CONFIDENTIAL BUSINESS INFORMATION
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`Page 1
` UNITED STATES INTERNATIONAL TRADE COMMISSION
` WASHINGTON, D.C.
`
`In the Matter of )
`CERTAIN TABLE SAWS INCORPORATING )
`ACTIVE INJURY MITIGATION ) Inv. No. 337-TA-965
`TECHNOLOGY AND COMPONENTS THEREOF )
`__________________________________)
`
` ** CONFIDENTIAL BUSINESS INFORMATION **
`
` DEPOSITION OF STEPHEN F. GASS
` Taken in behalf of Respondent
` Thursday, January 14, 2016
`
` BE IT REMEMBERED THAT the deposition of
`STEPHEN F. GASS was taken before KAREN M. EICHHORN, a
`Certified Shorthand Reporter for Oregon, on
`Thursday, January 14, 2016, commencing at the hour of
`9:27 a.m., in the law offices of Miller Nash, 111 SW
`Fifth Avenue, Suite 3400, Portland, Oregon.
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`1 STEPHEN F. GASS,
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`2 3
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`was thereupon produced as a witness in behalf of the
`4 Respondent and, having first been placed under oath
`5 by the Certified Shorthand Reporter, was examined and
`6 testified as follows:
`
`7 8
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` MR. HANNEMANN: And before we, before we get
`9 going in the hearing, I wanted to note that this is a
`10 personal deposition of Dr. Gass.
`11 It's also the deposition -- the deposition is
`12 being taken pursuant to the respondent's corporate
`13 deposition notice to complainant's counsel.
`14 I don't expect there to be any divergence
`15 between the individual testimony and the corporate
`16 testimony, but if that situation arises, we will, we
`17 will discuss it and deal with it.
`18 MR. BRINKMAN: Okay.
`19 (Deposition Exhibit 1, Bates
`20 SawStopITC-0078995, colored photograph;
`21 Deposition Exhibit 2, Bates
`22 SawStopITC-0079017, colored photograph;
`23 Deposition Exhibit 3, Bates
`24 SawStopITC-0079020, colored photograph;
`25 Deposition Exhibit 4, Bates
`
`1 APPEARANCES
`2 QUINN EMANUEL URQUHART & SULLIVAN, LLP
`3 BY: MR. PAUL F. BRINKMAN
` BY: MR. JARED W. NEWTON
`4 777 6th Street NW, 11th Floor
` Washington, DC 20001
`5 202.538.8102
` paulbrinkman@quinnemanuel.com
`6 jarednewton@quinnemanuel.com
` Attorneys for Complainant
`
`7 8
`
`SHEARMAN & STERLING, LLP
`9 BY: MR. MARK HANNEMANN
` 599 Lexington Avenue
`10 New York, NY 10022
` 212.848.4000
`11 mark.hanneman@shearman.com
` Attorney for Respondent
`
`12
`13 ALSO PRESENT:
`14 David Fanning, VP of SawStop
`15 VIDEOTAPED BY:
`16 Jonas Hinkley, LNS Court Reporting
`17
`18
`19
`20
`21
`22
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`24
`25
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`Page 5
`1 SawStopITC-0079031, colored photograph;
`2 Deposition Exhibit 5, Bates
`3 SawStopITC-0079032, colored photograph, all
`4 marked.)
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`5 6
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` EXAMINATION
`7 BY MR. HANNEMANN:
`8 Q Dr. Gass, you have, you have given
`9 depositions before; correct?
`10 A I have.
`11 Q Approximately how many?
`12 A I would guess between 15 and 20.
`13 Q Okay. And what was the -- what was the
`14 subject of those depositions generally?
`15 A Um, in large part, it was product liability
`16 cases where someone had been injured on a table saw
`17 that did not incorporate active injury mitigation
`18 technology.
`19 And I was testifying with regard to the
`20 viability of putting this kind of technology onto saws
`21 such as the plaintiffs were injured by, and the
`22 effectiveness of that technology to mitigate the injury
`23 if that had been done.
`24 Q What is active injury mitigation technology
`25 in the context that you were just using it?
