Yes, yes they can

It's not that they wanted to sell it.

It's that they wanted to require everyone to buy it at the point of the government's gun.

The technology is great but fuck that company.

Not worth owning a table saw without a Sawstop feature in my opinion.

Unfortunately they are spendy.

Mr. Zinc, our shop teacher, was missing a finger from a saw accident.

He loved to show graphic films in class of industrial accidents! His favorite one was doctors digging around in an eyeball trying to find a wood splinter.

Anyone ever see that film?

A dude I worked with was using a 5' flex drill bit in an attic going down through a header drilling a fire block. He didn't use a flex bit guide. The bit twisted up in his shirt, caught his armpit hair, and ripped out a large chunk of flesh. He damn near bled out per paramedics. He lived. He worked in our warehouse after that incident. I was sent to the house to finish the job the next day. They had not replaced the attic decking, or cleaned up much of anything. It looked like a crime scene.

Damn.

My great-grandfather, lost a fingertip to a table saw, which horrified his wife.   Then a few years later, he lost another fingertip to (I assume) the same saw.

What did he do?  He wrote a humourous poem about cutting off the second to make it match the first.  I'm not sure if it mollified his wife, but I thought it was funny when I heard about it.  (the poem, not the de-fingering)

As a kid, I saw him hoeing his garden in his 90's wearing a fedora, a three-piece suit, and oxford shoes.   I thought he was pretty cool.

{Checks that State of Origin is not FL) Go Grampa!

I saw more than one person get stuck by table saw projectiles.
In 20 plus years of tech work, I saw some the following. The others took place out of my sight, but in my workplace.
This is not the complete list.

One fool (forgot his name) got a thumb trimmed in a table belt/disc sander. Shaved about 1/4" off of the side/tip of his thumb.

Slick Rick shot a 1/2" upholstery staple in the middle of his hand.
Slim drilled a 3/8" hole through the palm of his hand.

Jesse the pencil neck broke his arm when a 1/2" electric drill with a 1" auger bit hit a nail. Jesse should not have been allowed to handle that drill imo.

James sat on a razor knife blade that was stuck in the attic decking next to the telephone punch down he was working on.

Tommy was moving a shop fan. Tommy picked up the running fan by putting his thumb and middle fingers through holes in the fan shroud. Tommy split the tip of his middle finger halfway down the nail through the tip, glancing off of the bone, and ripped off the nail on his thumb.

Another fool was soldering laying on his back when a solder ball dropped into his nose. He curled up in reaction, and cut his head on amplifier heat sinks. He had to go to the ER to get the solder out of his sinus, and stitches in his forehead.

Steve the tweaker left a battery on 10 amp charge rate too long. The battery sploded when he disconnected it. His coworkers quick reaction saved his vision per the ER doc.

Barlos knocked up a customer. Was paying child support last I heard.

I barely missed one bad kickback one time. It was a cut that while safe, I was too green with a tablesaw to be as comfortable it it as I should have. Small piece of sheet mdf made to plug a subwoofer cabinet for a replacement amp. I didn't keep the piece held down as well as I should and it zipped off. It barely skinned some flesh off my stomach, ripped my shirt, flew back across the garage, and dented the drywall.

I was impressed, but also placed an order for a sawstop later that night for a better hold down, riving knife, and the tech...

She should rename her site "Pinksawdust" altho there is a site with that name.

I don't know about everyone, but so far our insurance has had nothing to say about any of our equipment.  Now this all may change in the next few weeks when they send a risk management person for their annual visit in light of all of this, but they are typically more concerned with fire than anything.  The last several guys that came by for inspection could have walked right past nearly any infringement you could think of, but from 200 yards they could spot a fire extinguisher that was skipped over while doing monthly checks.  I've got a bit of a different deal than most though with 250k sqft of wood manufacturing and finishing so if something goes up here its going to get big quick.

I accidentally reached for a light switch and hit mine without thinking.  I only did that once.

I have a friend who was ripping plywood with his old table saw and it kicked back knocking him into the garage door with authority . It bruised his chest. My dad lost the ends of 3 fingers when he was building cabinets for ambulances. They were mostly sewn back on.

I've got an old school radial arm saw in the shop, just to set the vibe.

