A competitor to SawStop is in the works.

That's pretty cool Keith, nevermind the whole SawStop controversy, it's good to see new ideas come onto the stage, this one is very fascinating!

I would bet the patents are about to expire and there will be several versions of the safety devices show up on table saws. I'll bet the Bosch Reax (?) will be among them as well. Harvey makes some good stuff, I'll bet their saw will be a good one.

The braking is due to widespread use of rare earth magnets in permanent magnet DC motors now. They have more or less taken over in DC motor design in the last 15 years, more power, smaller package, and very effective braking. I've used one with a brake like this and they are very powerful and as far as I know, non-friction. They still use a DC voltage to hold the brake open so the unpowered state is brake on. I don't know how this style of brake works as I've never taken one of the motors apart. I do know they are silent but that doesn't necessarily mean there is no solenoid involved.

The braking part is not particular to Harvey, but it's good to see them utilizing it for a non-destructive safety stop. I would bet that Sawstop would still have tried to sue over dropping the blade if their patents weren't so mature. I don't think it would have worked though, that's like trying to say your patent covers a lever - it's something intuitive rather than designed tech. Either way they are just harnessing momentum to move the threat under the table.

I'm curious how the field distinguishes between flesh and wood..... density maybe? I only got halfway through, and figured he wasn't going to go any deeper into the gritty details of how it works. Taking a WAG, some kind of RF field and detectors that are sensitive enough to note some very minor change when flesh enters the field. I don't know though, just a guess. Field dynamics is smoke and mirrors to me!

Sawstop could easily have developed this kind of thing years ago I bet. They got lazy, focusing on patent profit at the expense of R&D. I guess their lawyers would bristle at my calling that lazy, but who cares. If you can make a lawyer bristle it was time well spent! 🤣

The bandsaw thing doesn't impress me much. Bandsaws don't have the same reputation of removing fingers - accurate or not, the reputation of bandsaws is that they are fairly safe. Now if Sawstop could have done this with a jointer they would maybe have something. I knew a guy who lost fingers to a jointer - a big Oliver with a heavy cutterhead on a direct drive motor. Basically unstoppable momentum. Might be able to do it with a modern DC motor and dropping the cutterhead. I bet though, such a cutterhead would be chatter city when cutting wood.

Edited yesterday at 12:16 PM1 day by JWD

Some irony just struck me. I love irony.

Just imagine for a moment that Sawstop hadn't been so litigious. Imagine they had said to themselves, we'll make our fortune on volume licensing instead of high cost and make the tech approachable for all manufacturers and defend the patent when other manufacturers refuse to pay a reasonable license fee (No one does this, of course, that is why it's imagination).

If Sawstop had done that, Harvey's saw wouldn't be able to make a splash. Three quarters of their hype is going to be thanks to finally beating Sawstop! 😆