Designing Safer Saws

Our clients include individuals who are injured using defective products. For years, I have been watching a company called SawStop with interest. SawStop makes a very cool table saw with technology that that stops the spinning blade in an instant when it comes into contact with human flesh. With such a design, accidents which would otherwise result in the loss of fingers or hands are avoided (https://www.sawstop.com/). Given my interest in product safety, my aspiring engineer son recently shared the following YouTube link with me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdW7vhYYSdM&feature=youtu.be. The video shows two designers who are developing a safety modification to rotary hand saws. These saws can cause injury in a kick back event; in such an event, the blade of the saw can catch on what is being cut and be sent back into the user. Using a variety of technologies (e.g., gyroscopes, machine learning, etc.), their design can stop a blade’s rotation quickly once a kick back event is triggered. Keep the advances coming!