Reply by derosa

Contrary to the statement that GASS “stuck” his hand in a TS blade, pay attention. He very, very, very, slowly moved his finger forward NOWHERE NEAR the speed of a regular cut. The damn coward, IMO. If he TRULY believed in his system then test it under REAL world conditions…PERIOD. Nuff’ said…
Maybe for real world testing he used the kitten toss test. Toss a extra cute kitten at the blade simulating the speed of someone slipping into the blade. If kitten remains extra cute then the system works; if the kitten becomes un-cute then he needed to tweak the design. I understand that real sawstop owners still use this test to check the viability of the system on occasion.

It would be interesting to see just how fast a hydraulic caliper for a bicycle would stop a saw blade. Magura used to produce a caliper for rim brakes that could grab so fast and hard that they could crush rims. But even a bicycle disc brake is designed to stop a couple hundred pounds being leveraged by a large, heavy wheel. A piston design like the sawstop uses could be used to activate the hydraulics. As long as Gass didn’t invent the piston then its use to activate an already existing bicycle caliper should be distant enough from his metal brake to do the job. On the down side, I’m not certain the blade would survive this kind of system, I’ve seen rotors warp from squeezing too hard and fast and in this system the piston would be designed to apply more pressure then a normal person’s squeeze.

-- --Rev. Russ in NY-- A posse ad esse