Behold, the Sawstop

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I started this thread over in Great Debates on an issue of government regulation. However, I was surprised that several of the responses were not about the regulatory issue, but rather along the lines of “wow, I want to get that for my dad/husband/civic group/etc.”

I know a lot of folks stay out of GD, and given those types of responses I thought it might be nice to place a post here where other woodworking forum members (or forum members with woodworkers in their circle of family and friends) might have a chance to take a gander, if they haven’t seen this elsewhere already (I know the site’s been around for over a year and has been noted in various tech and woodworking media).

So, I present for your consideration: the Sawstop. Watch the hot dog video on that site, and be impressed by the power of clever engineering.

FTR, I’m not affilated with the company at all; I just went to a demo and was really impressed, and find the regulatory issue interesting to boot.

2

That’s the most impressing wiener video I’ve ever seen on the web.

3

So someone rigged one of those touch on/off lamp switches to a saw. Clever!
I bet it’d cut through the hot dog if you clamped ro the wood instead of holding it with your hand.

4

Which would be like sawing through an already severed finger.

5

In fact, it would, because the hot dog alone doesn’t have enough capacitance to trip the brake. You need the full capacitance of the human body. This is also why hitting a nail won’t trip the brake.

At the demo, the lady pointed this out, noting that when they first started out a few of their salesmen had messed up the demo by only taping the dog to the board. Now it’s part of their sales training.