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Beth Stackpole

SolidWorks CAD Behind Groundbreaking SawStop Design

Did you know that table saws are responsible for 60,000 accidents every year—or one accident every nine minutes? The most common occurrence, naturally, has to do with severe injuries to the fingers, resulting in nearly $2 billion in injury-related costs annually, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.

Steve Gass, a lifelong woodworker with a doctorate in physics, recognized the need for a safer saw. He founded SawStop, which created a saw design that automatically retracts a blade when it touches a finger, eliminating many of those serious injuries. The saw runs with a small electrical current on the blade and when the blade touches a finger, the current drops and engages a brake—a process that happens in only three milliseconds.

Pretty amazing design, yet a fairly standard design process. To make sure the table saw performed as expected and could stand up to constant use, SawStop turned to a simple 3D CAD combination: SolidWorks 3D CAD software and its COSMOSXpress and COSMOSWorks Designer analysis software.

Now there’s a safer saw on the market and a really cool video of the saw slicing a hot dog.