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`Page 3
`1 THE VIDEOGRAPHER: This is Jonas Hinkley of
`2 Veritext. The date today is January 14, 2016, and the
`3 time is approximately 9:27 a.m.
`4 This deposition is being held in the offices
`5 of Miller Nash Graham and Dunn, LLP, located at 111
`6 Southwest Fifth Avenue, Suite 3400, Portland, Oregon,
`7 97204.
`8 The caption of this case is In The Matter Of
`9 Certain Table Saws Incorporating Active Injury
`10 Mitigation Technology And Components Thereof, in the
`11 United States International Trade Commission,
`12 Washington, D.C. The name of the witness is Stephen
`13 Gass.
`14 At this time the attorneys will identify
`15 themselves and the parties they represent, after which
`16 our court reporter, Karen Eichhorn, also with Veritext
`17 will swear in the witness and we can proceed.
`18 MR. HANNEMANN: Mark Hannemann for the
`19 respondents.
`20 MR. BRINKMAN: Paul Brinkman for the
`21 complainants.
`22 MR. NEWTON: Jared Newton for the
`23 complainants.
`24 MR. FANNING: I'm David Fanning from
`25 SawStop.
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`1 A Generally speaking, active injury mitigation
`2 technology for table saws would be some type of a
`3 system incorporated in the saw or associated with the
`4 saw that would respond in some fashion, some active
`5 fashion, thus the active, in the event that an operator
`6 or other person's hand or body part came into dangerous
`7 proximity or contact -- proximity to or contact with
`8 the sawblade of the saw.
`9 Q And would the meaning of that phrase be
`10 different for you in the context of other power tools
`11 besides table saws?
`12 A I really haven't thought about that. No
`13 immediate distinction comes to mind. It was just that
`14 was where my testimony generally was applied.
`15 Q So when, when was the first time that you
`16 thought about active injury mitigation systems? And
`17 going forward, I guess if you're more comfortable,
`18 we'll use that phrase to refer in the table saw
`19 context. Is that okay? And then if we need to expand
`20 the context, you let me know or I will let you know.
`21 Is that all right?
`22 A That sounds fine.
`23 Q Okay. So when was the first time that you
`24 thought about active injury mitigation systems?
`25 A I would say sometime in 1999. I can't give
`
`1 I described it, could you stop the blade fast enough,
`2 if it took -- if it took 10 million pounds of force to
`3 stop a blade fast enough to mitigate injury, under the
`4 circumstances I described of you running your hand into
`5 it, then that would be something that to me there was
`6 no sort of, within the laws of physics, no way to
`7 achieve that result in that fashion.
`8 So it was a matter of kind of considering the
`9 dynamics of what you needed to do to mitigate the
`10 injury, to somehow remove the hazard, and that requires
`11 sort of stopping or moving the -- or changing the blade
`12 in some fashion.
`13 And that when you have to move microscopic
`14 physical objects, change their state in some fashion,
`15 it, it involves a force. And the time scales involved
`16 here are very short, a matter of thousandths of a second
`17 or milliseconds, and that the Newtons laws of motion
`18 make that a challenge.
`19 Q So what did you do to resolve this question
`20 of whether an active injury mitigation system would
`21 necessarily violate the laws of physics?
`22 A Well, I think the first thing I did was
`23 consider the blade itself. And the first option I
`24 considered for responding was to stop the blade.
`25 And so I weighed -- well, first, I thought
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`1 you an exact date.
`2 Q Do you know roughly during the year when?
`3 A I would think it would have been in the
`4 summer, perhaps early fall, but probably summer of
`5 1999.
`6 Q And where were you when you had these first
`7 thoughts?
`8 A I was actually in my shop. I am a
`9 woodworker and have a shop, and I was -- looked over at
`10 my table saw, and as I described it, the idea kind of
`11 came to me. I wonder if you could stop the blade fast
`12 enough if you ran your hand into it that you wouldn't
`13 get a serious injury.
`14 Q So did you, did you do anything in
`15 connection with this idea when it popped into your
`16 head?
`17 A Well, I sort of continued to think about it
`18 and did an analysis to assess whether the concept
`19 seemed -- well, in shorthand, I guess whether it would
`20 violate any laws of physics to achieve that result.
