Skin Sensing Table Saw 471
killabrew writes "Check out this article from Design News about a new skin sensing table saw technology that is on the verge of becoming a mandatory piece of hardware on every table saw. For years inventor Stephen Gass persevered in the face of legal, corporate and technical foes, he is forcing society to rethink its acceptance of saw blade accidents."
Who do you sue... (Score:1, Interesting)
And if it is so great and reliable, why are they using hot dogs and not this guys hand?
Finally, they never show wet wood. We have to cut wet lumber sometimes. Does that make any difference with this mechanism?
Re:Interesting Technology (Score:2, Interesting)
Having worked as RN in a large factory which had Lost Time Injuries approximately every 3 days.... and which could have saved a fortune if modest changes had been made, I have discussed this with management.
The motivation of the management who makes the decisions is one of control and temper. It really does make sense to make things safer. This factory could have saved about $100,000 a week had it improved safety. They just didn't want to do it. You see a worker was only paid about $50,000 a year and as such these people didn't cost management enough to be worth anything to them.
I watched the expensive management employees get protected while the workers got nothing. This was a tire factory. They made $1,350,000 a day even with this injury expense. It may be strange to some but actually the workers were too cheap to be worth anything. The loss of a life about every year or so was an acceptable cost to management. So what if you pay off the family with a damage claim of $500,000 or so. Blow it off. These people are worthless in the eyes of management...
Saving $5,200,000 a year simply didn't enter their mind as worth that much effort. I proposed that we use the medical data to extract which machines should be fixed. I offered to observe the machines and look at what was going on. They had no interest. One major loss to them was hearing losses. The addition of a few minor changes could have nearly silenced the factory. They couldn't care less. Another major loss was loss of hands and fingers and intermittently a person in a machine. Simple design changes in jobs would have improved production and saved lifes. They didn't care because it might "bother" their situation. It was an attitude that the "Free Trade" advocates refuse to recognize. Burried in the true motivations of many rich persons is a hatred of other social classes and a view that they are property not people. This is why they will not embrace safety technology.
I tried to buy one. (Score:5, Interesting)
So, when I finally had a reason to go buy a tablesaw for my business, and I saw the horrible cost of insurance, I tried to buy the auto-shut-off table saw. Of course, I searched the web. Then I called the big saw distribution importers and distributors. It took some effort, but I finally got an answer why they were not, and probably would never be available.
It's not a perfect product. It is still possible to get your fingers cut off, and it is possible to have it "jam" on plain old wood too. When it jams, you have to replace the blade and the whole blade jamming mechanism- it can take most of a day to do that, if you have the parts, and it's expensive. It can cost as much as a whole new table saw each time it goes off.
All those things are solveable, but I was also told that the insurance companies hate the thing. It sounds counter-intuitive, but you know that a table saw is dangerous. If you believe that it's less dangerous, then you might be more careless too. The car companies had a similar argument against seat belts back in the 1960s.
There are better solutions in industry. CNC automated machines are used where lots of similar parts need to be made. There are very few, if any, one-off parts in manufacturing environments. So the only real market for this machine is the hobbyist or general contractor and cabinet maker, and the professionals have really good stafety rules anyway (at least the ones where I worked did).
But, as it stands, nobody has a case if he tries to sue the manufacturer because he cut off his finger. But put an auto-brake on the saw, and every time it fails the manufacturer and insurance company have a dismemberment case to settle.
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Re:Interesting Technology (Score:1, Interesting)
Not only is there the horror of the accident, and then having to deal with living and working with fewer digits, there's also the serious effect it has on the health of the individual. In both cases that I witnessed, the victim of the accident, survided the accident, but died within one year of it. One from stress related cancer, the other from a heart attack. The heart attack victim was only 17 years old!
So this guy may well save lives, not just fingers and thumbs.
Need a "good samaritan" exemption (Score:4, Interesting)
An well-said, although unfortunate, point.
It's seemed to me for a while that we need -- if we can't actually accomplish all-over tort reform -- some sort of a "good samaritan" law for corporations as well as individuals.
There shouldn't be any liability reasons for not putting a safety device like this on your equipment. But the system as it stands doesn't encourage it, for exactly the reasons you mention. Without a safety device, and as long as they're not "expected," when someone takes their finger off, it's just their own damn fault. But with the safety device, they'll be a massive lawsuit whenever it doesn't work perfectly -- even though it might work very well most of the time.
