The best part about it is that SawStop went to each of the tool manufacturers asking to license their technology so people could be safer. For an extra cost of $10, they ended up having to build their own hardware because noone took them up on it.

Please cite your $10 fee narrative, only Reference [1] I can find, and this history I know of from my memory at the time the Licensing fees where not even remotely that small

Closer to 3-8% of gross sales was what as demanded on a product that often does not have that much margin to begin with, thus the licensing of the tech would have took a hug part of the profits of each saw sale

Contract Talks ultimately broke down when the companies wanted the inventor to indemnify them from law suits if the tech failed, not over a "$10 fee" like you imply in your comment

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SawStop#Attempt_to_license,_20...

I'm also surprised by this claim. SawStop table saws cost 3x the equivalent from other manufacturers.

It's unfortunate the technology wasn't licensed out. It's a critical safety feature on one of the most dangerous consumer tools.

"the licensing of the tech would have took a huge part of the profits of each saw sale"

That seems to be assuming that consumers would not pay one penny more for the safer saw. I guess if you're afraid of people relying on it, then suing, you can't really market it. Which seems like a good argument for it being mandated by government, assuming it can be implemented in a way that works.

And then tried to force this technology (at whatever price they could get) by lobbying the CPSC to make it mandatory.

And sued Bosch over the Bosch REAXX table saw, which is a different implementation of a similar concept. As a result, you can't buy the REAXX in the US at the moment.

https://www.protoolreviews.com/news/sawstop-vs-bosch-reaxx-l...

Interesting because who brands are owned by different German companies. Is Bosch able to sell it in Germany though?

Not sure, I'm in the US over here :-)

My understanding is that US-style cabinet saws are extraordinarily rare in Europe, and sliding table saws (Altendorf, Felder, etc) dominate the European market in stationary installations. I don't know whether jobsite saws exist in Europe, which is the market segment Bosch was bringing their technology into. All that to say, in Germany, the issue may well be moot.

The 2017 Festool acquisition appears to postdate the 2016 lawsuit. I have no knowledge of the acquisition timing beyond the easily googleable press releases and news articles. It may well have begun while the suit was pending.

They do have jobsite saws, the ones I have seen look like our mobile contractor saws (Delta, etc)

According to wikipedia they only went to ryobi and wanted 3% royalty of the wholesale price and then decided to go their own way when there was a stall in the licensing.

The benefit to the tool maker of SawStop is clear: not only does it save the fingers of your customers, it destroys a large number of components in the saw after use. This means that the customer must buy a new motor, mount, etc. after almost losing a finger; a trade that I personally would be willing to make.

I can assure you that it does not damage the motor, mount, arbor, trunnion assembly, or any other major components of the saw. The cartridge is expended, but that is the only part of the saw that needs to be replaced as a matter of course. Whether the blade survives or not is a bit of a crapshoot, but the smart money is on having to replace it.

If you happen to trip the saw with flesh, Saw Stop will send you a free replacement cartridge if you mail them your expended one. They'll run diagnostics and verify that it was tripped on flesh, and mail you a new one.

Source: I've been present in two shops for 4 trips on two different saws, all other people. 3 were an aluminum miter gauge fence (Incra), one was fingers. In both cases the saws are known to have been tripped a great many more times than that. Neither saw has had anything but the blade and cartridge replaced.

Worth noting that replacing a blade can be a fairly expensive proposition depending on the blade you were using, but of course the argument is that the cost of that is far cheaper than medical bills and lost fingers. Seems like a valid argument assuming it's not a false trip.

Also, the safety feature can be temporarily disabled if needed to cut through something like damp wood that might cause a false trip.

A $200 saw blade can be resharpened after such an incident. It’s not as expensive as you might think.

Generally at around the same cost as a cheaper blade. I'm not sure who the actual market is for hella'spensive blades; the difference in cut quality I've not actually seen; certainly not enough to justify the expense.

Do you mail them the expended cartridge Or expended finger?

Do you own one? I have never heard of anyone ever having to replace anything but the cartridge and saw blade.

Even then, the expensive saw blades can be sent back to the manufacturer and resharpened after such an incident.

This is wrong. One must replace the saw blade and the cartridge.

Citation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SawStop#Opposition_from_trade_...

A fire on a Sawstop can cost you close to $400 if you destroy a dado stack and the cartridge, but the saw itself is fine.

An advantage of the REAXX technology is that the blade is fine, only the cartridge is expended.

Why would you just go out and tell lies like this?