`21 Q And, and how would, how would an active
`22 injury mitigation system potentially violate the laws
`23 of physics?
`24 A Well, for instance, there was a question in
`25 my mind when I first had the thought or the question as
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`Page 9
`1 through, well, how fast would I have to respond? How
`2 much time do I have? I did kind of a rough estimation
`3 of what would be the approach speed because that would
`4 determine how much time you have before you get a
`5 serious injury. And then even, actually I guess as a
`6 predecessor to that, how much injury is a serious
`7 injury.
`8 And in my mind at the time, I thought if, if
`9 I get more than an eighth of an inch deep cut on a
`10 typical, you know, accident or even maybe on the -- not
`11 necessarily an extreme case, but at a fairly high but
`12 not extreme feed speed, if I get more than an eighth of
`13 an inch deep cut, I'd consider that probably that would
`14 mean that the system wasn't commercially practical at
`15 least.
`16 And so I thought, okay, an eighth of an inch.
`17 Then how fast is the hand going to be approaching the
`18 blade. Now, there are lots of different ways that a
`19 hand can approach a sawblade. But a fairly common
`20 accident actually is for someone to simply have their
`21 fingers misplaced on the board as they are feeding the
`22 board through the saw in the path of the sawblade.
`23 And human reactions are so slow, that under
`24 those circumstances, people will literally push their
`25 fingers, typically up to three fingers, through the
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`1 sawblade at normal feed speeds before they can flinch
`2 and respond. And so it's that -- that's not at all an
`3 uncommon accident.
`4 And so I figured, well, how fast are you
`5 feeding wood? And so I kind of went over, you know, or
`6 maybe done this in my head, but thought, okay, so we're
`7 feeding wood. How fast? You know, well, a foot per
`8 second would be kind of the upper limit of in my mind of
`9 normal feed speeds for feeding wood through a sawblade.
`10 Now, if you're feeding at a foot per second,
`11 and you don't want to be cut more than an eighth of
`12 inch, that means that you don't want to go more than
`13 about one one-hundredth of a foot because an eighth of
`14 an inch is about one-ninety-sixths of a foot roughly,
`15 one one-hundredth of a foot, which means you have about
`16 one one-hundredth of a second from the time your finger
`17 contacts the blade to stop, so ten milliseconds.
`18 So that gives me my time scale that I, I,
`19 sort of doing an order of magnitude calculation at
`20 least, this gives me my time scale. I've got, I've got
`21 to respond in ten milliseconds. That's a pretty short
`22 time period.
`23 So the next thing I did is, you know, the
`24 sawblade, okay, I know the sawblade is spinning at about
`25 4,000 RPM is a typical speed. I took one of my spare
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`Page 11
`1 sawblades and weighed it. It turned out to weigh about
`2 two pounds.
`3 You can then calculate the angular momentum,
`4 you can calculate the inertia of the two-pound disk and
`5 then apply that speed to it and calculate the angular
`6 momentum, and then do a calculation of how much force
`7 would you have to apply to -- I'd pick the perimeter of
`8 the blade because that would be the most efficient,
`9 whereas, if you applied the force, it would require the
`10 least force to stop the blade.
`11 If you applied out at the outside edge of the
`12 blade, the -- so I calculated how much force would it
`13 take applying a force on the perimeter of the blade to
`14 stop it in ten milliseconds from 4,000 RPM.
`15 And that calculation, turned out it was on
`16 the order of a thousand pounds. And I concluded that I
`17 think I can, I can apply 1,000 pounds to this blade.
`18 That wouldn't be outside the realm of the laws of
`19 physics. And so that was kind of my analysis of, of
`20 kind of whether it was possible or not.
`21 There was a second stage that, if you will,
`22 and that is how can I tell the difference between the
`23 wood and the person, because it doesn't do me any good
`24 to be able to stop the blade. That's a necessary thing
`25 to achieve, but not sufficient. I still also have to be
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`1 able to know when to respond.
`2 And so I looked at -- considered a lot of
`3 different options for how one might possibly distinguish
`4 cutting wood from cutting a person or potentially a
`5 person getting close to the sawblade, because it
`6 would -- in an ideal world, you would actually detect
`7 the contact prior -- detect the dangerous condition
`8 prior to contact with the blade.