I grew up around old school woodworking and metalworking machinery. I mean old school. No guards, no e-stops, punch presses with a foot pedal and no arm restraints, flat belts, even some machines running from a lineshaft powered by a huge electric motor. I can still remember the sound of the belt splice on the pulleys.

I was taught from day one to never lose focus, always know where your hands and other body parts are at all times and especially in relation to the blade or cutters. Do not let anything distract you. Always use a pushstick on a table saw.  Always. Watch where you stand when you run a bandsaw or belt sander. Sooner or later you will break a blade or belt. It can get ugly.

Been a machinist for 40+ years and still have all my fingers. Safety glasses saved my eyes more than once. Never ever wear gloves around rotating equipment. Years ago one of our more experienced machinists was wearing gloves and sanding some hot rolled bar in one of the CNC lathes. One hand got wrapped up and he grabbed it with his free hand. He shattered both arms and lost some fingers. He would have bled to death if one of the guys hadn't put tourniquets on his arms. I went to see him in the hospital and he told me he knew better but just had a brain fart. He never worked again. He was a great guy and a really talented lathe guy.

I'm sure i dodged more than one bullet but I haven't seen a machine that scares me but I will say that running a wood shaper is pretty hairy. My grandfather had a furniture plant and most of the shaper guys were missing at least one finger. Bandsaw guys too.

Our shop bought a Pirahna ironworker and we noticed the technician that delivered the machine was missing a couple of fingers. Someone asked him about it and he said "it will bite you".

Worst thing I had happen was a nasty kickback on my 2 hp cabinet saw because of my dumbass self. It hurt like hell. Luckilly, it was a cold day in the shop and I had a field jacket on. Learned a valuable lesson.

The worst thing I got from a lifetime around loud machinery is hearing loss. My Dad was in textiles his whole career. Same with both of my Grandfathers. No ear plugs back in the day. Not too long before before he died I told him that it used to be a badge of honor to lose your hearing. his response was "what ?"

On the flip side, my Daughter in Law worked in the ER and told me a guy brought in half his hand to re attach after a table saw accident. Lets just say she is not a fan of my table saw or radial arm saw.

Stay safe.

Fortyseven2n

Was doing my ER observation time for EMT class back in the day. Boring Sunday afternoon, nothing interesting is going on.

One of the rural ambulances brings in a guy that chopped off all his toes on one foot after somehow getting it under a running lawmower deck. Perfect case study to bring back to class.

After he gets stabilized, I start talking with him. He says something like "It's not the first time", and shows me one of his hands, which is missing 2 or 3 fingers from previous accidents.

The nastiest one I ever treated in the field was a guy who tried to clear a snowblower clog with his bare hand. That guy's hand was fuuuuuuuuucked up.

this.  

fuck him and his overpriced fucking table saws.

uh, no.  

he fucking lobbied to make it required on all saws sold.  

and refused to license the technology.  Bosch came out with a similar saw, they got sued, not sold in the us any more.  sold in other countries though.  so those other countries apparently don't think it infringes.  

fuck him.

and now, how many millions of Tocata airbags have been recalled because some have actually done randomly and sent metal shavings into the occupants?

That bit of tech is about to be rammed down everyone's throats and you can kiss tablesaws under 1000 goodbye.

https://www.ar15.com/forums/topic.html?b=1&f=5&t=2720787&tl=A-perfect-example-of-nannyism-and-crony-interests-and-how-government-screws-everyone

I watched a good video on Sawstop a couple months ago.  I don't recall exactly all the points they made, but do recall a few issues.  Mainly, they really pissed the industry off.  I think did 2 things originally.  The biggest was lobbying to make them a safety requirement on all new table saws, the second was patent lawsuits so they would get their licensing fee.  IIRC they dropped the lawsuit fairly quickly (but not before the major company pulled that saw from the market), I think they have also agreed to let their patent go public domain.  But the other part, is still a thorn in the industries side.  They proved a system that would protect people - and it is only a matter of time before it gets mandated.  Because the system cost several hundred dollars to add to the equipment - it will destroy the cheap table saw market.  You simply can not add $200 to the price of a $300 saw and not kill sales.  I love my current table saw (well kind of, see next paragraph) - but if I ever replace it, I now would probably pay for the tech (abet a bit late).