Festool is also insanely expensive, like the Arcteryx of tools. My local specialty lumberyard also sells Festool, and no other tool brands.

Brands like Festool and Hilti are aimed squarely at professionals doing high-volume work. You're paying for the warranty, spare parts guarantee, and system compatibility as much as you are for the tool itself.

In both cases I get the impression that if it were financially viable, they'd prefer to only do fleet sales and maintenance.

Hitachi nailers are another tool I'd add to the "strictly professional" category. Their framing nailers are built like light boat anchors and you can use them the same way you'd use a sledgehammer in some applications. We would routinely use the back of the nailgun to move the wall around if it wasn't quite on target.

For personal use they are a bit overkill, but only if your cheaper tools don't break after 3 years.

The professionals I know generally all use a couple expensive tools from Hiltl or Festool etc over time. They can justify a new machine on a single job that pays ~8k, the time saved with the right tool is often already worth it.

And of course they are smart enough to know when they can use the "best long-lasting & cheap" tools instead of the high-end equivalents. I'm looking at you Makita PJ7000 which I bought for 150.- vs a Lamello that will be >500.- or a Festool Domino for 1k.

"best long-lasting & cheap" is spot on. Often, getting the very best is not worth it, no matter how long they might last.

We had a lot of work done on our house a few years back, and every one of tradesmen used Makita. I asked our carpenter if they were really good, and he said no, but they we pretty good, lasted quite well, but didn't cost the earth.

I think the ubiquity of Makita also made it easy to swap batteries and chargers between kit, and between people.

Electrician here: Last place I worked was almost exclusively Makita (and they were big, thousands of employees), and being able to swap chargers and batteries was both a blessing and a curse. I took good care of my batteries (and everything else), and I had to be careful not to end up with some other guys battery that he'd used to drive nails with.

This is remedied with Bluetooth batteries that only work when paired to the owner's phone.

Please tell me that people were not using the batteries as hammers.

Driving any fastener can put put of wear on batteries fast, the current requirements are high and peaky. Nails are particularity bad because unlike say, driving a screw or bolt you often don't even give they battery a second or two of break time to cool slightly while you line up your bit to the next fastener, just "BAM BAM BAM" down the line of wood as fast as you can until you drain the battery back to nil.

This is one of the the best ways to kill li-ion cells fast.

The usual method of driving a nail with a battery isn't by turning on a tool.

By far the safest though, but still very hard on the batteries.

https://www.makitatools.com/products/details/XNB02Z

The converse of Maslow's hammer is such a common scenario that Wera actually sells a ratchet designed to be used as a hammer (think mechanic working under a car): https://www-us.wera.de/en/great-tools/koloss/

They're kind of a dud because the extra bulk on the head gets in the way so often. I have one I never use.

The vise grip crescent wrench on the other hand...

You can also get an adjustable crescent wrench with a hammer on the opposite side of the head. It's known colloquially to viewers of the AvE YouTube channel as the "thumb detecting nut fucker"

Some times you need to do a bit of percussive problem solving, and battery powered tools are heavy, so you do what you gotta do.

lol, pretty standard on site mate, especially during demo - some screws are just a bit too captive, quick whack with your battery (in the impact driver) does the trick.

Think of a soldier to use the butt of his rifle in close quarters. This spares a bullet too. Not sure if savings are comparable in case of the battery, but you get the idea.

It is so common that tool manufacturers have it as a load case in their design.

Every tool has a hammer end.

Makita worm-drive saws were nice because they were about half a pound lighter than even the Skilsaw with the magnesium case(HD77). This makes a difference when leaning out over the second floor of a house cutting rafter tails.

Have you tried the cordless mag 77s? I'm curious to know if going cordless in those situations would make the weight less important, the same way AirPods sort of magically stay in my ear better without a cord tugging on them.

My shop (electrical) uses Makita for the vast majority of power tools, but we have some Hilti hammer drills and Hilti BX3 battery fastener, because they’re worth the money.

Particularly the battery powered fastener (BX3), it can shoot a 22 ga nail into steel or concrete quietly which means we can do that work in occupied buildings during the day instead of at night.

The best recommendation I’ve ever heard was to buy as cheap as you can, and then pay attention to what you actually use. Whatever tools in the “regular use” category break first should be replaced with the nicest tool in that category you can afford.

Of course if you’re a professional carpenter or similar, chances are you’re already aware about what you need to spend more on.

