36 Australian Wood Review
TOOLS & EQUIPMENTI
s there a perfectly safe saw?
The correct guards properly
used will help to keep your tablesaw
safe. A few simple safe operating
procedures will help as well.
Cleanliness and a good maintenance
program will add more to your table
or panel saw’s safety but even after all
this, your machine still has a sawblade
that will remove a finger before you
even realise it’s gone. And it’s so
easy to do; a momentary lapse in
concentration can find even the most
skilled woodworkers in trouble. Enter
the SawStop technology that instantly
stops the spinning sawblade if you are
unlucky enough to touch it.The Sawstop story
So how does it work? Firstly, there
are now a number of parallelSaving Our Skins
Philip Ashley looks at developments in sawblade flesh sensing technology.
technologies, so we’ll look at the
original SawStop machine first.
On this machine the blade carries
a small electrical signal. When the
skin contacts the blade, the signal
changes because the human body is
conductive. The change to the signal
activates the machine safety system.A block of aluminium springs into
the spinning blade, stopping it in less
than five milliseconds and the blade’s
angular momentum drives it beneath
the table. Power to the motor is shut
off in the same action. You can re-
set the machine, but this requires a
new brake mechanism that Carbatec
currently sells for $130 and you will
certainly need a new blade as the
brake and blade are usually fused
together in the impact.The technology was invented by Dr
Steve Gass in 1999, and in 2004
the first SawStop tablesaw was
sold. SawStop is a privately-owned
company based in Portland, USA.
The technology won Time Magazine’s
‘best new inventions’ for 2006 award
and rightly so.The machine was first brought into
Australia by Gabbett Machinery,
now SCM Australia, and exhibited at
the AWISA trade show in Sydney in
2010 where live demonstrations were
held using a sausage in place of a
finger. The best customers of this new
technology were schools, especially
secondary colleges. SawStop is now
sold by Timbecon in Melbourne and
Perth, and by Carbatec and Total
Tools Australia-wide.