i think there is some confusion about the term 'vaporware' which is defined as websters as:
"Products announced far in advance of any release (which may or may not actually take place)"
saw stop claims that you can buy one today. if this is true, its not vaporware. if its not it is. whether or not somebody actually owns one is irrelevant.
randy
xrongor responds:
I've seen it work---with a hot dog--at least on video. I don't doubt the theory works, but is the application practical. It prevents, primarily, amputation style injuries. How many of those are there a year? Is it worth having every table saw in the U.S. built, or retrofitted, with a device that currently costs about $500 to save 50-60 people from their own misbehavior? If the figure is even that high.
That's what is more likely to cause this to become vaporware than any doubt that it actually works. Economics. A proper crown guard with a splitter will do about 95-90% (my guesstimate) of what the saw stop will do. Total cost is probably about $50, and allows the makers to dump the current crappy splitter/guard assemblies, to reduce costs even more.
Charlie Self "It is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man." H. L. Mencken
I didn't claim it didn't work. "Vaporware" != "doesn't work", "vaporware" = "for all practical purposes does not now and never will exist as a commercial product".
Why would one want to have a saw stop on a lamp?
And you are willing to trust the mechanism of a touch lamp to save you from serious bodily harm without further analysis?
So go buy one and tell us how you like it.
Maybe you know that, but I know no such thing. For someone to "not get his hand cut off" there must be someone who was at risk of getting his hand cut off. I want to know who that was. If you can't identify someone then you should not be claiming that such a person exists.
I'm sorry, but I don't see what that has to do with anything.
If he was not in danger of getting his hand cut off then sawstop did not "save him from getting his hand cut off". So was he in fact in such danger?
You're the one who used someone deliberately sticking his hand in the saw as an example of someone "not getting his hand cut off".
Nope. I just see a lot of hype and little product.
Randy notes:
I think you can order one today. Whether or not that counts as "buying" one, I don't know, but the bigger question is, are there any in the hands of Joe. Q. Boardbuster.
Charlie Self "It is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man." H. L. Mencken
i never claimed it should be on every table saw. just that it probably works. sawstop claims 3000 finger amputations per year. dont know if thats a real number. it also seems to me it would prevent at least 10 times as many injuries but im just tossing a number out and have no evidence. is it worth 500 bucks? you decide.
but we're getting into this theory that sawstop is trying hard to make it be forced upon us. while that seems to be a persistant rumor, i have no evidence or opinion either way on that issue. if it makes a statistically significant (which is a number that could be debated) reduction in accidents it should probably be considered.
as explained in another post a few minutes ago, as defined by websters, if you can buy one today, its not vaporware. it may have been vaporware for the time between it being announced and a product being available... sawstop claims they will sell you one today. if the product fails because its too expensive thats another word... i think thats part of why theres so much disagreement in this thread.
vaporware implies a product that doesnt exist or work. that the demo's are pure fakery or at least you arent seeing the whole picture. i see no evidnece of either. yet.
and if the saw companies dump the crappy spllitter/guard assemblies to save money, then the addition of a (assuming it works) sawstop will increase the price less than if they didnt dump the guards.
in any case, i think a splitter is still necessary. sawstop may stop the saw from cutting you but wont stop a board from flying into your face..
randy
oops, i didnt look clearly and put the wrong name, not you frank, jclarke i mean.
randy
Well you can *order* one, or at least get on a list. It seems as though it's been a couple of years now that you could *order* one. To my knowledge, none have been delivered to the public. Per the definition you cite, it certainly appears to be vaporware. It's been discussed in this newsgroup now since 2000. It makes one wonder why it hasn't gone to market yet. If you want to say it isn't ready, then fine, but why take preorders for two years? Doesn't seem to be the way to make people happy by putting them on a 2 or 3 or forever year waiting list.
todd
In what post did I state that it does not work? In what post did I state that it does not exist?
You appear to be trying to attribute to me a position that I do not hold for the purpose of advancing your own agenda whatever that might be.
I did read the thread. Are you familiar with a phenomenon called "thread drift"?
Where does Sawstip claim that you can buy one today? They have a page where it is possible to place a "non-binding preorder" for one of two models, which will be shipped if they ever actually have a product. I'm still waiting for the Zeos PCI/Microchannel motherboard that I preordered back in '87 or thereabouts.
The fact that they will take an order does not mean that they will ever deliver the product that you ordered. Until they _deliver_ product it's vaporware.
I don't give a damn whether they fail or succeed. But I also don't see any product delivered and I do see claims here that more than one person has already had his hand protected from being cut off by this device that has not yet been shipped.
Could be. Do they have decent capitalization?
There's the problem. First, it's not a retrofit and I doubt that anybody's going to buy a new saw just to get that feature, and second if you look at the prices on their site you'll see it's going to cost a lot more than $150 extra to get a saw with their device installed for the foreseeable future. I mean how big a market is there for a $2500 3 horsepower cabinet saw from some outfit that nobody has ever heard of?
Yeah. They're talking $150 but that's not the price they're showing for the products for which they're taking preorders. If the thing was a $150 retrofit and didn't get in the way of using the saw I'd order two of them right now. Cheap insurance at that price. Not worth tossing a perfectly good saw just to pay a lot more than it had cost me to buy theirs though.
Where can I buy one?
How do I go about getting them to sell me one today? Not a "non-binding preorder" but an actual purchase?
The product may exist and work and yet never make it to market.
Todd Fatheree responds:
Yes. They're still taking only pre-orders. I first saw this thing at the 2000 IWWF. They started taking pre-orders at the next IWWF, if memory serves. That was almost two years ago, now. It seems just a little bit like the boy who cried wolf, doesn't it?
And I would very much like to know where they get the figure of 30,000 injuries on table saws.
Charlie Self "It is even harder for the average ape to believe that he has descended from man." H. L. Mencken
My understanding is that the goal is/was to stop the blade as soon as it made contact with a person without destroying the blade. It took some testing to achieve both goals.
If you go to you can query the Consumer Product Safety Commission database. The database has actual results from a sample set of hospitals, which is used to estimate the national statistics, if they get enough reports to allow an estimate to be calculated. It also has case histories online and will show up to 30 of them for each query.
It shows an estimate of 33,000 table-saw related injuries requiring a hospital visit in 2002. They estimate 3503 amputations, all of which were of one or more fingers. They estimate 22,105 lacerations and 3595 fractures. An estimated 28,271 of the injuries of any kind were to fingers. 24,498 occurred in a home, 7612 occurred in an "unknown locale", they have no estimate for the number that occured in an "industrial place"--they had _one_ reported--a 77 year old man lost his left thumb. They had no estimate for the number that occured in a school--they had 13 reported, only two of which were amputations, one "partial" of two fingers and the other the tip of the left ring finger, the rest were lacerations or fractures except for one kid who got something in his eye.
"Seen one" and "own one" are different. May prototypes are seen and demonstrated, but never reach the marketplace.
I'd truly like to see the product hit the market and become accepted and the cost lowered in mass production. Has not happened yet and the Saw Stop web site does not give any solid information about delivery. Nor has it for the past year or so. The Tucker was ahead of its time too. Ed
word is, it's prone to false positives, and each one costs you $75.00.
well the page i saw says "saw stop saws now available". that seemed pretty damn clear. but i also see if you go one page deeper it says 'pre order'. so it looks like they are indeed lying.
randy
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