Bad advise for current tools: you need to settle on the battery system, since batteries are expensive. I.e. once you start replacing, it’s going to be a single brand, but the trick that you can get great set of batteries and tools as a bundle at large discount. DeWalt in particular, and others, often have great bundles and sales. So if you more or less know what you need, you can get good quality tools at discount by choosing correct bundle, replacing them one by one would be way more expensive.

They’re getting rarer, but you can still generally find corded handheld tools for significantly cheaper than the battery versions. If you’re working somewhere that has a power feed, they can make good trial versions.

I needed a drill. I wanted to buy a cordless drill, but I chose to buy a corded drill instead. 20+ years later, I am using the same drill. I wonder how many iterations of cordless I would have bought over that time.

Don't go too cheap. Mid grade tools work well in general. Cheap tools are often so bad that the frustration they cause is worse than the help, or worse you think it is you not the tool and spend money hiring someone to do what you really could do yourself if your tools were up to the job.

I don't think anyone capable of doing a job ever hired out a job because the tool they had at the start wasn't good enough. They just went and bought the better tool.

Maybe a few people have done that in situations where the cost of the different tool is thousands and much more than paying someone with the tool (e.g. difference between a chainsaw mill and a proper industrial sawmill or a three bag mixer and a concrete plant and fleet of trucks). It's certainly not a situation most DIYers ever run into though.

I'm currently trying to decide which vendor/battery system to buy into for the long run. Festool/Hilti are too high end for DIY/Hobby. I'm looking at De Walt/Makita and leaning towards Makita.

Honestly for hobby use I would definitely recommend ryobi. Reason being, they haven't changed their battery design in absolute ages. So, you can take a old drill that was originally ni-cad and use brand new batteries without an adapter. They have updated battery chemistry, so obviously you need to change chargers when you get new batteries, but at least you don't need to re-buy all your tools as well.

They definitely aren't pro-grade, but I've put fairly heavy use on mine over the last 9 years and the only tool that failed was a flashlight. Wore out 3 batteries that I took good care of, but buying $200 in batteries & charger is way better than $1k in batteries+tools.

The only real problem is they look cheap, so if you are into showing off then that is a negative.

I used Dewalt tools at my last mechanic job, and I honestly didn't think they were better enough to justify the price (2-3x ryobi). I haven't used makita, but the Dewalt drills would only survive 2-3 5 foot falls onto concrete, and the chucks were really crappy. My ryobi drill has survived probably 5 falls of the same type, and is still functional. The only real complaint I have is that the plastic absorbs grease, so if you use them in automotive/machine shop environments they start to look really grungy.

Also a happy Ryobi user. Even more so after I stumbled on [1] from Slickdeals; they rotate through a ton of Ryobi stock (factory blemished and refurbished) and I haven't ran into any duds yet. Between that site and frequent Home Depot specials, I've been able to build out a solid kit for far less than I expected.

I'm sure other brands funnel factory rejects and refurbs somewhere, as well. But I'm not sure where that is.

[1] https://www.directtoolsoutlet.com/

My rule of thumb is midrange for battery powered tools, and more expensive for corded tools that I expect to last me a lifetime. I went with Ryobi for the former and I’m really happy with them. I’ve had one battery go bad, but otherwise no issues at all and I love the variety of tools. In addition to the normal set you’d expect we have a pump for our hot tub, a tire inflator, and a handheld vacuum.

My dad used Makita battery tools exclusively for ~30 years of being a self employed radio communication tech. He stuck with them because he could still get chargers and batteries for the oldest drills, the ones with the stick battery that goes all the way into the handle like a handgun magazine.

I borrowed his tools many times over the years, and I've never been let down by anything made by Makita.

"I'm looking at De Walt/Makita and leaning towards Makita."

I went with Dewalt solely because this device exists:

https://www.dewalt.com/products/storage-and-gear/generators-...

So, you've already got the batteries, and you already need a place to charge the batteries - why not get the added bonus of a true 15-amp portable generator while you're at it ?

It's not true sine wave, but it's quite robust - I have powered decent sized compressors, etc. with it.

Makita has had the same battery setup for a good long while now (the 18v batteries are something like 15-16 years old), and they have a ton of really good, well thought out tools in the 18v (same as DeWalt 20v) lineup.

Plus, the higher power tools still use the same batteries, just two, rather than forcing you to but yet another set of batteries. I wasn't as impressed with dewalt's tool lineup.

Makita and DeWalt are more or less equivalent, but I’m using DeWalt 20V (and corded miter saw) for few (subjective) reasons:

* Looks like DeWalt bundles are priced better.

* Looks like DeWalt has better variety of tools in 20V.

