Update on the Bosch ReaXX vs Sawstop issue

[Rick Fisher]

It appears the patents all expire between 2021 and 2024 .. 2021 is more likely.. SawStop has a bit over 4 years left ..

[Roger Marty]

And I'll bet you $100 that in 2025, SawStop is still the leading cabinet saw. They're the only cabinet saw that my local stores (Woodcraft and one other) even carry.

It is not the capacitive coupling, it is probably the software.

Black-and-Decker/Stanley? Phff. Do they even sell a product with a microprocessor?

I'm with Gass. The tool companies response was pathetic as shown by Colbert.

http://www.cc.com/video-clips/hgxqxc...rica---sawstop

[Bill ThompsonNM]

The patents for this have always bern amazing to me. 30 or 40 years ago when the patent office was doing its job they would never have issued one for capacitive sensing of flesh. Patents are not supposed to apply to processes where any competent engineer would have made the same decisions. We all use capacitive sense for fingers every day and have for many years. (Used your phone lately?). Capacitive sense keyboards snd screens were developed well before sawstop and almost every engineer asked to develop a method to sense fingers with saw blades would have used the same pre existing technology so it shouldn't have been granted a patent. The method for stopping the blade to avoid injury is clearly patentable. I was very surprised that the courts sided with sawstop since bosch has a completely different blade stopping mechanism

[Roger Marty]

The patents for this have always bern amazing to me. 30 or 40 years ago when the patent office was doing its job they would never have issued one for capacitive sensing of flesh. Patents are not supposed to apply to processes where any competent engineer would have made the same decisions. We all use capacitive sense for fingers every day and have for many years. (Used your phone lately?). Capacitive sense keyboards snd screens were developed well before sawstop and almost every engineer asked to develop a method to sense fingers with saw blades would have used the same pre existing technology so it shouldn't have been granted a patent. The method for stopping the blade to avoid injury is clearly patentable. I was very surprised that the courts sided with sawstop since bosch has a completely different blade stopping mechanism

First, you can go to www.uspto.gov and enter in the patents and see what exactly they cover.

Second, you are demonstrating precisely why the system is working as intended. "30 or 40 years ago". If it were so obvious, then it would have been done 30 or 40 years ago, right? Nope, it wasn't obvious and took a new guy to come up with it. Do you think he should have just given it to the large, established tool companies? The fact is, America is still an innovation leader because of our system on intellectual property (even though it is outdated for software).

Without patent protection, there is no incentive to pursue new ideas. Yet new ideas typically come from startups rather than big, established companies that are stagnant in culture and stagnant in new ideas.

Without patent protection, if someone like Gass does come up with a new idea, then large established companies can choose to steal it and/or crush small companies based on the idea. Which destroys incentive for innovation and startups. I also don't blame him for petitioning the CSPC for requiring flesh-detection technology. If he tried to be unreasonable regarding patent royalties, he would be litigated for that.

Qualcomm holds patents that are necessary to build cellphones that speak CDMA/LTE, and the U.S. government hands out spectrum licenses that pretty much require companies to license those patents. It is the way the world works.

[Malcolm McLeod]

I've got no dog in this fight. If you like SS, buy one, or sing praises for Gass, or hiss at the Dewalts in the BORG tool department. If you don't like Gass' tactics or product, buy the Bosch and hiss at the SS. Your call.


Personally, I think our patent system works reasonably well. Not perfect, but what is? I also agree that protection of IP is the biggest incentive to innovation and is why the US has enjoyed a better than average entrepreneurial success rate.

Like all innovators, the path forward for SS will probably be very predictable: The new products they're offering are their attempt to diversify; first the job-site saw, soon the re-branded lift (etc.), and I won't be surprised to see a circular saw with a brake on it. The SS saw prices will start coming down as they reduce their margins to discourage new competitors from entering the niche (Bosch excluded). Patents will expire and competitors will use the IP or not. Gass will continue to innovate or not. And consumers will still buy the tool they feel is right for them. Capitalism at work.


My personal suspicion is that SS is a one-trick-pony. When the various saw's features equalize, can SS be the 'Festool engineering' of the table saw market? From all reports and my limited look, it may very well be a really good saw. But the overall fit and finish, solidity, and precision are probably funded by the brake margins. When those margins go away, what else goes with them? What is the next generation of saw safety and innovation? And then Bosch will bury SS because they too probably have good (and optional) margins in the ReaXX.


....If I was a SS owner, I might load up on brake cartridges in 3 years.