`9 Q Um, and had you, had you made any formal
`10 study of table saws before you worked through the
`11 considerations you just described?
`12 A I'm not exactly sure what you mean by
`13 "formal study," but I mean, I was a hobbyist
`14 woodworker. I had not had any experience in the table
`15 saw industry, you know, with power tools of that sort
`16 other than using them prior to that. If that -- I
`17 don't know if that answers your question or not.
`18 Q Exactly. I didn't want -- I wanted to do
`19 the opposite of putting words in your mouth.
`20 A Yes. I appreciate that.
`21 Q So whatever the opposite of hobbyist is what
`22 I meant.
`23 Um, but so the quantitative -- the figures
`24 that you, that you worked with, so, for example, the
`25 eighth of an inch -- let's talk about that -- the eighth
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`1 of an inch deep cut being the basis for your
`2 calculation, where did that dimension come from?
`3 A That was my layman's estimation of the depth
`4 that a blade could penetrate into your finger before it
`5 hit something important. You know, your fingers, you
`6 have some skin.
`7 And it's, it's -- although, you don't want to
`8 have your skin cut, it's typically not a debilitating
`9 accident, and you heal relatively well from an injury
`10 that simply penetrates the skin or removes some skin.
`11 On the other hand, if you get in and hit the
`12 bone or a tendon, that's going to be a much more serious
`13 consequence. And so, you know, I sort of pinched my
`14 finger and looked at it and thought, well, an eighth of
`15 an inch is about right for, for what struck me as an
`16 upper limit for a normal injury to be -- for a system
`17 like this to be commercially viable.
`18 Q And the 4,000 RPM -- well, let me ask a
`19 different one first.
`20 The feed speed that you were considering, a
`21 foot per second, I think you said; is that right?
`22 A Yes.
`23 Q And what was the basis for using the one
`24 foot, one foot per second figure in your
`25 considerations?
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`1 A That was simply my estimation having, you
`2 know, cut a lot of wood on a table saw of what was an
`3 upper limit of a normal feed speed for feeding material
`4 through the path of a blade on a table saw.
`5 Q Are there -- well, when you were thinking
`6 about this at the time in 1999, did you think about any
`7 kinds of accidents other than simply feeding fingers
`8 along with wood into the, into the sawblade?
`9 A I certainly knew that they occurred. Um,
`10 certainly kickback is a common reason for someone's
`11 hand ending up contacting the blade, slips. Reaching
`12 over the blade and contacting it. There are a number
`13 of -- almost an infinite different number of ways you
`14 can end up contacting the sawblade.
`15 I don't know that I tried to assemble any
`16 kind of a list of those. Really I was looking for more,
`17 um, I guess what was -- what I thought were, you know --
`18 without research, what I thought were probably common
`19 accidents. And I would have based that on in some sense
`20 the risks and kind of the operations you do with the
`21 table saw and then sort of anecdotal experience.
`22 I knew, I think at the time of two different
`23 people that had removed the ends of three fingers simply
`24 pushing material through the, through the blade so it
`25 was something that I was familiar with.
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`1 Q Now, and the 4,000 -- the 4,000 RPM figure
`2 that you, that you used in your considerations, where,
`3 where did that come from?
`4 A I don't remember for sure, but I probably
`5 looked at the tag on the back of my saw, which
`6 typically the saws will have a tag. They'll say, you
`7 know, so many horsepower and so many speed, 220 volts
`8 and whatnot. And it will typically have blade RPM on
`9 there.
`10 And so I'm not a hundred percent sure if I
`11 knew that at the time already just from sort of general
`12 knowledge or it was, it was something, you know, I sort
`13 of crawled around the back of my saw and looked at the,
`14 at the tag.
`15 Q And I think you mentioned the sawblade you
`16 were considering was two pounds.
`17 Where, where did that dimension come from to
`18 be used in your considerations?
`19 A I -- it was probably a sawblade I had lying
`20 around. And my -- interestingly, I think it was a
`21 10-inch sawblade, but my saw was a 12-inch saw, so I'm
`22 not a hundred percent sure. Why did I use a 10-inch
`23 blade? I don't remember.
