Can some of you people that work with this kind of tools for a living , please tell me the advantage of this saw stop saw for about $3,000.? I know it is only a 10" cabinet saw also. Right now we have a 12" delta and 2 ea 10" unisaws. All three are 10-15 yrs old but work fine. Except they will eat fingers if inserted. Our shop (retirement community in fl) has the money to buy, but I am having a hard time trying to convince myself to buy this. I have read all the other stories on here about this saw , but nothing to make me say hey "we need this, can't live with out it". Think someone said yes it will stop the saw but will it cure the problem of why it stopped the saw. Also do you have to buy the saw stop blades? How about the sharpening of them? And there are questions that I am sure I don't know to ask yet. Pig in a poke? All this and asking myself what we could get with the $3 Gs. Some people see all the sales brochures and say they want it, but you never see the mfg tell you the cons. So What are the cons. I know the answers are here, just have to find them. Thanks all.
For a retirement community shop, IMHO, it makes even more sense than a one-person garage/shop. You're distributing the cost among a bunch more people (say it's $1500 more than a Unisaw, and you've got 25 people using the shop = $60/person). As someone else said, how much are your fingers worth to you? More than $60, I'd wager. Heck, even my friend's fingers are worth more to me than $60, although I'd probably want to watch when he tried to test the saw (if I was shelling out the bucks for it, that is).
Also for a community shop, reducing the liability for an "incident" may be an advantage. Not sure if your insurance company would think so (yet), but perhaps worth checking.
And finally, old farts don't heal as quickly as young pups *duck and run* :)
I'm not sure what you mean by "it will stop the saw but will it cure the problem of why it stopped the saw". It's supposed to stop the saw when someone sticks their fingers in the sharp spin-y section. You're not supposed to do that (AFAIK) whether you have a SawStop or not; it's just how much of an impact it has on you that changes. One will cost you Can some of you people that work with this kind of tools for a living ,
If I had the money with nothing else to do with it, this is the saw that I would buy. I researched it a bit in the past and found some interesting tidbits.
The pros are obvious, I can think of ten reasons (fingers) to buy the saw. Cons: Price. When the brake activates the brake cartridge and the saw blade are ruined. You can see that in the demo. New product so not much road testing.
It got me thinking, why hasn't other companies licensed this technology. My answer was interesting.... I don't speak for any side in the issue, this is just my opinion.
History: The guy that invented the system was a patent attorney that wanted a safer table saw product. He spent a few weeks thinking of solutions and this product idea is the result. His goal was to license the idea to all the saw manufacturers. He came close with Delta, but the everyone pulled out. He said heck with it and created his own saw.
Why did they not license the product? Two sides to the story. Saw Manufacturer side: The technology provides too many false positives, not proven to work 100% of the time. A false positve costs big bucks and customers will reject that. (This could be a huge con if you are dropping $100 some bucks for new blades and brakes all the time.) A negative for a saw manufacturer is that someone actually cuts off their finger using the sawstop technology in their saw. They will get sued because the product doesn't perform as advertised. It is too much of a gamble for "unproven" "unreliable" technology.
SawStop side: The large manufacturers love the technology but the lawers got in the way. The legal analysis said that some guy developed a safety system in a few weeks in his garage. They have been developing tools for 50 years and couldn't make the saws safer. As a product manufacturer in the USA, they have the responsibilty to make the product as reliable and safe as possible. If they adopt the sawstop braking system we will be admitting that they failed and will open themselves up to legal liability for every person that chopped off a finger with their non-sawstop products. Bottom line is that adopting the sawstop will cost us money.
An interesting note about this issue is a lawsuit was filed suing a large saw manufacturer saying that they could have implemented a saw stop type system on thier product but have not. Ignoring this saftey feature makes them liable.
In the end I think we will see the saw stop on all saws or none at all. Personally I think an individual on a budget will have a hard time buying the saw at the price point. A group style shop, such as a cabinet shop or school could spend the extra money to reduce liability. In your case, you are representing a group of people. Could you eventually be held liable for not choosing the SawStop?
As an important note to this post, I do not offer any specific advice for this post. I have no experience with table saws, but I'm looking to start woodworking -- I watch New Yankee Workshop on Saturdays :) Since I've looked into this a bit, thought I'd pass on the information.
If you want to spend some money to upgrade safety, a quickly removable and replaceable crown guard and a riving knife will give you nearly as much safety for a whole lot less money.
OTOH, they're not bad saws or badly priced if you're buying a new saw of similar quality.
No, you don't have to buy SawStop blades. Any 10" standard blade will do. (However, I have seen comment here on the wreck that the Freud adjustable dado cannot be used, likely because it is marginally over 8" in diameter at some, or all, width settings.) My Freud stackable dado is fine.
Should the cartridge fire, you not only have to buy a new cartridge, but also replace the blade which is destroyed in the process.
Changing from a standard blade to dado, or vice versa, takes an additional 30 seconds or so.
The blade insert is complex and expensive and not easy to duplicate. So far I have not seen any third party inserts for the SawStop for sale. The dado insert is made of walnut and mine was badly warped on receipt. The standard insert is phenolic - no problems.
The manual that comes with the saw is by far the most comprehensive I have ever seen for a power tool of this level of complexity but it is full of errors - annoying things like the index pointing to the wrong page numbers, parts numbers missing from exploded view diagrams, etc.
The shiny black finish on the saw and extension table shows every bit of sawdust. I'll leave it to you to determine if that is a plus on minus.
Stopped at the Woodcraft store yesterday, and one of the salesman started talking about the saw stop saw. He said it was $200, if the system was to stop the blade. He also said, you had to deactivate the system to cut wet wood. I wonder how wet it has to be to set it off? oops, I guess the wood was wet. I think I'll pass, and continue using common sense, and a sharp blade. I just hope that in a few years all saws don't have to have the system, and the price of all saws gets out of control. If you don't want your wiener cut, keep it out of the blade.
It has a test mode where you can place a piece of the material you're cutting in contact with the blade and it will signal if it would trip or not. It's expensive to reset because it does destroy some of the hardware (has to to disperse the energy from the blade) but it's intended use is in large shops that have to carry liability insurance and worry about employees or students doing boneheaded things. It has it's place, but most likely not in joe average's shop.
Jason The place where you made your stand never mattered, only that you were there... and still on your feet
I would be leery of that salesman .. .. .. if a cartridge is triggered, a replacement is $59 .. .. .. usually, up to 3-4 teeth might be damaged on the blade, so whatever you might pay to have them replaced would be an additional charge.
If you cut VERY wet wood, the system goes into an alarm mode, letting you know it sees a potential problem.
The saw stop also takes some time to stop although it stops darned fast. Watch the feed rate on the hot dog in the demo.
If you slide your hand in at that rate then you get cut that much. The question is about how many people get hurt slowly sliding their hands into a blade versus tripping or slipping and putting their hand in very rapidly.
Table saw accidents can happen at any time and to anybody. One of our customers who purchased a SawStop table saw from us back in March recently made contact with the spinning blade with his fingers. The SawStop braking system triggered, stopped the blade, and he ended up with just a scratch.
This is our third customer save since we started selling the SawStop and we are glad to hear that it prevented a potentially tragic accident.
We are proud to be a dealer for the innovative SawStop table saw.
I wonder how the force of the high speed spinning blade is disipated? I am betting that you have to replace more than the blade and brake unit, like say motor shaft, motor mounts, motor adjustment screws and anything else the torque throws out of whack.
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