If fingers getting cut off is the problem, then people who are involved in power tool design step back and study the whole problem, the whole system, the entire woodworking process, to see what leads a person to push their fingers into a saw blade. That is the human intuitive approach to solving problems, but engineers have learned over the last couple hundred years that this is not the way to do things. He has followed what engineers call the two step design cycle: Here is a problem and here is the solution. This is just wrong! His ‘engineering’ attempt failed to get his design into production, so he turned to his lawyer friends to cram it down the industrys throat. So what did he do (here is the disturbing part): he managed to start a process to enact laws and regulations to force companys to use his invention (or something like it). He thought he had invented something that everyone would want, but was rejected by every company he approached. He uses power tools for his woodworking, but he is not a power tool designer. The inventor was not in the power tool industry. He decided to invent a way to stop powerfull table saws from cutting off fingers.Īs an engineer, here is my problem. If I understand it correctly, the inventor is a patent attorney with a long term hobby/interest in wood working. The article is interesting, and from an engineering perspective very disturbing. Compare that to the pipeline debacle that BP is in right now… (sorry, let’s please keep this thread to a discussion on Sawstop, thank!) It looks to be a great company, who’s trying to do the right thing. But, if they were, I’d make sure I had some money to invest in them. Sawstop LLC doesn’t seem to be a publicly traded company. Hopefully, the one law change will force manufacturers to include this technology (or similar ones) into their products. Clearly, this device has the potential to save not just fingers, but lives in the right applications Chainsaws, hedge trimmers, lawn movers, you name it… But the manufacturers are reluctant to include it because of liability, or more importantly, their present lack of liability.
However, upon reading that article, I find it fascinating how the real-world market actually works. Wow, if that isn’t one of the most interesting and practical inventions of our time! As a young kid I can remember meeting the man who helped build my parent’s house, who only had 7 fingers! This could, and should, revolutionize the business.
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