`24 Q I was, I was just going -- I was just going
`25 to ask you if the size of the circular table sawblade
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`1 So that's how I ended up with kind of
`2 focusing on my analysis. And I think it -- I look at
`3 things and at the time looked at things as a physicist.
`4 You know, I was looking for -- I wasn't
`5 trying to calculate a precision answer. I was trying to
`6 get a quick order of magnitude, back-of-the-envelope
`7 kind of assessment of whether it was worth thinking
`8 about this anymore.
`9 And so if it -- the analysis that I was doing
`10 at that point was not something that necessarily
`11 ultimately answered the question of whether this kind of
`12 technology would be a viable solution to injuries on
`13 table saws. It really was sort of a preliminary
`14 analysis of is it worth investigating this further.
`15 Q Yeah. I, I understand, I understand what
`16 you mean. I have done some physics work myself.
`17 Although, it got too hard for me about 1935. I stopped
`18 there. If you have any mass on a spring problem, we
`19 can work on them together.
`20 The other kinds of accidents that you
`21 mentioned, do, do any of them involve hands or other
`22 body parts approaching the sawblade faster than one foot
`23 per second in your experience at the time in 1999?
`24 A I don't know -- you know, I don't know that
`25 I thought through that one way or the other.
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`1 matters in the kinds of rough calculations that you
`2 were doing.
`3 A It -- the size of the blade makes a
`4 significant difference. The -- I don't remember if the
`5 angular momentum goes up as the square or the cube or
`6 the fourth power maybe even of the diameter of the
`7 blade when you factor in the mass going up as well.
`8 So it ends up a 12-inch blade is much harder
`9 to stop. Maybe, maybe a 12-inch blade might be twice as
`10 hard. It might take 2,000 pounds to stop. Whereas, a
`11 10-inch blade, you might be able to stop with a thousand
`12 pounds.
`13 Q And am I correct to think that you -- when
`14 you were making these initial rough calculations, that
`15 you assumed an even distribution of weight throughout
`16 the sawblade?
`17 A Yes.
`18 Q Um, so you -- I think you said you made that
`19 initial feasibility calculation for stopping the blade.
`20 That's the first thing you thought about in
`21 this connection; is that right?
`22 A I think so.
`23 Q Okay. And then you mentioned a second
`24 stage.
`25 How, how did you proceed to consider the
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`1 second stage of the problem?
`2 A Well, I thought about what is different
`3 between wood and flesh, because ultimately, that's what
`4 I'm trying to be able to detect, you know, for this
`5 type of an application.
`6 And so I considered, for instance, that wood
`7 is generally hard and flesh is generally soft. So, for
`8 instance, perhaps I could put an ultrasonic vibration on
`9 the blade, and contact with flesh would absorb some of
`10 that vibration, damp it in some fashion that wouldn't --
`11 that wood would not.
`12 And I thought about an optical system. For
`13 instance, that flesh, particularly blood is red and
`14 relatively distinct from the colors that you would find
`15 in wood, and perhaps you could look for red on the teeth
`16 of the blade.
`17 I thought about proximity detection of, you
`18 know, could I detect it before I actually made the
`19 contact using the blade essentially as a type of
`20 antenna. And then I thought about the -- actually
`21 looking for contact with the blade based on the
`22 different electrical properties of the flesh and the
`23 wood.
`24 In particular, I suspected, although, I
`25 didn't know for sure at the time, I suspected that wood,
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`Page 20
`1 of a gut check of how well does this seem like it would
`2 likely work to me.
`3 And so, for instance, for the ultrasonic
`4 thing, that seemed like kind of a long shot that I could
`5 make that work because, you know, you do have softer
`6 spots in wood.
`7 And, you know, you're talking about probably
`8 a pretty small contact with the blade hopefully, and,
`9 therefore, the idea that you could actually sort of
`10 discern that signal change from that seemed unlikely.
`11 The optical system, I can't say for sure that
`12 I did this at that time, but I -- the -- I know that
`13 the -- one of the problems you have if you're detecting
`14 contact on the top and looking for the teeth to come
`15 around with blood on them is that you lose an awful lot
`16 of time in transit for the teeth from, you know -- as
`17 the teeth come out of the table at the back and then
`18 they rotate over to the front, if you make contact at
`19 the back, it might be a third of a revolution before you
`20 get to the front.
