41–50 of 226 posts
Ya, no. Besides the horrendous patent issue (say goodbye to market competition), this will double the price of table saws. No thanks. Consumer protection laws are not about making obvious choices for me. Its supposed to protect me from the unknown unknowns - things that the average consumer would not know is dangerous. Everyone has heard about these safer saws for over a decade now. Everyone knows saws are dangerous.…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Clarification: If I'm understanding this right, the stopping the saw works differently, but the detection works the same.
So they are patenting capacitive sensing in the context of detecting a finger? you know, like a touchscreen? Wow. The USPO fucking sucks. For the record, I don't even know how the sensing actually works in the saws. I'm just guessing because its fricken OBVIOUS.
Sad, sad, sad. Greed trumps safety. I wonder how many other safety inventions have not reached mass adoption?
Off the top of my head, I can think that the saw getting false positives or being incapable of cutting anything conductive, which may be my precise goal as a tool user, as dealbreakers on this feature. Nothing to do with greed.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the greed mentioned here is that SawStop is lobbying to make it mandatory for saws to use their technology while trying to stop others from bringing similar systems to market, all so that they can price-gouge a captive market. IIRC last time it was discussed here, they were trying to charge ~$100 per saw to license their tech, when the usual margin on a saw was about a quarter of that. If they just accepted a…
Thanks for putting that into better light. So it's SawStop that is asking for too high a license, they aren't getting bites at that price point, and now trying to get legislation to force other companies to pony up. Now I get the greed aspect, should have been more obvious. I was thinking in terms of component cost and not licensing cost, how naive of me... Though in this case, at least they did create something nove…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
just make injury insurance mandatory for tools like this in institutions, and have lower premium for safe tools. Same could be done for guns.
Insurance is after the fact. Won't prevent you from losing your fingers.
Ya, no. Besides the horrendous patent issue (say goodbye to market competition), this will double the price of table saws. No thanks. Consumer protection laws are not about making obvious choices for me. Its supposed to protect me from the unknown unknowns - things that the average consumer would not know is dangerous. Everyone has heard about these safer saws for over a decade now. Everyone knows saws are dangerous.…
What about employees or students who have to use the equipment? They can't force their employer or educator to spend the money, but it's their fingers that'll be lost. Maybe laws to ensure that if you are employing or in any way requiring someone use your saw you need the safety features. The patent stuff is it's own issue for sure, and yet another example of how crappy the system is.
The facililty described in the article seems to be a criminal racket. But my question in these cases is usually: is this a spectrum? How many places are on the seedy-but-not-criminal portion of that spectrum?
Kickbacks and body brokering might be ilegal, but the ultimate goal of these isn't: find clients with insurance you can bill, bill clients as much as the insurer will pay. There are options that aren't criminal, but also aren't a good allocation of resources.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
just make injury insurance mandatory for tools like this in institutions, and have lower premium for safe tools. Same could be done for guns.
Insurance is after the fact. Won't prevent you from losing your fingers.
They don't mention if it's possible to build saws without sawstop patents. Is this guy lobbying for all saw companies to be required to license his technology? EDIT: It appears that they're currently suing Bosch for developing their own similar technology.
And since they are suing, people can't buy Bosch's technology, and probably a lot less saw-stoppers are installed. Also, it seems the SawStop version is destructive, as opposed to Bosch's. That means you have an expense every time it fires. So this lawsuit is causing a lot of lost fingers, and some lost money. It would be really funny (although unrealistic) if somebody could be held responsible for all damages caused…
I think the argument that, "you should know that this item is unsafe" is stupid, because just because something is unsafe doesn't mean a good, quality of life saving feature should be excluded. You could make the same argument about having seatbelts or airbags in cars, because you know it's dangerous but you're taking the risk anyway. Accidents happen, taking measures to prevent them or mitigate the damages should be done, if possible.
This isn't something I use, since I don't often create things from wood, but I would pay more for a technology that saves my finger in the off chance I accidentally move my finger towards the blade or something else happens, like the table accidentally shifting because my dog ran into it.