Was doing a production run last year - trying to get it out in 3 days.  Normally I do wood work on my own time, but this needed to get done, and I was pushing myself way to hard (given how fucking hot it was outside).  Well 2 or 3hrs into a run of ripping (when I had only a couple pieces left to do out of hundreds), my hand was a little too heavy and I reached across the blade a little too low.  As table saw accidents go, it was not really that bad.  The blade was set fairly low (not optimal for cutting), and I barely brushed the top rear (not the front) of the blade.  Only 8 stitches (but honestly, it is hard to stitch hamburger back together), and I probably will never have full feeling on that part of my left thumb.  Honestly, it's only been a year - I have gotten back about 50% of the feeling so far.  The tip still feels a bit asleep, and the pad (that hit the saw) feels like it has a thick scar over it.  That said, I cut that thumb 2 other times in the last 3 years, so it also has nerve damage on the top and side. The cut on the top healed well (over 8 weeks), the cut on the side (a knife slipped) severed a nerve - so it has numbness there as well.  The numbness on the tip of the thumb could easily be a combination of the last 2 injuries.

The production run is still sitting there.  I finished 1/2 with bandages.  I have not gotten back to it - as it missed the deadline.  I could joke, maybe next week...  I finished the ripping, but have a lot of dado and shaping work to go.  Honestly, I have about 8hrs left to finish.

I seem to recall a member here having an aortic rupture from a kickback impact.

Years ago I got a few really good kicks in the gut with kickbacks.  But I do think they can be minimized with sharp blades and correct blade height.

I was using a push stick when I cut my thumb.  I was reaching over with my left hand to catch the wood.  I was ripping 1" strips off a 2x6 - The push stick dropped my cut piece off the back of the saw, but I had to catch the scrap to pass it through again, and again.  1 second of brain fog due to being dehydrated and overheated - I simply was grabbing the wrong place.  I reached low and grabbed an inch or 2 too short.


Really thinking about it, I might have changed my sequence since I was almost done.  At one point, I was using the next work piece to push everything through - maybe I had been letting both drop and just wanted to speed up the last couple of cuts.
---
I am going back to the kitchen.  My woodworking has gotten rusty, but I am doing much better with bread making.

As an active hobbyist for 40 years  I've done all manners of cutting and machining with almost every type of equipment known to man.

An old school table saw scares me. At home I have and use an old 1950's Delta table saw. I fortunately still have all my digits. I've been struck by kickbacks a time or two. That bitch scares me more than a truck bed full of chainsaws or band saws.  

Big lathes are also a killer. I worked as a QA engineer a number of years in a production facility. My job was to measure and check parts for specs.  I was on-scene when a worker got tangled up in a 13" metal lathe. He was a welder as well as a machine operator, and got his welding sleeve caught and wrapped up his arm, and dragged him into the machine work. That bitch didn't even slow down. He would have lost the arm entirely if another worker hadn't dived for the safety cut-off.  As it was, his hand and wrist was flayed and mangled horribly and his arm and shoulder just destroyed. I can still hear him screaming as the machine had to be manually reversed, and it had to be unwound.

Later, I taught in a high school shop setting a number of years. Not a full-on wood shop, but a fairly well-equiped shop for engineering and technology projects. We didn't let them use a table saw- just too much could go wrong too quickly.

They still managed to stick digits into the bandsaw blade occasionally. Thankfully, the tpi on the bandsaw blade was low enough that you would have to try pretty hard to cut something off.  

There have been some things- projects-  I would have liked to have done in my life that I didn't do simply because I didn't have the right equipment available to do it safely and reliably and I was blessed with the smarts to recognize that.

I think that's where a lot of folks run into problems. Doing sketchy things just trying to get stuff done. At least that's my observation on a number of accidents I've seen.

Love me some stumpy nubs.  Watched this when it came out a month ago.  But I had to re-watch it again to make sure of this before I said it.  But he misses a key point:

The government isn't the only overarching governing body that can move markets.  The cost of healthcare has skyrocketed since Obama signed the Afordable Care Act back in 2008.  Insurance claims aren't just about the ER visit, it's about the multiple subsequent visits, the surgeries, and physical therapy that follows.  There will be a tipping point, where business insurance coverage will only cover your woodworking business if you have this technology.  