[Steve Demuth]

I would agree that the patent system is broken, and issues protection for ideas that in no way deserve it. Drug patent protection is the poster child for this, but it is common elsewhere. Apple has patents on round corners on a cell phone for heaven's sake. I used to work at a place that emphasized patenting their work, and as a consequence hold several patents myself that in a reasonable world would never be issued. The patent office says you can't patent something that "would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art." Drug patents that involve modest re-arrangements of the molecular make-up of a compound flunk this test. Many things I have reviewed or submitted for patenting in the IT world also flunk it. I think that whether the Sawstop mechanism does or doesn't pass this test is arguable, but I probably would side with it not passing the test. If someone had issued a design challenge to 100 mechanical/electrical engineers to build a table saw mechanism that would stop the blade upon contact with flesh within 5 msec and given them 24 hours, half of them would have designed something not significantly different from what Gass built. It would have been obvious to anyone skilled in the arts that this was possible, and how to go about doing it.

What the patents really reward here is Gass beliefs that it was worth the effort (that there was a market, in other words) to work out the details and build a device that could be manufactured and would work in the field. But the patents cover the broad, rather obvious to someone skilled in the art, idea, not all that faith and detailed engineering work. Whether that's right or wrong, I leave to others to decide.

The truth is that many ideas that get patented are rather obvious, because the world is full of very knowledgeable, very talented people, and the logic of our entire system of science and engineering leads easily and naturally to the answer to many questions. The insight is often more about the marketability of a product, or the utility of an already developed idea in a different field, than "invention" per se. And the protection more about the hard work of perfecting a product (or testing a drug) than about an idea.

[Peter Aeschliman]

I'm in the camp that believes SS will be in trouble when their patents expire.

For two reasons:

1) The technology itself, while very innovative, won't be difficult to reverse engineer. Heck, other manufacturers can straight-up copy it with no recourse after the patents expire. You don't need top engineering talent to do that. And given that SS has proven the market with their sales, you bet the major manufacturers will give a go (assuming they're good capitalists at least). In fact, I'd be willing to bet that a number of them have already figured it out and are just waiting for those patents to expire to flood the market.

2) SS has not expanded its product line, and has missed a huge opportunity to build a competitive moat. While its brand is well-known in the woodworking industry and amongst hobbyists, it's associated with table saws only. And for some meaningful segment of consumers (judging by the angry folks who always pop up in these threads), the brand is associated with shady business practices that equate to taking away freedom of choice. They had a huge market lead. But there has been very little follow-on innovation. They've made a few other versions of table saws (contractor, benchtop, PCS) and have focused on table saw accessories- overarm dust collection, an over-priced and under-whelming sliding table attachment, and lately, a bunch of re-branded General International TS accessories (and a router table).

I'm rooting for sawstop because they brought innovation into a stale industry. I bought a PCS and love the thing. But I'm really disappointed. Much like my Nest thermostat, when I bought it, I had high hopes for follow-on products and continuing innovation... But so it goes.

[Roger Marty]

I'm in the camp that believes SS will be in trouble when their patents expire.

For two reasons:

1) The technology itself, while very innovative, won't be difficult to reverse engineer. Heck, other manufacturers can straight-up copy it with no recourse after the patents expire. You don't need top engineering talent to do that. And given that SS has proven the market with their sales, you bet the major manufacturers will give a go (assuming they're good capitalists at least). In fact, I'd be willing to bet that a number of them have already figured it out and are just waiting for those patents to expire to flood the market.

2) SS has not expanded its product line, and has missed a huge opportunity to build a competitive moat. While its brand is well-known in the woodworking industry and amongst hobbyists, it's associated with table saws only. And for some meaningful segment of consumers (judging by the angry folks who always pop up in these threads), the brand is associated with shady business practices that equate to taking away freedom of choice. They had a huge market lead. But there has been very little follow-on innovation. They've made a few other versions of table saws (contractor, benchtop, PCS) and have focused on table saw accessories- overarm dust collection, an over-priced and under-whelming sliding table attachment, and lately, a bunch of re-branded General International TS accessories (and a router table).

I'm rooting for sawstop because they brought innovation into a stale industry. I bought a PCS and love the thing. But I'm really disappointed. Much like my Nest thermostat, when I bought it, I had high hopes for follow-on products and continuing innovation... But so it goes.

Yes, your arguments could be right. After all Google's original PageRank patent expires in 2017 but I don't think anybody thinks Google is in trouble.

