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posted by martyb on Saturday August 12 2017, @03:05AM   Printer-friendly
from the safety-is-no-accident dept.

In 2015, 4,700 people in the US lost a finger or other body part to table-saw incidents. Most of those injuries didn't have to happen, thanks to technology invented in 1999 by entrepreneur Stephen Gass. By giving his blade a slight electric charge, his saw is able to detect contact with a human hand and stop spinning in a few milliseconds. A widely circulated video[1] shows a test on a hot dog that leaves the wiener unscathed.

Now federal regulators are considering whether to make Gass' technology mandatory in the table-saw industry. The Consumer Product Safety Commission announced plans for a new rule in May, and the rules could take effect in the coming months.

But established makers of power tools vehemently object. They say the mandate could double the cost of entry-level table saws and destroy jobs in the power-tool industry. They also point out that Gass holds dozens of patents on the technology. If the CPSC makes the technology mandatory for table saws, that could give Gass a legal monopoly over the table-saw industry until at least 2021, when his oldest patents expire.

At the same time, table-saw related injuries cost society billions every year. The CPSC predicts switching to the safer saw design will save society $1,500 to $4,000 per saw sold by reducing medical bills and lost work.

"You commissioners have the power to take one of the most dangerous products ever available to consumers and make it vastly safer," Gass said at a CPSC public hearing on Wednesday.

Source: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/08/patent-disputes-stand-in-the-way-of-radically-safer-table-saws/

[1] SawStop Hot dog Video - Saw blade retracts within 5 milliseconds of accidental contact - YouTube.


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  • (Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday August 13 2017, @01:35PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Sunday August 13 2017, @01:35PM (#553240)

    So a wet spot in wood, or a hot dog, will cost you $50.

    Well there you go. Thats kinda my point that with the sensor being based on physical touch capacitance or resistance in a circuit going thru the operator, with machine vision instead of requiring the speed of a shotgun shell or a electrical blasting cap or whatever, a mere reusable spring and solenoid "should be fast enough". Note that my numbers were kind of ridiculous and most people don't thru a baseball pitcher 100 mph pitch at a table saw blade... technically it doesn't have to disappear before the hand arrives, it merely needs to accelerate fast enough to be moving away from the hand faster than the hand is moving toward it by the time the hand arrives...

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