I’ve been kicking this can down the road for years, but I finally got a job that involves cutting so much melamine board there’s no way I’m doing it with a circular saw.
I watched multiple safety videos before even opening the package, and now I’m just sitting here staring at it wondering whether I should fire it up and cut off a finger or two. I’m fucking terrified of this thing.
Holy shit, they killed the Bosch ones… WTF. I’ve not needed a table saw in a long time, but I remember that Bosch and a bunch of others had addons. WTF happened?
AFAIK it is a patented technology so the answer, as always, is: money.
Bosch did not have it for ages (10+ years) by now, only Festo and saw stop (same company) have the classic saw stop.
Felder and simlar priced manufacturers have something, but that is based on totally different mechanisms and equipment.
I am not aware of any other companies that have or had a saw stop like mechanism and there certainly never was a upgrade package for other saws (which would have been technically impossible imho).
So, the guy who invented the saw brake went around trying to sell that technology to other manufacturers. None wanted it because they didn’t want to sell a safety feature on premium saws as it would make the lower range look unsafe. So he started his own tool company. Bosch built a different system that achieved the same result, and got sued.