But the thing is, who makes Cabinet saws? Delta? Jet? Who else? It is not a big enough market to flood, and brand value goes a long ways.

If things go south, their value will go low enough such that someone will just purchase the company and the brand (and perhaps keep selling brake cartridges). If things go south, I guess I might have to go buy a Black-and-Decker or Bosch cabinet saw replacement in 10 years :-)

[Steve Demuth]

The technology itself, while very innovative, won't be difficult to reverse engineer.

Indeed, but there is no need to reverse engineer anything. There is no element of the SawStop system that, absent patent protection for the ideas themselves, any competent mechanical and electrical/electronic engineering organization couldn't duplicate from first principles as a routine matter. There are more complicated and nuanced systems designed and built into automobiles, construction equipment, farm equipment, and industrial manufacturing equipment all the time. Somebody poses a particular mechanical need, and the engineers design and build a solution. Gass got there first on table saw safety, and earned himself a nice 20 year monopoly. That's good for him, and hasn't been particularly bad for consumers (SawStops are probably overpriced compared to what they'd be absent the monopoly, but not wildly so given their overall engineering quality). That's how our system works. But it's not magic, and it's way more market innovation than it is technical innovation at this point.

[John Sanford]

One question to be asked is this:

What other areas are ripe for this technology?

Bandsaws -- Need to brake both wheels and the blade itself.
Jointers -- (gear driven cutterhead with flywheel NOT on the cutterhead that is braked. Why? Because there's no room for a flywheel on the cutterhead itself without a complete redesign of the fence system....)
Miter/Radial Arm saws in all their flavors
Circular Saws - serious sizing issues....
Shapers -- Add a "flywheel" to the bottom of the shaft, brake that.

ALL of them would require some significant re-engineering, but they're all doable. Also, bringing the tech to Sliding Table Saws would be good, and that's something we're more likely to see with Bosch's approach, in part because of their strength in Europe.

Planers would be an afterthought, for the simple reason that getting one's flesh into a planer almost requires deliberate intent. Sure, one COULD brain fart and reach into a running planer to free a jam, but... Or one COULD get their sleeve caught on a big honkin' splinter that pops up, but... So from a cost perspective, it's unlikely to happen.

IF SawStop can move into these other areas, then they have a good chance of keeping their market position. If not...

All that said, I should pick up another pair of cartridges. Just in case....

[Steve Demuth]

What other areas are ripe for this technology?

Cutting and sewing machines in garment and shoe manufacturing!

[Malcolm McLeod]

I was bored today and started thinking about my 'SS circular saw'. Stopping a rotating mass means the frame has to absorb that much energy (less that absorbed as deformation & heat by the SS billet). If you dump that much inertia into a circular saw frame in a couple of milliseconds, it will probably twist it out of your hand - - and maybe break a wrist in the process? Maybe not such a good idea? (And we'll ignore wet wood, nails, and rain on the job-site, too.)

...And I was 'this' close to fame and fortune!! Drat!

The rotating mass in a 500-1000lb jointer/planer/bandsaw might mean playing Twister with it in your shop...?

[Jim Dwight]

I think SS will end up somewhere between Xerox and Fein when their patents run out. Probably not as badly as Xerox but perhaps not as well as Fein. A lot depends on what they do. If they continue to improve their saws (have they done that?) then they can hold a significant position. But if they continue to be a good but not great saw with the only advantage of blade stopping technology - that they then loose, they will fade away.

[David Kumm]

The technology would need serious revision for most other woodworking machines. The inability to use the design to stop a blade larger than 10" is all ready a limiting factor in penetrating the commercial market. Jointers, planers, and particularly shapers spin much more mass than even a 12" blade. Shapers in particular vary the mass rotating and - at least the good ones - run on precision bearings. Bearings take a real beating when stopped that quickly and large bearings running at higher speeds than a saw, won't fare well. The fact that SS hasn't offered a 12" saw tells me that it won't be easy or cheap to apply their design to commercial machines. Dave

[Mike Henderson]

The rotating mass in a 500-1000lb jointer/planer/bandsaw might mean playing Twister with it in your shop...?

There are bandsaws used in the meat industry that have brakes on them. I haven't looked at the technology closely but I think they use one or more cameras and the operators use blue gloves. If the camera detects a finger going into the blade, it stops the saw.

Again, I don't know a lot about these and how they work but I know the meat processing industry has bandsaw safety technology.

Mike