make it resettable and the design would then tend to "fail safe", that is, if the system won't work the blade can't be locked into the "up" position.

SawStop may be a good product, but I think there are a lot of other ways to try to solve the problem. Because SS holds the patent on using induction (?) or whatever to detect contact with the blade they have the industry in a stranglehold. A year or so ago it seems that one of the saw manufacturers said they were interested in the detection technology, but wanted to develop their own blade stopping system. SS, at that time, would only license the right to install SS, not to develop a different system based on part of the SS patent.

Personally, I do not think that SS is likely the best way to solve this problem, but I'm afraid that they have sewed things up in such a way that they are probably going to be the only game in town. If SS becomes mandatory (especially the way their SPSC petition was written) it could well be illegal to try to do something else, effectively stifling innovation. Look at the emissions controls on today's cars for examples of how legislation can destroy innovation and lock us into second-best solutions. Tim Douglass

[J]

(spare tire/cost of car) < (sawstop cartridge + new blade/cost of saw) Call me a cheap bastard but I'm not carrying around a spare transmission or engine. My beef isn't with the cost of sawstop anyway. It is their business practices.

Similarly, I could carry around hot tea on my head and it would be my error if I spill it on my face. Thank goodness no one is legislating that.

Perhaps if you are so good at determining that my objections are not valid, you may be able to supply some objections which are valid as an example. I'm just trying to learn here. Please, give an example.

Oh, so they don't want it is a valid objection, but my personal reasons why I don't want it are not valid. OK. I've learned something.

Why?

-j

[Tim Douglass]

At this point, probably. I try not to buy beta or .0 releases. If SS has a good track record after being in the workplace for 5 years in significant numbers then I'd be willing.

Tim Douglass

[J]

I am starting to think I'm being trolled. You are the one who stated that the average reaction time is 2.5 fingers. Now you are saying that no one really knows. Come on. Stop playing around.

No, it is not. Really, this is where I think you are trolling. You imply it is on their website, so I go there and check it out. It says nothing of the sort. Then you say write Sawstop and find out. You are the one speculating that it possesses an attribute which is not documented anywhere.

I'm tired of being trolled. Show me the facts that back up your argument.

-j

[hgates]

Obviously from this discussion not everyone would buy it, but I certainly would as long as it wan't cost prohibitive. A year and a half ago I cut the tip of a finger off on my PM66. I really wish I had been working on a sawstop equipped saw. Sawstop isn't a hard sell to me at all. $100/cartridge + a new blade? So what? Want to know how much cutting my fingertip off cost? About $6000. Mosly covered by insurance, but cost to me was still more than the $200 it would have cost to get back on track after a sawstop trigger. In other words I would be _very_ happy to shell out $200 every time I would have cut my fingers off but didn't because the brake triggered. Clearly the general strategy would be to never get into a situation in which you triggered the thing at all, but as I have learned sometimes accidents happen.

I think the reason saw manufacturers don't want to use it is probably one of two things:

1) the manufacturers are really lazy 2) the terms being offered to them to license the technology are too expensive

Lazy? My theory is that the manufacurers are loathe to redesign their products and retool their production facilities, because that is way more trouble than just continuing to pump out what they already make. The reason the PM 66 is called the 66 is because it hasn't been substantially changed in design for the last 38 freaking years. Comparing my '72 PM66 and my friend's new one, the few minor changes I noticed were obviously to slightly cut production cost, not to improve the design. It would be pretty straightforward to redesign the arbor casting and cradle to accomodate at the least a riving knife. But they haven't even bothered to do that, much less the more serious modifications that would be required to design in sawstop.

Terms too steep? Some saws/brands have higher margins than others, but generally I bet the manufacturers are not making a huge profit on such a commodity product. Adding cost to the production would mean either cutting their margins or charging way more by the time distribution and retail markups are included.

I think of this technology exactly like airbags in cars. It adds some cost. Some people don't think the cost is worth it. You can certainly buy cars without airbags. But I am willing to pay a little extra for that additional protection. Hopefully you never even have the opportunity to get your money's worth out of the system, but it is there in case you need it. (I actually don't have a car though, so we'll see in the future I guess).

The other comment I had re: the number of table saw injuries. Most table saw injuries are related to kickback, which sawstop woudn't help with in most cases. However, the second place injury is lacerations, which along with kickback related incidents where the kickback drags people's hands into the blade would be helped by sawstop.