`21 And assuming you put -- you can't in all
`22 likelihood cannot put the sensor above the table because
`23 the wood occupies that space.
`24 And so that means you probably are going to
`25 have to have your optical sensor below the table. And
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`1 because it's generally not salty, would not be
`2 conductive in the way that a salty wet human would.
`3 Q And so, when you had gotten to this stage of
`4 your thinking about the problem, roughly, roughly how
`5 much time had passed from when the issue first occurred
`6 to you -- I should say when the idea of an active
`7 injury mitigation system first occurred to you?
`8 A I don't think I could say definitively. It
`9 could have been a few days. It, it, you know, a week.
`10 I don't remember kind of the -- sort of the specifics
`11 of like did I, did I think it straight through, if you
`12 will.
`13 Um, I probably mulled it over for a little
`14 while, kind of -- I like to come up with ideas in the
`15 shower. And I may have, over a few days, may have sort
`16 of thought through the different possibilities to see
`17 what I could come up with.
`18 Q Did you, did you do any of the kind of
`19 feasibility analysis that you discussed earlier with
`20 respect to any of the potential second stage solutions
`21 that you just mentioned?
`22 A Sure.
`23 I, I for each of them, I kind of considered,
`24 I don't know, the -- initially, sort of the
`25 plausibility, if you will, of like, you know, just kind
`
`1 the likely spot for it then would be in front of the
`2 blade as the blade comes back down, as the teeth come
`3 back down into the table.
`4 Well, that takes 4,000 RPM. It's about 15
`5 milliseconds per revolution. A third of a revolution is
`6 five milliseconds. So I've potentially lost half of my
`7 available stopping time before I can even start to
`8 respond if I do an optical system that, you know, can
`9 only detect the, the blood beneath the table.
`10 So that didn't seem like a -- didn't seem
`11 like a great option. I also think -- considered at the
`12 time that that would be -- trying to deal with the dust.
`13 You know, you're in a very dusty environment, and an
`14 optical sensor in a dusty environment is potentially
`15 problematic. There may be solutions, but, but of
`16 concern.
`17 For the proximity detection, I thought that
`18 it could be done. I thought I could, I could make a
`19 circuit that would detect as a hand approached the
`20 blade.
`21 But I also thought it -- the physics of
`22 what's going on there in terms of the electric fields
`23 and the changes of what you're detecting under those
`24 circumstances are very sort of nonspecific in a sense
`25 that, in that a finger, a single finger -- if the
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`1 sawblade is here, a single finger four inches away --
`2 well, a single finger an inch away might generate the
`3 same signal change as your hand four inches away.
`4 And so it would be very difficult to make
`5 such a system that I thought would reliably detect
`6 contact and not go off for other things.
`7 And in particular, I think the -- things like
`8 wet wood, for instance, or metal would also have
`9 significant influences on that that would, that would
`10 make it difficult to make the distinction accurately and
`11 reliably.
`12 And so those -- I sort of put those aside and
`13 kept thinking, and ultimately, sort of settled on
`14 contact detection as perhaps the most likely to be a
`15 robust way to detect the difference.
`16 Q So at, at this point in time when you'd come
`17 to the conclusion that the contact system you mentioned
`18 was the most likely to be robust, did you, did you
`19 believe that any of the other systems you mentioned
`20 would be workable?
`21 A I don't know that I had a conclusion about
`22 that. I think I had -- certainly had significant
`23 reservations, I would say, about any of the other
`24 solutions that I considered for the reasons that I
`25 described.
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`Page 23
`1 Q And, and so roughly, roughly how long then
`2 did it take you from the first time you thought of an
`3 active injury mitigation system until you settled on
`4 the contact detection system as the one you were going
`5 to explore further?
`6 A Again, I don't think I could say with
`7 precision, but a relatively short period of time. Um,
`8 you know, in that, in that -- you know, I may have
`9 first had the idea, kind of the concept in the summer
`10 and, you know, probably even late summer. You know, I
`11 don't remember that specifically. But once I started
`12 working on it, it was, you know, fairly quick.
