Triggered SawStop on Sunday night

Woodshop
#1

Cause: me being a f****** moron. I was using the nice miter gauge and it wasn’t until AFTER I triggered the sawstop that I noticed the “Make sure to adjust so it doesn’t touch the blade” message taped to the back. Just pure, unadulterated idiocy from moving too quickly.

I’ve never triggered the SawStop before, so I’m unsure of the protocol. Luckily there was another cartridge in the closet and another blade so I brought the saw back into operation immediately after. But I don’t know where or how or how much money I need to pay because of my dumb mistake, I only know that I have a responsibility to replace them.

Can someone point me in the right direction? I’d appreciate it. I hung the locked up cartridge up on the wall to publicize my shame.

8 Likes
#2

You are a model citizen maker, and I am sure @IanLee will get back to you.
Next time, hopefully never, but next time feel free to take pictures of the bad setup,
so folks can see a perfect example of how to trigger it.

3 Likes
#3

I should have done that, and if I ever trigger it again (or have another shop mishap, hopefully never) I will take a picture for the woodshop hive mind.

I will say, that thing triggers FAST. Pretty incredible. I’ve seen the marketing stuff, and the videos with people using hot dogs to simulate fingers to demonstrate the safety, but I’m still amazed. I miscalculated the clearance of the miter gauge and ended up with the very end of it in the path of the blade. But it barely nicked the miter gauge. It was over before I even realized anything happened.

Still a loss, but a learning experience in two parts:

  1. Being deliberate, not moving too quickly, doing tests without the blade moving to confirm it’s all correct
  2. The SawStop really does make it safer to use a table saw, the marketing is not just a bunch of fluffy BS. (This is a good learning experience for me because as a rookie I am still learning to overcome my fear of the table saw. While I will always avoid an “incident” to the best of my ability, it is extremely comforting to know that if something truly does go wrong that my fingers will most likely be safe)

Anyway, end rant. @IanLee just let me know what I need to do! I don’t go to the makerspace nearly enough but when I am there it’s to use the woodshop and I try to have a net-positive impact (despite my clear ambition to destroy table saw blades as a hobby)

3 Likes
#4

Thanks for reporting!

To cover the cost of the cartridge, Donate $100 to the woodshop: put a check or cash in an envelope with your name and “sawstop cartridge” on it and drop that in either the woodshop tombstone or finance box.

It definitely is frustrating to have it go off unexpectedly but I’m glad you’re taking it as a learning experience- it’ll make you a better maker in the long run just because it will force you to better visualize and practice your cuts before you make them. :grinning:

#5

My Moto for everything in life wether it’s becoming a pro athlete or learning to ride a bike, or mastering a new skill, is the only way to get good at something is to f up repeatedly until you learn how not to! And that’s universal so don’t be hard on yourself cause if you never make a mistake you’ll never get good at anything! It’s literally happened to every single person in the entire world who’s good at something, they f’d up over and over and over again until they learned how not to haha

1 Like
#6

I’m sure there a number of 4 fingered people that followed that same philosophy. Could have been worse though had the sawstop not fired.

#7

Making mistakes and having accidents are different, I’m not saying every nba player had to break their leg to get there but I am saying they had to miss shot over and over and over again until they figured out how not to, and human contacts are such a rare reason for triggering the saw stop, the company will literally pay you to send the cartridge to them for the data stored inside, they’ll send you a free replacement if it’s actually human contact, most triggers are such as this one where a foreign object caused it

#8

Probably a dumb idea but could a contrasting color be applied to the table in line with the blade to make it more obvious that your miter gage setup is going to contact the blade?

#9

That or make sure in all current classes that the use of a miter gauge is not only brought up the the need to check and adjust clearance of it, before using would be better as I believe the lack there of is the culprit here

#10

The or honestly we could just do away with all the miter gauges completely, and just have a miter cross cut sled jig made which would 1 make it safer and more precise but 2 would negate this ever happening again

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Which could easily be made out of plywood, just the arch would need to be cnc d, other than that we have all the hardware and handles