Todays USA today TS article

[Van Huskey]

Well, I have to agree with Van on one point, and one point only...holy Moderator self-control!

Well, that's one more than my wife does!

[Karl Brogger]

it was only a matter of time before the safety nannies decided that a tablesaw with out a brake was not suitable for the poor dumb general public. Being a small industry it probably won't cost much in lobby-ing to persuade a few that won't really pay attention anyway to sign something like this into law or sneak it in with another bill, forcing some out of business, and others into trouble.

[Larry Edgerton]

I can tell you there have been a lot of people change their minds over threads like this over the years SS has been around.

My personal odyssey while reading threads on forums over the years:

1. interesting idea, over priced, probably isn't fully sorted nor effective and probably attached to an inferior saw
2. wow this actually seems to be proving itself and the saw (ICS at the time) seems really well made
3. (sees ICS for the first time)
4. (uses and ICS for the first time, a friends)
5. directed to SS hotdog video by a forum thread and now believes SS is a great saw with a non-gimmick tech and my next saw will be an ICS
6. directed by forum threads to SS corporate agenda, opinion sours
7. further threads leading to more facts regarding SS's agenda and rerunning my personal risk-benefit analysis has me buying a PM2000 w/riving knife but sans brake


I think the key is most if not all who post in these threads have made their minds up, for what ever reason, however this is a small sampling of the ones that actually read the thread and are potentially influenced by them. Though there are fewer and fewer people who have not made up their minds there are still some on the fence reading this and other threads and being influenced.

My line of thinking ran in the same vein with the exception of #4, I have never used a SawStop. His attempt to make my three existing tablesaws illegal in my situation as a business owner made me decide that he will never get a penny of my money.

I would not mind having one saw around with this sort of feature for those times when I have to do some odd cut that can not be done with 100 percent safe practices. The realities of staying in business, especially in these tough times dictates that I don't spend an hour building a jig to make one cut. Most of the people on here are hobbiests, or people with a retirement making a few bucks, and they have different criteria. If someone feels that they need such a tool, by all means, have at it. But don't try to tell me I have to get rid of tools that were very hard for me to save and pay for, or close up shop.

I have a finger missing as well, which I paid for, thank you, and I do not have a problem with the idea. I do have a problem with the implimentation of the idea, the cost of a firing is far too high, and of course the attempt at using legislation to force me to buy a product. I don't use hardware store blades, and I can not afford to be replacing them every time that something sets off the brake, let alone the cost of the brake itself.

I do think that this firestorm will in the end be a good thing. It will force the other manufacturers to develop a system of their own, and it will surely be better. There is too much cost involved in this one. Sure if you do actually make a mistake the cost is small compared to the loss of flesh. But the cost of misfires would make me lose money, and I and most small businesses like mine are just hanging on by a thread just now. More government intervention is not what we need, that is what brought us here in the first place.

I don't see any reason that the brake could not be seperate from the blade for example. Use a pinned arbor/blade and put the brake on a seperate disc on the other end of the arbor. Make it so the brake can easily and cheaply be reset, maybe some inexpensive plastic inserts that can be boughtt by the bagfull and are easy to change in the shop/jobsite? That way it could be back up and running in minutes. Many small companys have only one saw. Not as much money to be made this way, but it is more likely to be used. I know myself well, and I know that after a couple of misfires that the system would be perminently bypassed, as I can't afford downtime or the cost of the blades and brake.

I get a chuckle out of the whole moral argument.....

Larry

[mreza Salav]

A couple of observations:

- It is interesting that some people get upset that someone is trying to make money of patents he has and they will be forced to pay for it.
Next time you buy any equipment try to find the several patents that are on it. Be sure that someone is making money out of those patents.
Needless to say, if you want to buy any car, you are paying for many similar safety equipments that are *forced* upon you and someone is making money out of them.

- The argument of having a choice and not being to forced to pay for something is not one way. If your *choice* of not using a safer saw eventually costs the society
(and other people who have nothing to do with it) then you are forcing those other people to pay for *your* desire to have a choice here. You don't leave in isolation,
and you cannot say "if I make a mistake I am responsible for it" but be sure that other people are also suffering because of that *mistake*; immediate family members,
people who are affected because you miss work days, and any trip to hospital is paid somehow by somebody; the cost of these "10 fingers a day" are mostly paid by insurance
company and they recoup the cost from everybody (not just those 10 people missing a digit or two). I am sure the cost of "10 fingers a day" is hundreds of millions
(if not the $2B figure in the article). By the same token, you cannot build a house that does not satisfy the many safety codes forced upon by the government even if you
say "if the roof falls on me or it burns down, I'm the only responsible person". So at the end of the day it's money that speaks how things should be dealt with.

[Larry Edgerton]

People that think they know better than me how I should live my life scare me.............

[Keith Christopher]

You know I find it interesting that everyone is up in arms about this, and it presents a solution to what is a real problem. To me the argument that 'I haven't lost a finger and I've been woodworking for a zillion years.' find someone who has recently lost some digits and they will be comforted by those words. the CPSC makes sure that products are safe, no lead paint or small childrens heads don't get hung up in cribs. Face it the government mandates these things in all aspects of your life. If there is a product which makes your work safer and at a small cost (blade +brake) then I am ok with it. Of course all the ranting of "I have to turn in my old saw and buy a new one to meet regulation" probably only if you own a WW business, as a hobbiest, you're free to 'shoot yourself in the foot' if you desire. The lack of adoption of a braking system is the reason why Mr. Gass is seemingly the only one with a product out there. If this is mandated, he will not be the only cowboy in the rodeo as this will spur competition. And that spells better varied choices. It's a good thing. I don't hear too many complaints about rivving knives and their saws.

