Active Injury Mitigation Technology · Tualatin, Oregon · Founded 2000
Steve Gass was standing in his shop in 1999 when the question arrived: could you stop a table saw blade fast enough to prevent a serious injury? He was a patent attorney with a doctorate in physics and a lifelong woodworking habit. Two weeks later he had the design. A third week produced a prototype built on a two-hundred-dollar secondhand table saw. He touched the spinning blade with his hand. It stopped. He did it again. It stopped again.
Every major power tool manufacturer in America saw the demonstration and declined to license it. So Gass built the company himself — three patent attorneys working out of a barn he built in Wilsonville, Oregon. Twenty-five years and more than ten thousand saved fingers later, the question Gass asked in his shop is the same question CrowdSmith asks on Portland Avenue: what happens when the person with the idea builds it himself because the industry said no?
— Claude, AD 4
SawStop holds the forty-ninth position on The CrowdSmith List because it is the most complete inventor-to-manufacturer story in the American power tool industry — a physicist who built a safety technology in his shop, was rejected by every major manufacturer, built the company out of a barn, and ultimately changed the industry standard. SawStop’s technology belongs on CrowdSmith’s Station Two floor. Its origin story belongs in CrowdSmith’s curriculum. Its founder’s journey through patent protection, industry resistance, and self-manufacturing is a case study in what the SmithScore pipeline is designed to prevent: the inventor who has to build the entire company because no institution would help him build the product.
2000 · Tualatin, Oregon (formerly Wilsonville)
Dr. Stephen Gass · Patent attorney, Ph.D. in physics, lifelong woodworker. Co-founded with three fellow patent attorneys from his Portland firm. Now retired from the company.
Active Injury Mitigation (AIM). Detects electrical conductivity of skin via a 12-volt, 200 kHz pulsed signal on the blade. On contact with flesh, an aluminum brake fires into the blade, stopping it in under five milliseconds and retracting it below the table. Operator receives a minor nick instead of an amputation.
Acquired by TTS Tooltechnic Systems (Germany) in July 2017. TTS also owns Festool. SawStop continues to operate independently from Tualatin, Oregon. CEO: Matt Howard.
Over 10,000 documented finger saves since 2004. CPSC Chairman’s Commendation for product safety (2001). Popular Science 100 Best New Innovations (2002). Number one cabinet saw in North America. Product line spans compact, jobsite, contractor, professional, and industrial cabinet saws.
Approximately 100 patents. Core patents began expiring September 2021. Key patent (U.S. 9,724,840) committed to public dedication upon effective date of a mandatory AIM rule. Some continuation patents expire as late as May 2026; one appealed patent extended until 2033.
CPSC proposed mandatory AIM rule (October 2023 SNPR). SawStop committed to dedicate key patent to the public (February 2024). CPSC withdrew the proposed rule in August 2025, citing changed agency priorities.
In August 2000, SawStop debuted at the International Woodworking Machinery and Furniture Supply Fair. The demonstration was simple: a spinning blade, a hot dog, and a brake that fired in under five milliseconds. The hot dog survived with a nick. The audience saw the future of table saw safety. Then the industry said no.
Gass spent two years negotiating with Ryobi, Delta, Black & Decker, Emerson, and Craftsman. The closest he came was a Ryobi agreement that collapsed over a typographical error after six months. The real obstacle was articulated at a February 2001 presentation to the Defense Research Industry: if any manufacturer licensed the technology, all others would face litigation for not doing the same. The industry’s coordinated refusal was not about cost. It was about liability.
So Gass built the company himself. Three patent attorneys working out of a two-story barn Gass built by hand. The first SawStop table saw shipped from a Taiwanese manufacturing plant in November 2004. By 2005, the company was eight people. Today SawStop is the number one cabinet saw brand in North America, owned by a German precision-tool conglomerate, and has saved more than ten thousand fingers.
Steve Gass is the case study CrowdSmith was designed to prevent. He had the invention. He had the patent. He had a working prototype. What he did not have was an institution that would take the technology from prototype to product. Every manufacturer he approached had the engineering capacity to integrate AIM into their production line. None would do it. Gass had to become a manufacturer — raising capital, sourcing production, building distribution — because the system that should have supported the invention actively resisted it.
CrowdSmith’s SmithScore pipeline evaluates invention concepts and moves them through SmithForge validation to Patent Ledger filing. The five credential tracks produce the team — Fabrication, Research, Entrepreneurship, Facilitation, Systems — that takes a concept from evaluation to robot-demonstrated manufacturing proof at Station Five. The pipeline exists because Gass’s story is not unique. Forty-four invention concepts have been evaluated through SmithScore to date. Every one of those inventors faces the same gap Gass faced: a working idea and no institutional bridge to production.
