Talk:SawStop

Discussion leading to the creation of this article

 * (copied from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Oregon)

You might consider creating an article on SawStop (http://www.sawstop.com/), a startup company in Tualatin, Oregon which since 2005 has sold tens of thousands of table saws with an electrical sensor that detects when the blade touches flesh instead of wood. According to one source, its technology has prompted hearings by the Consumer Product Safety Commission to consider whether the feature should be mandatory. Its technology was the subject of the Illinois General Assembly's 2005 Electrical Saw Safety Act, and has been the subject of Congressional lobbying by major saw manufacturers. I suspect these references and others mean the company is notable enough. I just wikified the two references already present in Wikipedia. 67.101.7.183 (talk) 16:39, 18 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Do you want to help create the article? I've followed sawstop since before 2005, they've tried hard to sell the patent, (and when that wasn't successful) sell their own brand of saw, (and when that wasn't successful) lobby to have it legally mandated. Because it's a revolutionary idea that has received plenty of press, it'll have no question passing notability guidelines, but I'm not really interested in creating it- but I'm willing to help. tedder (talk) 22:52, 18 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Okay, I created a first draft of such an article, called Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Oregon/TempSawStop. It's got several refs, an infobox, and categories. It needs work but I think its enough to move to SawStop.  67.101.6.107 (talk) 09:16, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
 * It looks like an excellent start -- but there is really only one high quality, independent, focused reliable source in there (the design article). I'd recommend adding in one or two of these somehow before moving to mainspace. Maybe not necessary, but it should help fend off anyone raising notability concerns. -Pete (talk) 20:09, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
 * I'd be interested in having other members of the wikiproject weigh in on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Oregon/TempSawStop as it is right now. It has five references, only one of which is a primary source, with the others being Design News, and one each from a U.S. federal legislative branch website, a U.S. executive branch website, and the website of the Illinois General Assembly. As I said, it certainly can be improved, and I plan on helping improve it after it becomes an article.  I think the existing references are sufficient for moving it into place, and I ask you to reconsider and others to take a look.  If Peteforsyth's is the consensus viewpoint of the wikiproject, feel free to delete the draft I did, since I have no further interest in working on it as a talk page draft.  Thanks. 67.101.5.155 (talk) 05:42, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
 * 67, I think the draft is fine as it stands; as I said, an "excellent start." I don't throw that term around lightly. The company's notability is clearly established by the number of hits in the search I linked above. My suggestion is merely there to avoid the possibility of Wikipedians with a more deletionist bent than myself from objecting. I support you moving it into main space as is, if you feel it's time. You should be aware that other Wikipedians may share my belief that the government sources don't add much to the case for the topic's notability, but the Design News article should be enough by itself; and adding one of the NPR sources or similar would clearly put it past the notability threshold.
 * Again, nice work. -Pete (talk) 16:32, 21 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Once someone moves it into article space, I'll work on improvements.  67.100.125.24 (talk) 22:23, 25 June 2011 (UTC)
 * It was just moved. Jsayre64   (talk)  22:53, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

Used Inc. magazine ref and others
I said during a conversation at WikiProject Oregon's talk page (copied above) that I would help improve this article once it was moved into article space. I've done so, based on five new refs, adding a pull quote and expanding the history section. 67.101.6.105 (talk) 20:41, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Math error?
In the rquote: '''Given the speed of the blade, it would have to stop in about 1/100 of a second — or at about an eighth of an inch of rotation after making contact. '''

That matches the source precisely, it's not a typo here. The source also says 10 milliseconds, confirming the 1/100 of a second, so it's probably not a typo there, either. But it's just wrong.

Unless I seriously need to retake 4th grade math—which is entirely possible—that's 12.5 inches of rotation per second.


 * One-eighth = 0.125 ; 0.125 x 100 = 12.5.

The source states 4,000 rpm, which, now using 3rd grade math, comes out to 66 rotations per second. That's a little more than 12.5 inches. If one rotation is a couple of feet, the quotation is wrong by a factor of about 125, or 12,500%. ‑‑ Mandruss  &#9742;  08:19, 17 November 2014 (UTC)


 * With an 8" blade, one rotation would be 25 inches...1675 inches per second...so if it's 10ms then that's 16.75 inches of 'stopping distance'.


 * This page says "under 5ms" - which gets it down to under 8 inches of stopping distance...but that's still far too much to account for the self-evident effectiveness of this gadget.


 * I think the key here is that the brake mechanism doesn't just stop the blade from spinning - it also retracts it back under the table...so it's pulling the blade away from your skin as it's slowing it down.


 * The video http://www.sawstop.com/why-sawstop/the-technology shows that only one or at most two teeth touch the guy's finger before the blade starts to pull away...so clearly there is SOMETHING wrong with our assumptions here. The blade vanishes below the table in just one frame of the video...a 30th of a second maybe.