I bet the reason is more people worry about kickback _vs_ body/blade contact. Feeling that kickback is out of their control while not coming into contact with the blade is under theirs. Which is most likely the reason to the aversion to sawstop like technology.

and for all you conspiracy folks out there, I do no own a saw stop, I have a DW-746 and I don't have any holdings or associations with SawStop or Mr. Gass.

I just think a good idea is a good idea and if he can make a buck or two off of it, this is America dang it.

[Chris Padilla]

I bet the reason is more people worry about kickback _vs_ body/blade contact. Feeling that kickback is out of their control while not coming into contact with the blade is under theirs. Which is most likely the reason to the aversion to sawstop like technology.

Well, kickback can send one's hands into the blade, too.

[Sean Nagle]

The car safety analogy isn't quite the same. If there were patents on safety equipment on cars, they have long since expired, so the cost to the consumer is set by the market through competition among manufacturers, even though there are government mandates for the safety devices.

The SawStop is still protected by some 50 patents [at least that's what I recall reading]. The whole idea of granting a patent is to give the inventor a limited-time monopoly in the marketplace to sell that product at a price that's pretty much what the market will bear. If the SawStop technology were mandated, what would prevent Dr. Gass from charging $10,000 or $100,000 per saw for licensing the technology? Dr. Gass could pretty much establish a monopoly on tablesaws not just tablesaws with flesh-sensing brake technology.

[Larry Edgerton]

Well, kickback can send one's hands into the blade, too.

That is how I lost mine, and ironically, I was distracted by a backup beeper.

[Chris Padilla]

If the SawStop technology were mandated, what would prevent Dr. Gass from charging $10,000 or $100,000 per saw for licensing the technology? Dr. Gass could pretty much establish a monopoly on tablesaws not just tablesaws with flesh-sensing brake technology.

The market still dictates. No one would purchase a saw if it cost that much and the used TS market would be a flury! I'm sure older saws would be exempted from this anyway.

Frankly, I don't think this technology will get mandated or perhaps it will AFTER the expiration of the patent. This stuff take a long time to happen.

[Sean Nagle]

Chris, what I should have stated is that Dr. Gass can price the licensing such that Delta, Powermatic and Grizzly would not be able to manufacture a tablesaw competitively. Now with the competition out of the way, Dr. Gass can exercise his patent-granted monopoly to charge what the market will bear for the SawStop.

A secondary market would be quite robust, but wouldn't be an option for a non-private entity such as a business since that's really the only place where a mandate would be enforceable. Of course the home and hobbyist tablesaw user would be relegated to buying the older tabelsaws. But then this is the crowd that seems to be having the most injuries with conventional tablesaws.

[Dan Hintz]

The market still dictates. No one would purchase a saw if it cost that much...

Isn't that the point?

Let's imagine for a moment a ruling is passed that all table saws manufactured from this point forward must include flesh-sensing technology. Let's also assume that SS has locked out all others from designing competing technologies due to his large patent portfolio. SS decides a brake unit license is $10k. If you want a table saw, now your only choices are purchased used (and that market can't last forever) or spend $10k+. No way around it because it's mandated.

Sure, a somewhat similar argument can be made about electronics... if you want a cell phone these days, you can almost guarantee it will have a GPS receiver in it. But how that came to be wasn't through mandate, it was via overwhelming request... so many people wanted the functionality, it was almost cheaper for a company to put the technology into all of their phone families than just a few. Even if you don't want GPS, you're paying an extra dollar or two for it regardless, subsidizing the majority that do. But that's market economics, not mandate/law... and to me, at least, how it comes to be is very important.

The huge difference is GPS is not required, and a manufacturer can skip it if it's financially worthwhile, which could very easily become the case if a patent holder were to come out of the woodworks and suddenly try to claim a major chunk of their pie. Think that doesn't happen? Think again. LG is suing Sony for patent infringement on 8 separate counts, to the point where it has requested a stop to shipments of PS3 game systems until the case is resolved (not going to happen, I know, but there's nothing to say the next case doesn't turn out differently). Some obscure company decided to sue IBM (first) over some patented IP in UNIX... once IBM bent to their will, they started going after other companies.

The point? What used to be considered free was suddenly costing a license fee... and nothing says that license fee cannot be anything the patent holder wishes it to be. That's always shaky ground to be on. So someone steps up and asks the government to step in and force the fees to be reasonable. Why? If it wasn't mandated in the first place, there would be no reason for the government to step in at all. And we come back full circle...

[Chris Padilla]

Are there good examples where the gov't allowed/help create such a potential monopoly? I hear all about them breaking 'em up....

[Dan Hintz]

Are there good examples where the gov't allowed/help create such a potential monopoly? I hear all about them breaking 'em up....

That makes the assumption the right hand knows what the left hand is doing... and with the government, that's rarely the case. It's so much easier to solve on problem at a time, no matter how many new problems doing so creates. Let's mandate the idea first, then we'll worry about the monopoly just created.

[Mike Henderson]

Sure, a somewhat similar argument can be made about electronics... if you want a cell phone these days, you can almost guarantee it will have a GPS receiver in it. But how that came to be wasn't through mandate, it was via overwhelming request... so many people wanted the functionality, it was almost cheaper for a company to put the technology into all of their phone families than just a few. Even if you don't want GPS, you're paying an extra dollar or two for it regardless, subsidizing the majority that do. But that's market economics, not mandate/law... and to me, at least, how it comes to be is very important.

I think it was mandated due to the requirement that a location be transmitted with a 911 call on a cell phone. There were other technologies, such as triangulation on cell towers, but the GPS solution was better.

The cellular companies are prohibited from activating a phone unless it has 911 location capability. So if you have an old phone without location capability, you can't get it activated. If you have an old phone and it's been continually in use (activated), you can continue to use it.

Mike