CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
27 March 2007
Implementation Investments
SawStop Makes Woodworking Safer With Finger-Saving Table Saw Designed in SolidWorks and COSMOS
A small Oregon company is changing woodworking professionals' jobs with a table saw designed in SolidWorks ® software that only cuts wood - not fingers. SawStop has invented a table saw that immediately retracts the blade when it touches a finger, making woodworking safer and eliminating painful and very costly medical procedures.
Table saws are involved in more than 60,000 accidents every year - or one accident every nine minutes - according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. Those accidents result in nearly $2 billion of injury-related costs annually. Realizing the need for a safer saw, lifelong woodworker Steve Gass applied his doctorate in physics to design a saw that runs with a small electrical current on the blade. When the blade touches a finger (or something else that conducts electrical current), the current drops and engages a brake. As the blade's teeth sink into the brake, the momentum forces the blade to drop below the table. The entire process takes only three milliseconds, which is a fraction of the time it takes to blink your eye.
SawStop Vice President of Engineering Dave Fulmer said inventing the product went more smoothly than learning to use the first CAD software the company bought. "We're all inventors or engineers, but none of us really had any CAD experience," he said. "It took us about eight months to realize that purchasing Autodesk Inventor® was a mistake. It wasn't very intuitive, it didn't handle complex assemblies very well, and all of our manufacturers in Taiwan used SolidWorks. In just a couple of weeks learning SolidWorks, we were able to design complex components such as the brake mechanism, including the spring that sets the brake into the blade to stop the saw."
Fulmer and his team rely on COSMOSXpressT and COSMOSWorks® Designer analysis software to ensure the table saws perform as expected and can stand up to constant use. SolidWorks' integration with these products enables SawStop to minimize prototyping costs and time and eliminate added manufacturing costs from overbuilding.
SolidWorks CEO John McEleney recently demonstrated how the saw works using a hot dog in front of more than 3,000 attendees at SolidWorks World 2007. "The speed with which the blade retracts and the sound it makes is stunning," he said. "So far, this invention has prevented nearly 150 serious injuries, and that number will increase as sales continue to grow. SawStop is another example of a small company with a groundbreaking idea designing great products that make a difference."
SawStop relies on authorized SolidWorks reseller Shounco Design Studios for ongoing software training, implementation, and support. To see how the SawStop can save woodworkers' fingers, watch it in action at http://www.sawstop.com/media/Table%20Saw%20-%20WMV%20high.wmv .
About Shounco Design Studios
Shounco Design Studios, Inc. is a Northwest CAE /CAD/ CAM company serving Oregon and Washington since 1995. Visit the company's Web site at http://www.shounco.com/ .
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