-Holly

[Dave Hinz]

I thought you might have been, but it's _so_ hard to tell on Usenet. There are people who apparently think that way, and eventually they always find out about "tha intarweb thing".

[bridger]

here's another question about sawstop's machines.

does the extra mechanism for dropping the blade introduce another source of slop in the trunnion? I can't see how it wouldn't, especially over time.

[bridger]

ok, ted, your fingers are worth more than a couple hundred bucks. granted.

what isn't known is the rate of false positives. that information

*cannot* be known until the machine has been in use in actual workshop use for some time.

how many times would you pay $180 for a cartridge and blade before you started thinking about either replacing the saw or just disabling the thing. a cabinet saw costs about $2000. that's about 11 false positives. if it does it once a month it's costing you something like

4 new saws a year.

how many times HAVE you cut off your fingers on your table saw, anyway?

[Brett A. Thomas]

Well, I don't think it's a conscious thing, no one would say "Wow, I drive worse with an airbag." But it's a well-documented effect that safety in one place can squeeze out into previously unexpected dangers.

The canonical example is with "child-proof" caps on aspirin. Prior to "child-proof" caps, parents were always very careful to keep aspirin where kids couldn't reach them it at all. In 1970 they made "child proof" caps mandatory, and it basically had no effect on aspirin poisinings in kids. The explanation I like best for this is that parents depend on the caps and don't keep the drugs out of reach - but the caps fail (or are used improperly), so some number of kids get poisened anually, anyway. An article about this effect is here:

's a pretty common effect that when a new safety measure is introduced, the law of unintended consequences results in something undesirable happening. Maybe it's a wash (as with aspirin safety caps), maybe it's more desireable than what was happening but less stellar than hoped for. For example, airbags have certainly saved some lives, but they've inflicted injuries and in some small number of cases caused deaths that would've been otherwise avoided. On balance, I suspect we're better with them than without (although I personally wish they were smaller and designed for people who will use them with seatbelts, which are much more effective at preventing injuries in crashes). But it's naive to think that they are an unclouded good.

Just to be clear - I'm actually not arguing against Saw Stop (although I think their current regulatory attempts are misguided, at best). If it had been available as an option when I bought my saw, I'd've definitely gotten one - I'm real big on safety devices. I'd strive to treat my tablesaw with just as much respect as I do now, although it's impossible to say what level of pure terror has anything to do with my current level of safety consciousness ;).

Based on past experience with other safety mandates, though, if it were a required item, I'd be very surprised if we didn't have some sort of other "squeeze out" in injuries - perhaps not nearly as bad as amputations - as a result of unintended consequences from Saw Stops. This is not necessarily an argument against the Saw Stop, it's just a reminder that there are no silver bullets.

-BAT

[Brett A. Thomas]

I just had a vision of hitting something unexpected with a circular saw and having it fly across the shop... ;)

-BAT

[J. Clarke]

I think that the real reason is that the caps aren't "child proof". No, the kid's not strong enough to open it with his hand, but he's quite capable of opening it with a pair of pliers, a nutcracker, a screwdriver, a hammer, a knife, a saw, or any number of other varieties of mechanical assistance. The cap and container may not be good for much after he's gotten it open, but you think the kid really cares about that?

[tzipple]

Doug, do you propose that we eliminate all building codes and let the "free market" dictate what we build? Eliminate required safety equipment on autos, airplanes, etc. and simply leave it at "buyer beware? Drop requirements for standards of care in hospitals and simply let the free market decide what quality of surgery you get?.... and many other examples?

I suspect that many "free market" folks would be at the head of the line screaming for government help in your world.

Doug Miller wrote:

[tzipple]

A silly question. That is why we elect a government and enact laws. They are an effort to both define and protect the common good. A perfect system? Of course not, and we sometimes err in defining it (or we would not be in Iraq). But in fact we do define the common good in thousands of ways daily from stop signs to antitrust regulation and from school crossings to money policy from the Fed.

You may disagree about a particular issue like SawSt>

[tzipple]

[rcook5]

Unfortunately the publicity campaign for air bags has given some people the idea that air bags are a substitute for seat belts. This is massively untrue, but a lot of people believe it.

True, but PR campaigns that misinform can make even fairly bright people act in truly stupid ways.

--RC

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