`13 Q And what was the first physical thing --
`14 what was the first thing you did in the physical world
`15 about -- to follow up on, on your ideas about active
`16 injury mitigation systems?
`17 A Well, I think, as I described, I mean, there
`18 would have been physical -- like I would have moved my
`19 hands on the saw to sort of figure out what's -- how
`20 fast do I normally feed wood. How does it feel if I
`21 try and do this at a foot per second? Is that like
`22 ridiculous or reasonable?
`23 And so I think I literally physically kind of
`24 played that out on my saw. I physically weighed the
`25 sawblade. That -- those would probably have been the
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`Page 24
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`1 first things I did.
`2 Q Okay. Um, I'll ask you an
`3 uncharacteristically direct question.
`4 Did you, did you -- because I'm trying to
`5 understand how the process worked. But really what I
`6 was, what I was curious about is this:
`7 Did you start trying to build a braking
`8 system before you settled on the contact detection
`9 system as the first part of the second stage to explore?
`10 A No.
`11 Q Okay. So you had, you had worked your way
`12 through the feasibility analysis of the second stage
`13 before you started building anything?
`14 A Yes. Yes.
`15 Q Okay. Um, and during this time after you
`16 first thought about active injury mitigation systems
`17 and the first time you started to build anything in
`18 that regard, did you consider whether anybody was
`19 already making such systems?
`20 A In the general sense, I considered it in
`21 that I wasn't aware of anyone having made such a
`22 system. And I certainly would have known if they were
`23 widely commercially available.
`24 I would have had no way to know if, you know,
`25 somebody in outer Russia had made one and, you know,
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`Page 25
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`1 only sold it there, for instance. But in general, I
`2 didn't -- I wasn't aware of one.
`3 Q Did you say to yourself: I wonder why
`4 nobody is doing this?
`5 A I don't remember doing that, no.
`6 Q Did you, did you ever ask yourself that
`7 question: I wonder why someone -- I wonder why no one
`8 else is doing this?
`9 A Um, I don't know if it was something I asked
`10 myself. It's a question that's come up certainly, and
`11 I can't -- you know, over the last 16 years, did it
`12 come up first? Did I ask myself? I couldn't say. But
`13 it's definitely a question that, that, um, I've had
`14 some thoughts about and some discussions about.
`15 Q Um, well, I mean, let me ask you then.
`16 What were -- what had been your thoughts and
`17 discussions about that question of why nobody else was
`18 making an active injury mitigation system at the time
`19 you started work?
`20 A Well, the, the first explicit thing that I
`21 can remember that was kind of directly on that, I
`22 believe occurred in, I think it was, I think it was at
`23 the meeting with the Power Tool Institute members in
`24 Cleveland, that I believe would have been November of
`25 2000, where one of the engineers I think from Delta
`
`212-279-9424
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`7 (Pages 22 - 25)
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`SD3 Exhibit 2013 – Page 7
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`CONFIDENTIAL BUSINESS INFORMATION
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`Page 26
`1 said we always just thought it would be too late once
`2 you contacted the blade, that you couldn't respond
`3 quickly enough.
`4 And, and I, you know, that -- I guess by
`5 nature, I tend to be kind of contrary. So I tend to not
`6 accept kind of things at first glance, and so I looked
`7 more deeply than that. But that was, that was probably
`8 the most explicit occurrence of that kind of discussion.
`9 Q So let's go, let's go back.
`10 You've, you've worked your way through the
`11 feasibility thoughts about both the first stage and the
`12 second stage.
`13 Um, how did you -- how did you proceed?
`14 A The next thing I did was to build an actual
`15 contact detection system, a, a -- I built a small
`16 electronic circuit that would respond to me touching
`17 the blade.
`18 And I just did that on the bench with not in
`19 a saw, but just on the bench with a sawblade laying
`20 there on top of some circuit board materials that formed
`21 capacitive coupling to the sawblade.
`22 I hooked an oscilloscope up to the blade to
`23 see the signal; that I made a little oscillator that
`24 would create the signal, and then I hooked the
`25 oscilloscope up to the, to the blade.
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`Page 27
`1 I then