techedghs

To Will Matney:

We have a Saw Stop at work. A maintenance employee tried to using it to cut treated lumber and it tripped the safety device.
The blade is not to be reused as it incurs a violent collision with the aluminum stopping block. The blade cuts into it and becomes jammed. Maybe the blade could be reused, but it is not recommended and we did not.
Concerning the plywood blade and high tooth-count blades, we do not use them on that cabinet saw. Not only are there the concerns you mentioned, but there is the concern of the stopping efficiency of the Al block upon the blade. Once we saw the end result of the lower count blade in the aluminum block, and saw how the Al block stopped the blade, we thought a thinner or high tooth-count blade could possibly (we never tested it) spin longer, cutting through the Al block momentarily, prior to stopping the rotation.
Even with that said, the blade does slam down below the surface of the table at the same time. It seems as if it is designed to not allow items to block this downward travel, but zippers are designed not to get stuck too. Apples and oranges I know, but the point is I never trust a mechanical safety if I can avoid it.
Just putting in my 2 cents based on what I have seen.

I teach Technology Education at the high school level. If I ever removed safety devices and there was an injury, I can almost guarantee I would lose everything - career, house, savings, insurance coverage, etc.
Whatever happened to people being responsible for themselves? My circumstance is a bit different, I am identified as the person responsible for maintaining a safe environment. However, I never saw a machine manual that claimed the device was always safe to operate regardless of how the operator uses it. On the contrary, every manual I have ever read for a power tool extensively describes specific actions that will render the tool or process unsafe.
The injured party was overwhelmingly at fault. And regardless of lawyers, they are doing what they are hired to do, juries should be smarter than this. With decisions like this, no wonder it's increasingly hard to keep prices down or even a business afloat at times.