This reminds me of the situation in many states prior to the introduction of "good samaritan" liability laws. You'd have doctors and off-duty paramedics driving past the scene of an accident and not stopping, because nobody wanted to risk getting sued. It was only after some pretty ridiculous and unfortunate situations, where it became clear that as a society, we shouldn't be encouraging people to leave their fellows bleeding to death in a ditch because of fear of being sued later, that many states have changed the law.
A company which makes it's products safer than the norm shouldn't be liable for suits when the safety mechanism fails, if the result of the failure is that the product is only as dangerous as the device would normally be expected to be (assuming the manufacturer has not advertised it as being much safer, or that less precautions are necessary).
Any time you have the law encouraging the creation of more-dangerous products for perceived liability reasons, you have a problem. The goal of the law should be to encourage and reward productive behavior, not discourage and punish it.
Butcher Re:Whats the problem? (Score:3, Interesting)
Lets add a tempreture sensor so it knows cold, dead meat from the live kind your hand is made of.
To clarify [electricstory.com]
Re:Whats the problem? (Go here) (Score:3, Interesting)
Riving knives protect from most types of kick-back, and yet the saw-stop is one of the few US saws to have them.
Re:Interesting Technology (Score:3, Interesting)
When I was working at a storage systems facility owned by a large company, which it later sold to another large company, there was an on-site accident that landed an employee in the hospital.
Suddenly, we were policed for over-the-top compliance on every perceived OSHA requirement, greatly slowing down our productivity. For example, even though it wasn't policy, we were no longer allowed in the cleanroom without steel-toes shoes, etc.
Then we finally found out the details of the accident. It seems a portly man was in a cherry-picker, changing a light bulb in a warehouse. When he leaned over the controls to disconnect one end of the light bulb, his belly moved the lever and raised the platform on which we was standing. Of course, he was now squished between the ceiling and the control, and unable to turn off the lift.
Now, this was a serious accident, and resulted in pain and downtime for the employee in question. But his steel-toed boots didn't save him, so what was the point in making engineers where them in the cleanroom?
Getting back to the topic, I know there is a lot of accidents on construction sites. I have family members that have been seriously injured working construction, but most of those are from falls, not from saw-related incidents. So, would there be a better use of the time/money than on table-saw safety?
I also take issue with TFA:
"Here we had an unbiased government agency saying these saws are unreasonably dangerous," Gass says now. "So, yes, I did feel somewhat vindicated."
Anyone who's worked with the US government knows there is no such thing as "unbiased". The best you can do is balance the biases.
(Statistics from U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission) A memorandum from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission in June, 2006 states that "over a 10-15 year lifetime of a table saw, it would generate societal costs of $2,600 to $3,100" from blade contact injuries. Such saws typically have initial costs ranging from about $100 to $300.
Again, what about other safety issues? Is this the best use of regulatory funds?
(Bias aside, how much of the $2600 "societal costs" goes to funding studies to see how much they cost?)
Re:Butcher Re:Whats the problem? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Need a "good samaritan" exemption (Score:3, Interesting)
"If we sound the horn, we are legally responsible for making sure everyone gets off ths course. On the other hand, if we "don't see" the lightning and don't sound the horn, we aren't liable, because it's an unforseen act of God. Therefore, we never sound the horn."
So we live in a world where it is advantageous for the owners of a business to turn a blind eye to potentially fatal weather conditions because some idiot somewhere sued the golf course after the horn sounded and he stayed out anyways. There are probably hundreds of people across the country who have been seriously injured or killed by this easily preventable problem, and probably a half-dozen responsible for getting it enacted in the first place.
Re:I tried to buy one. (Score:3, Interesting)
That's because "splitters", as implemented on 99% of table saws sold in the US, are utter and total crap which should be banned. They don't work that well, they don't rise and fall with the blade, and worst of all, they're a pain to remove and re-install, in case you need to make a dado or other non-through cut.
The solution, of course, is the riving knife. This is required on table saws made in Europe. The riving knife is similar to the splitter, only it actually works well. It's mounted directly behind the blade, and is curved to match the blade's shape, so it's only 1/8" or so from the blade's rear side. It's also mounted to the blade height mechanism so it's always at the same place relative to the blade, regardless of the blade's height. And good ones are designed so that blade guards can be quickly and easily removed from the riving knife, in case you need to do a non-through cut. I believe the new Powermatic PM2000 saw has such a riving knife. Even better models have a dust collection port built-in.
As usual, stuff sold in the US is decades behind what people in the rest of the developed world have access to.