* DeWalt is sold at both Home Depot and Lowes, so you run into more sales and has better chance of picking up required tool (and, importantly, accessories) on the short notice.

* Amazon has good DeWalt sales for the Prime Day, etc.

In particular for corded miter saw DeWalt 779 is just a great deal. I upgraded it with the light kit and got DeWalt portable stand.

Since these tools really last, there is no need to get cheaper versions if you can afford it.

For really rare-use tools or accessories I get cheap Porter Cable (ironically owned by same holding as DeWalt) or chinese knock-offs from Harbor Freight.

You have to be careful with the tool bundles.

The tools in the bundle aren't necessarily the same as their stand-alone look-alikes.

I went with Makita without a whole lot of research, but I like that have a wide line of tools. I recently bought their weed wacker, and I'm thinking I'll eventually replace my plug-in lawn mower with their battery powered one.

One word of caution with battery powered mowers is they tend to weigh about 2x as much as a gas powered or corded electric mower.

May be a non-issue for you, but bit me hard when I tried to go that route. My lawn has poor drainage and never completely dries, and the added weight of the battery-powered mower led to constant rutting and mower-wrangling.

I think they are more expensive, but I’ve had a Bosch small drill driver that I’ve used regularly for over 10 years now. Still use the two original batteries although I do have to switch them on the charger more often. At work we use Bosch battery tools too. Our chief electrician just bought his own set because as he pointed out, some of them have been in use for years and oil field roughnecks aren’t known to be kind to their tools. Whatever you buy make sure it comes with two batteries so you can use one and charge the other.

Any of those will be good the only difference is what tools you can get. I bought Dewalt because a local store carries their chainsaw, and either Milwaukee doesn't have a chainsaw or my local store doesn't carry it. Local store is important because more than once I've needed a new tool for a job today. I'm a fan of makita tools but I can't find them on my small town so I only have plug in tools that I bought well in advance.

Yeh me and and most of the people I work with are on Makita (in Aus). Otherwise Milwaukee is quite popular, especially among the sparkies.

My wife bought a Ridgid drill with a promo kit of four batteries. The chuck eventually wore out, but the local Ridgid repair shop replaced it for us for $30 (would have been free if we’d registered for warranty). Because we had all those batteries, we were sucked into the ecosystem: cordless sawzall, impact driver, etc. They sell “naked” tools (no battery) at a significant discount. Definitely worth looking into, we’ve been exceptionally happy with the kit we’ve slowly been growing.

Edit: in Canada. Not sure if they’re the same elsewhere.

Electronic tools wise, I've been happy with the worx power share platform, but for a gas chainsaw, I have definitely become sold on Makita.

They are pricey, but I would describe them more like the Apple of power tools. They have an ecosystem of tools and accessories that work together, and because they have a relatively small and consistent product line 3rd parties also make a lot of accessories that increase the utility of the tools. They are expensive compared to many other handheld power tools, but if you want something that just works and is pleasant to use then it can be worth the price.

I would not call it insanely expensive, if you compare a Bosch Glide miter saw with the kapex, yes there is a difference, but it's not insane. The same goes for other festool tools like their sanders, compare them to Rupes, Flex or any other high quality brand and the differences are marginal.

Fun, unrelated fact: The Bosch Axial Glide saws use a Sarrus linkage[0], which is the oldest perfect straight line linkage.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarrus_linkage

The Festool dust extractors are similar to what you describe. I got one for list price, a bit over $700. It's quiet, has an accessory outlet that can turn the vac on, has an option for a remote, has big wheels so it doesn't get hung up when you pull it around. Etc.

The Festool is noticeably more than even the very good competitors - I think the Bosch is about $150 less, and there are others that are a bit more than the Festool.

But it's not like there's a $200 shop vac that's almost as good. There are such shop vacs -- but they're a different product entirely.

Recent... it's 20 years old.

That is pretty recent, consider when the table saw was invented

While impressive, I wish they would have done like other companies have done with their safety innovations (like Volvo for example with safety belts) and either given it away or at least charged a very nominal (small) licensing fee

The creator of the technology created saw stop because the saw manufacturers refused to pay his price for licensing, and has since been very aggressive in enforcement of patents around the technology preventing any competition in the safety space for saws

I can not get behind using IP laws to prevent companies from increasing the safety of their products, for example a few years ago Bosch attempted to bring similar saw stopping technology to market and was prevented do to a lawsuit from SawStop which resulted in a ban on the importation of the technology to the US

But aren't the IP laws in this case evidence of motivation for the creative mind? An incentive of being rewarded and not ripped off? We've had power tools without this feature for 100 years. What's a few more years to give the inventor exclusivity and a chance to profit, and then it becomes public domain?

