I'm not sure how comparable these alternatives are when two of them are "request a quote" kind of pricing, and the Altendorf is $7000+, unless you're considering an entire cabinet. None of them will go on a job site with you, for example. I would love to test the Felder system though.

There's no way I'm trusting the safety of my fingers to today's ML abilities reading a live camera feed.

If you don’t have this extra feature, all your safety depends on you. That still is the case.

Do you work for Tesla FSD? That's exactly their stance. If I'm still dependent, then it doesn't do what it says on the tin. I want my money back.

“Pay money for this feature”

“Ok, here’s your money”

“By the way, to use the feature, you actually just do it yourself and then pretend the product did it”

That depends on how they fail. If they trigger on false positives, that's money wasted on lost time and damaged equipment.

On the flip side, if they fail a real case, it may well be because they engendered a false sense of safety, a bit like a sharp knife being safer than a dull one.

People exhibit different behaviors of risk taking when they know there are safety systems in place to protect them.

Never mind the extra money spent on a "safe" saw vs the one without.

Yeah, they aren't comparable in the least. These companies use it for market segmentation. You'll only get this on the ridiculously expensive table saws. Whereas a Sawstop cabinet saw (the industrial one!), still expensive for an American-style table saw, is a fraction of the price. In the case of Felder, 10% the price!

Totally agree, and wouldn't really comment on it except to say that the cheapest Sawstop is $1-3k even on blackfriday. That's not really in the same league as other jobsite saws that are $100-300.

Each one really is a ~10x step in cost above the other. Of course quality and safety/reliability are higher too, and I know which I'd buy. But, comparable only sort-of.

Sawstop is really only about 2-3x the price of an equivalent saw. It's not 10x more.

The 100/200 dollar table saws are not really comparable (at a basic spec level, they're just not the same thing - 8" blades, smaller table, no fence)

Most reasonable products you would actually buy for a jobsite are in the $500 range. The same Sawstop is 1500. The cheap no-stand versions are $300. The same Sawstop is 900. Pretty sure they're targeting 3x as the price.

Sub-$1k list price now, with https://www.sawstop.com/product/compact-table-saw/ being $899.

Still a pretty fair assessment, though.

> Also, Altendorf's philosophy of using cameras & ML instead of inductive proximity reminds me of Tesla's philosophy using cameras instead of LIDAR (Waymo).

Kind of seems like the opposite. I could be wrong, but in the case of the saw the cameras/AI are probably more expensive to develop and deploy than the inductive sensing. With the cars though, it's the cheaper option for sure.

I don’t see the point of a Sawstop-type system for an Altendorf-style panel saw. The whole point of that saw design is that your hands are nowhere near the blade!