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A Table Saw that can't cut your finger off

Thats pretty neat!

But I think I'll just stick to not putting my finger on the moving saw blade
 
If you remember that all power saws are malevolent,
Blood crazed,demon infested entities, your survivial
chances are greatly increased.
 
The brake is single-use. I'd be pretty irritated if ever falsely triggered... Overall, nice concept, just too complicated.
 
This has been around for a couple of years.

Yep, it's single use.

Also the saw manufacturers this guy contacted
all treated him like a case of Ebola virus, for
obvious reasons.

Jim
 
I'm really carefull with table saw. The only reason I still have the fingers on my left hand is becase the blade cut into them a a shallow angle and not cross wise. I was 14 years old. I just barley bumped that blade with my hand. Happend so fast I didn't even feel it ---- at first. 1 hour drive to the hospital........

I guess all is well that ends well.....
 
That saw has been out on the market for the past two or three years. Besides the safety feature of the blade brake it also happens to be the best designed 10" cabinet saw on the market. And the price reflects that. By the time you have it set up in your shop cutting wood you'll have spent roughly $4,000. But that's still a lot less than an ER visit with mangled fingers.
 
There are old pilots
There are bold pilots
There are no old, bold pilots.

There are woodworkers.
There are bold woodworkers.
Dumb fs cut off parts of themselves.

A useless invention, unless you're OHSA.


Cliff
 
I cant agree with the statement that only dumb f$3%s cut themselves woodworking.
Over the years, I have had my shop in the same building or complex with woodshops several times- and unfortunately, I have had to bandage guys a couple of times. Intelligent, fine craftsmen.

Woodworking tools bite harder, quicker, and with less provocation. The fastest I ever run any of my machine tools is SLOW for a woodworking machine.
I often run metalcutting tools at 40 to 100 rpm- speeds at which nicking a leather glove, like on a bandsaw blade, is not only not dangerous, its routine. Its true metalworking tools have their own dangers, but the high speed of woodworking tools makes them inherently nastier.

And the number one woodshop tool in terms of injury is the tablesaw. Smart people do stupid stuff all the time with tablesaws- familiarity breeds contempt.

If I was running a shop where I was paying another person to use a tablesaw, I would buy one of these things in a New York minute. An extra grand is a small price to pay, compared to the cost, and mental anguish, of having your employee hurt himself.
 
I agree with Ries " familiarity breeds contempt."

I got my thumb in a blade when I was 14 and now 23 years later I'm just starting to use the finger that I got on a blade only a month ago. I wasn't in a hurry, I just took my eyes off the blade as I was reaching for the push stick.

I looked at that saw that Guru posted and think that if my sons ever take an interest in woodworking I'll replace my Delta cabinet saw with one of those.

There were several comments about one time use -which is true. The cartrige is around $75.00 which is cheap compared to loosing a finger. I got "lucky" both times and still have my fingers, but I now have two reminders.

Safety isn't cheap, and accidents can happen to anybody.

Luke
 
(yawn) yep, been around for years...ok idea, but I object to the owner of the company stirring up such a hubbub about the whole thing and trying to get it mandantory on all tablesaws used in commercial applications.

Seems like a solution to a problem that is a problem but not all that much of a problem. And FWIW, I used to be a woodworker running a 14 inch table saw (with no guards at all) and 16 inch radial arm saw every business day for about 8 years and never nicked a finger on a rotating blade, much less lost one.

(Having said that, I did keep a medical bag of saline solution that a doctor customer gave me to put any body parts in "just in case" and kept a cartoon near the wall telephone of a woodworker holding his severed right arm underneath his left arm, blood dripping on the floor, calmly calling the hospital for an apointment :D )
 
About 20 years ago Fine Woodworking magazine did a survey on injuries in the shop and came up with some interesting results. Most accident happen right after lunch, accidents happen to workers on opposite ends of the experience spectrum and not surprizing the tablesaw is the #1 culprit.
I had my accident where I nicked 2 of the finger on my left hand pretty good right after I returned from lunch. I don't consider myself a dumb f#$k but I wouldn't make that cut the same way today. I had 20 years experience at the time and I believe we get overconfident and do things that are unsafe. In a wood shop everything goes through the table saw at least once. Wood by it's very nature has stresses in it that when cut can cause the blade to bind and in the blink of an eye your hand can get pulled into the blade. Technolgy that can save you from serious injury is a bargain, but safe begins between your ears.
 
I'm amazed at the negative replies here.

Over a hundred years of safety refinements since the industrial revoloution, and to buck what is pretty much the first refinement to one of the most dangerous peices of common machinery ever invented?

Might as well ditch the double buttons and light curtians and go back to foot pedals on 500 ton presses, after all, why complicate something with such madness?
 
Mits,

Regardless of the positives, I think people are burned out on safety.

Some of this stems from corporate working where some safety person stuffs this crap down our throats on a weekly basis.

The real problem is management pushing for higher production numbers with less resources. So in the end we waste time being stuffed with safety information while our managers expect higher production numbers.

Same thing bleeding over into our personal lives with seat belts and helmet laws. People just don't appreciate being treated like children.

Just my .02
 
I don't think the negative replies are quite what you think.....

I also am a bit negative on it.

Why would I be like that when it obviously is a good idea in concept, and yes, the cost of the lost hand is far more than the device?

Because, it is such a drastic solution, and the way it works (sensing conductivity, IIRC) is a way that is fraught with ways the thing can go off without your finger etc in it.

If it were GUARANTEED not to go off for any other reason than a finger or other body part in it, I'd be far more positive. As far as I know, that guarantee is not made.

But the chance of spending hundreds of bucks on replacing the "cartridge" and blade a few times looks more probable than getting my finger in it, which I have yet to do or even come very close to.

The manufacturers are deadly afraid that this guy will be the last man standing.....

If they accept the thing, they are faced with a mandatory retrofit to every saw they have ever made..... or a buy-back of every saw they have ever made. The cost of NOT doing one of those is an AUTOMATIC slam-dunk at-fault judgement in any lawsuit, since here is available safety technology that they chose to spurn, making ALL their saws ever made "inherently defective".

They really have a choice of ways to go out of business / be forced out of business, and they would rather do it their way, than his.
 
Good post J. Yet another reason I'm not too thrilled with it.. just the knowledge that it's there might make a worker a little more lax about blade safety. With that "security blanket" in the back of their minds they might forgo using a push stick, when they would have previously...that sort of thing. Tablesaw injuries can still come from non flesh wounds...like sudden kickback of lumber into a face....although "timber in the tummy" much more common !
 








 
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