Volvo's donation of safety patents is nice, but it is a major manufacturer. The inventor of SawStop was not.

at a bear minimum we need something like FRAND for safety devices that require safety related patents to be licensed fairly, non-discriminatory and with reasonable fee's

SawStop’s creator seems to have offered reasonable fees.

Your definition of "reasonable" is clearly very different than mine as 8% of GROSS sales is not reasonable... maybe 8% of NET sales...

Gross vs. net sales just means a small percentage adjustment, unless the manufacturer makes a broken product. The other costs of making a table saw also make up a fixed percentage of gross sales, not net, but despite that, the product is still sellable.

> I can not get behind using IP laws to prevent companies from increasing the safety of their products, for example a few years ago Bosch attempted to bring similar saw stopping technology to market and was prevented do to a lawsuit from SawStop which resulted in a ban on the importation of the technology to the US

Bosch could have licensed the technology. This is actually IP that deserves to be enforced. Table saws have been around forever and none of the large manufacturers could be bothered to innovate until sawstop came along?

It's not like everyone can't buy sawstop tablesaws instead if they value the safety of it.

>>Bosch could have licensed the technology.

SawStop today refuses to license the tech as it is their only competitive advantage to sell their massively overpriced saws.

They could have 20 years ago when SawStop was trying to license the tech, however the industry (and I concur with them) belived their licensing terms were unacceptable.

I can't really get behind incumbent manufacturers failing to pay the inventor of a technology a significant portion of its value, which is, at minimum, the cost of hundreds of severely injured or completely severed fingers.

It isn't just that they wouldn't pay the license, it's also that they didn't develop the safety tech themselves in the first place. They presumably applied the Fight Club formula, to determine that the company's liability when people slice fingers off with one of their saws was not enough to justify the cost of actually doing anything about it (beyond writing into the operator's manual "let's don't cut any fingers off, mmmkay?").

If one of the incumbents had invented it, the others would have licensed or counter-patented incremental improvements and cross-licensed, recognizing it as a competitive threat.

But since an outsider patented it, that's a minor threat. What can a little guy do against a 100-year tool brand? And if he has to enforce, that means they're not playing by the rules, which are to pay the inventor's license, or wait until the patent expires.

Why are severed fingers part of anyone's business model?

>>>Why are severed fingers part of anyone's business model?

it is, however Millions of people operate normal saws everyday with out cutting their figures off, and contrary to popular belief on here Safety does have a cost narrative to it. SawStop over values their tech for many people, which is why other saws continue to outsell their saw because people buying the saws value other things more than the safety enhancements the SawStop technology brings

It has nothing to do with being an "Outsider" and everything to do with SawStops inventor placing and outsized value on the technology.

The manufacturers respond to consumer demand, and many consumers would refuse to pay the extra money (for some saws it would have amounted to several hundred dollars more retail price) for the technology

In which case the inventor of the technology would be remunerated according to the consumers' choices, and not by the choices of a handful of manufacturer gatekeepers.

Perhaps at some point, shops that only use blade-stop safety saws would recoup that cost on lower employee health insurance premiums?

Licensing the technology does not mean it must be put into all models of saw! You don't have to buy the heated seats and built-in backseat entertainment center when you buy a car, either.

>>Licensing the technology does not mean it must be put into all models of saw!

Saw Stop is actively engaged, and has been for more than 10 years, in trying to get the government to mandate their technology to be in all models of saw

This lobbying occurring after licensing talks with the incumbent manufacturers had failed.

In this analogy, one company has patented the seatbelt and demanded royalties on every car sold, while lobbying congress to make seat belts mandatory, and aggressively suing anyone else who implements the seatbelt.

And how much was the seat belt actually worth while it was patented? How much of that value should go to the inventor of the seat belt?

Is 10% reasonable? Too much or too little? How much value should be captured by the consumers that wear the belts? How much by the manufacturers that licensed them voluntarily? How much from compulsory installations? How much value should be captured by unlicensed installations?

Should the value of raised speed limits count, or just the direct impact of reduced collision injury severity?

Are we discounting the possibility that the patent licensing fee demanded by the saw-stopping inventor was actually reasonable in the US, thanks to hyperinflated medical costs, and the saw manufacturers were basing their decisions on international sales in countries with sane healthcare systems?