Granddad's old Craftsman was made in 1938 or thereabouts.  Still have 10 fingers, Granddad maybe had 9?  I know there was a story about him cutting one off, wrapped it with tape, and kept working.

Paladin

After reading this thread completely, I agree

The key part is that this was (and is being) astroturfed by government coercing it in this instance.

Had a guy in my High School class lose a finger in a similar mixer. Twice, over time. He worked at a Donut Shop.

If you don't know history you feel like you are the first person to experience something.

This has been an ongoing debate in D.C. for over 30y now.  Before sawstop was even a company, the inventors who formed sawstop first went to the government to try and get this mandate pushed through so they could just sell their patents to power tool companies.  That didn't fly so they created sawstop.  This debate isn't new.  Nobody has ever been able to produce an eliquant argument in 30y for WHY the government should MANDATE this, and they still haven't.  

Insurance companies however, they have a different set of overarching governing rules...and this makes total sense for them to mandate for their policy holders.

The public has grown a lot more comfortable with trading freedom for .gov mollycoddling in those 30 years, though.  It's probably going to happen, and I'm going to be wishing I'd have bought a semi full of pre-ban Grizzly saws before it did.  

If you watch the actual debate on the floor of congress over this topic, there's a universal concern across both the left and right:  Semi-monopolistic behavior.  If we mandate this, the patents are owned by one company and are structured in a way that this one company would drive the industry.

This concern is real, and it's a sentiment that is being favored across industries.  Hell, just this week this same argument was used against UHG in their senate hearing, two senators explicitly said they want to break United Health Group up because they are effectively a monopoly in healthcare.  

This is the current sticking point that will prevent government mandate here.

And yet again, this isn't something an insurance company cares about or is beholden to preventing...

"They're chopping my fingers off, Ira."

"Oh, ok, I get, you cut his finger off......HOLY SHIT! YOU CUT HIS FUCKING FINGER OFF! Oh my God, What the hell is wrong with you guys???"

I knew the history.

That does not change the fact that it is the government enforcing this. Which means ... it's the government. It doesn't mean that nobody else would ever try and force it.

I've been aware of how the insurance companies bully people for decades.

For instance, they started coming into mechanic's shops and telling them who to fire, when the shops pushed back the insurers said they wouldn't insure them if they didn't, because the insurers didn't like those mechanic's driving records.

Same, old school craftsman table saw as well. Was taught early on to have utmost respect for them and I understand how you can get complacent as well.

Like others, the bigger lathes are are what would really make me nervous.

 You're jumping the shark.  It is NOT the government enforcing ANYTHING.  It's the lobbiests of Sawstop trying to convince the government to take an action.

That is immaterial.  All bad laws have somebody promoting them or they would never have come into being.  It's our government's job to say, "no, sorry, we're not in the business of protecting people from their own stupidity".  But of course they won't.

You are correct there, this is a sideffect of the government being an insurer (i.e. Medicare/Medicaid).  They failed to stay in their lane decades ago and this point you make is now the byproduct of that.

At the hearing to move the bill forward, they offered to open their patents to the public domain if the legislation went through.  So sawstop wouldn't have made a dime off of it.  Don't make it out to be something that's it's not.

Not quite.  They offered to open ONE of their patents.  Basically it's the core patent - flesh sensing.  Which is a questionable patent anyhow, as they basically patented connecting a capacitive touch sensor to a moving/spinning saw blade.  

Every company would still be required to either invent their own method of stopping the spinning blad, or pay for the sawstop patents for the explosive cartridge that instantly stops the spinning blade when a touch is identified.

Bitch please.

I remember an old timer tell a story of a man whose baggy clothing got caught in a tractor's PTO.  Hell of a way to go.

Lopped off the end of my strong hand index finger in the disc brake of a mountain bike.  Combination crush/sever injury.  Hurt like hell when it happened, and yes, the SEEING part of your body no longer attached was far worse than the initial pain.  That, for me, started the shock process.

So how do you....you know....pull the trigger now?