What’s the Deal with SawStop?
George VondriskaDescription
Accidents happen. In fact, when it comes to table saws, accidents happen every nine minutes. One out of every ten table saw accidents result in an amputation. That’s what makes SawStop flesh sensing technology so great.
What does it do?
If you touch the blade on a SawStop table saw it instantly comes to a stop. And I mean instantly. In 5 milliseconds the blade not only comes to a stop, it also disappears below the table. How fast is 5 milliseconds? Faster than your eye can track. Ten times faster than the airbags in your car. Even after you turn the saw off, while the blade is winding down, the system is still active.
How does it work?
There’s a small electrical charge on the blade, which is electrically isolated from the rest of the table saw. Because your body is a big capacitor if you touch the blade some of the voltage goes into you. The system sees the voltage drop and initiates the sequence that stops and drops the blade.
And afterward?
If you activate the brake you need to change the brake pad and, most likely, the blade. Yep, there’s an expense there, but it’s way less than hand surgery.
SawStop’s newest table saw
Big news from SawStop is the availability of a table saw with SawStop technology for under $1000, their new Compact Table Saw. Very cool.
You just saw this amazing demo with the hotdog, and I'm here with Lori now and it's, let's hit on these stats again, with the amputations and the accidents. One every nine seconds seems... An accident every nine seconds. One every nine minutes. Every nine minutes. Still, every nine minutes. That's amazing when you think about the number of injuries that could cause. Absolutely. And do we know the number of amputations in a year? Yeah, and then one out of every 10 of those is gonna result in an amputation. It's amazing. I know we've talked about the five milliseconds with this, and the thing I like to use is, it takes about a half a second to blink your eyes. So five milliseconds is that much faster than, that's 0.5. And this is- And then 10 times faster than an airbag, which people think of as being instantaneous, but 10 times faster than that. I think I have SawStop number, like, three in my shop. It's been in there since 2007, and for me it was my own woodworking, plus I teach classes. And that idea of having outsiders in my shop using a table saw, was, "I can't not have this available, For sure. if it's available." And you've got the new saw that's come out is amazing. We were just talking about that. And that Contractor Saw is... The breakthrough on that I think is SawStop technology for under... Under 1,000. It's 899, it's the Compact Table Saw and it will be available in September. Really cool tool, really cool tool. So great technology, a number of finger saves. Do we know that number, like, finger saves in a year? We don't actually have that, because not everybody that has a finger save Reports. lets us know, but we know of thousands and thousands. We've sold over 200,000 saws, so one every nine minutes, you know, some of those are SawStop owners. Yeah, yeah. It's the technology is amazing, and thanks for letting us shoot video. I'm not gonna take a bite outta this hotdog. No, please don't. Way better to have the nick on this, than on this.
Its Amazing technology, I've seen my share of shop accidents. Fortunately, (knock on wood) i have all my fingers and body parts. If something like this was on a circular saw. A friend of mine wouldn't have almost lost his leg right in front of me. From a Delta 8" worm drive saw. He was on a roof cutting a piece of fascia that was mounted on the rafter ends. He had the guard pulled back to make a plunge cut, he had layed it on his thigh with the guard still pulled back. He pulled the trigger and you can guess what happened. It nearly cut his leg in two. He should've been doing what he was doing. Especially laying it on his leg. But it happened so fast. We had to apply a tourniquet to save his life. And life flight him. To save his leg and life. Back then they didn't have the rapid stop systems on saws. I'm not sure that would've helped much.