 * Furthermore, (according to their website) it's using the rotational energy of the blade to do that retraction. That being the case, the retraction has to be finished before the blade runs out of torque - so it probably takes the same amount of time (or perhaps even less) than getting the blade to stop...which means that it's retracting the blade away from you at some much higher rate.


 * My bet (and it's definitely OR) is that the blade does indeed take 8" to come to a stop - but it pulls away from your hand in 1/8 of an inch...that's much more credible IMHO.


 * It's also a better thing to do, because your finger will probably be moving forwards into the blade - so just stopping it wouldn't be enough - you need the blade to be moving backwards away from your skin faster than your hand is moving forwards.


 * If it can truly retract the blade several inches (which is what it looks like) within that 10ms period - then it's moving downwards and away at 200 inches per second - which a lot faster than you could be feeding a chunk of wood into the machine.


 * SteveBaker (talk) 20:16, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

Whether or not the article's description of the safety mechanism is is correct (and I suspect it isn't, stopping the blade (and motor) is a source of energy and angular momentum to rapidly pivot the blade and holder down and out of the way), the article as I read it now (August 2017) says "4000 x 3.1415 / 60 is 2093 inches per second", when it is actually "10 inches x 4000 x 3.1416 / 60" is 2094 inches per second". (3.1415926535 ... rounds to 3.1416) Fixing now, but future editors should do their rounding correctly, and pay attention to units. KeithLofstrom (talk) 18:22, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

Market share?
Maybe I missed it, but there doesn't seem to be anything in the article about market share? As a manufacturer of table saws is the company still basically a novelty, or has its innovative product managed to capture a meaningful share of the market? Are they 10% of the market, 1%, 0.1%, 0.01%? It would be nice some sort of a perspective on what impact their safer saws have had on the market for table saws in general. Dragons flight (talk) 20:56, 17 November 2014 (UTC)

Request Edit: Company Founding Date
SawStop was not founded in 2005. Instead, it was founded in 1999. Source is the company's own info page: http://www.sawstop.com/company/about

-submitted by SawStop marketing dept.


 * Hi. We require credible, independent sources for foundation dates, as there are often conflicting stories on the year a company was founded and it can depend on how one measures the start date. However, considering the current information in the article was unsourced anyway, I went ahead and replace it with equally unsourced data. CorporateM (Talk) 19:15, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

#9 reference
The link is broken for the #9 reference source. Considering it's an Associated Press article, I was able to find it here, as well, but I'm not sure how to change the the source. Also, the #10 reference source appears before the #8 or #9 reference. --Cody.berdinis (talk) 16:43, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

Source for Patent Expiration information?
The section labeled "Patent expiration, 2021" states that the SawStop patents will expire in 2021. I would like to see a source for that information, as well as the precise dates that each individual patent expires, especially the 7,895,927 and 8,011,279 patents.

I searched the internet, but could not find an authoritative source for that information.

I thought about deleting the section altogether, but would prefer to see the correct, verified information about the patent expiration dates. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2606:6000:FFC0:35:758A:3DED:4B1B:F7E6 (talk) 00:21, 17 February 2018 (UTC)

method of detection
"Sawstop inventor Steve Gass [..] According to Gass, [..]it monitors how rapid changes to capacitance affects a 500 Khz 2.5 to 3 volt sine wave that's appled to the electrically isolated saw blade" Mechanical Engineering Vol 125 / NO.8 August 2003

That sounds like Capacitive_sensing rather than current monitoring.

What about the other side?
A lot of this article seems like it comes directly from sawstop (such as stats they reference in marketing), and primarily tells the story from their perspective. It almost sounds like an "about us" page. There is not a lot of the criticism that has surfaced about SS, such as the fact they are trying hard to lobby congress to mandate saws have flesh sensing technology (which they coincidentally happen to hold patents for). There is clearly a financial incentive behind this, and they are not as humanitarian as they claim themselves to be. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.117.240.20 (talk) 19:29, 28 June 2019 (UTC)
 * To produce such things, you need to employ labor. The company that makes and promotes this stuff has labor expenses.  People must be paid.  Until we can produce evidence of abuse of monopoly power, we can't really prove malicious intent.  Stupidity maybe (the tech is expensive and that's actually a reason to not do things right away:  locking out hobbyists is a bad thing), but not malicious intent. John Moser (talk) 22:24, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

NPR?
Perhaps someone can provide a link to the acronym NPR?

Removal of underwriters review and product safety hearings sections
I have just removed two sections from the article, specifically the Underwriters Laboratory analysis (2014) and Consumer Product Safety Commission hearings (2017). These sections did not contain any specific reference to SawStop and seem to only have been included as supporting arguments promoting the SawStop product features. This ties into prior concerns raised on this talk page about neutrality of the content in this article. -- Gsuberland (talk) 15:17, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Intent to release patent (2023-2024)
It's probably noteworthy, that the '840 patent Sawstop "dedicated to the public", was already expired. (As is verifiable in the patent itself) 82.176.203.219 (talk) 23:47, 18 May 2024 (UTC)