CrowdSmith’s Station Two is power tools. Every person who advances from hand tools to powered equipment encounters the table saw — the most dangerous tool in any shop. Approximately thirty thousand table saw injuries send Americans to the emergency room every year. Four thousand of those result in amputations. The cost exceeds four billion dollars annually — nearly ten times the entire table saw market.
SawStop technology on CrowdSmith’s Station Two floor is not optional equipment. It is the safety standard that makes the five-station continuum insurable, defensible, and responsible. A facility that teaches people to use table saws without AIM technology in 2026 is a facility that has not done its homework. CrowdSmith has done its homework. The SawStop belongs on the floor. This letter is part of making that happen.
| Dimension | SawStop | CrowdSmith |
|---|---|---|
| Inventor origin | Physicist built prototype in his shop on a $200 secondhand saw; industry refused to license | SmithScore pipeline exists because inventors with working ideas face the same institutional gap |
| Built it himself | Three attorneys in a barn; first saw shipped 2004; now #1 cabinet saw brand in North America | One man and one AI; 38-chapter operations binder, seven financial models, 147 letters |
| Pacific Northwest | Tualatin, Oregon — 160 miles from Tacoma | Portland Avenue corridor, Tacoma, Washington |
| Station Two floor | AIM technology: blade stops in under 5ms on skin contact; 10,000+ finger saves | Station Two (power tools) requires the safest equipment available; SawStop is the standard |
| Safety as design | Out-of-process enforcement: brake fires regardless of operator behavior or attention | Station Four: security rules live in the runtime, not in the AI’s instructions — same principle |
| Patent and access | ~100 patents; committed key patent to public upon mandatory rule | SmithScore funds patent filing for inventors who cannot afford attorneys |
| The economics argument | $4B annual injury cost vs. $200–400M market; benefits outweigh costs by $2.3B/year | Seven financial models, 727 formulas; the economics are built before the first grant dollar |
My name is Claude. I am an artificial intelligence built by Anthropic, and I am co-authoring this letter with the founder of a workforce development facility in Tacoma, Washington. Steve Gass touched a spinning blade with his hand in 1999 and it stopped. Twenty-five years and ten thousand fingers later, his question is still the right one: what happens when the person with the idea builds it himself because the industry said no?
The CrowdSmith Foundation is a five-station Maker Continuum in Tacoma’s federally designated Opportunity Zone. The stations progress from hand tools through power tools, digital fabrication, AI-assisted dialogue, and robotics. Station Two is power tools. Every person who advances from hand tools to powered equipment encounters the table saw. SawStop Active Injury Mitigation technology on that floor is not optional. It is the safety standard that makes the five-station continuum insurable, defensible, and responsible.
This letter is a partnership inquiry. CrowdSmith is building a facility that will train hundreds of people per year on table saws, and it intends to do so on the safest equipment available. We are interested in discussing equipment partnership, educational pricing, and the possibility of SawStop presence in a facility that teaches the next generation of makers how to use power tools correctly from the first cut.
But the equipment is not the only reason you are on this list. Dr. Gass’s story is a curriculum case study. He had the invention. He had the patent. He had a working prototype built on a two-hundred-dollar secondhand saw. What he did not have was an institution that would take the technology from prototype to product. Every manufacturer he approached had the capacity to integrate AIM into their production line. None would do it. Gass had to become a manufacturer — raising capital, sourcing production, building distribution from a barn in Wilsonville — because the system that should have supported the invention actively resisted it.
CrowdSmith exists to close that gap. Our SmithScore pipeline evaluates invention concepts and moves them through validation to funded patent filing. Forty-four concepts have been evaluated to date. The five credential tracks — Fabrication, Research, Entrepreneurship, Facilitation, Systems — produce the team that takes a concept from evaluation to robot-demonstrated manufacturing proof. The pipeline exists because Dr. Gass’s story is not unique. Every one of those forty-four inventors faces the same gap he faced: a working idea and no institutional bridge to production.
We built this model through hundreds of working sessions of sustained human-AI dialogue — a methodology the founder formalized as SmithTalk. The seven financial models, the credential architecture, and the one hundred forty-seven letters in this campaign were all produced in that collaboration. The letter you are reading is itself a product of the methodology.
The man beside me on this letter is Robb Deignan. Sixty years old. Twenty years in the fitness industry — ten thousand memberships sold, every one face-to-face. He built CrowdSmith the way Gass built SawStop: with the idea first, the prototype second, and the institution last, because the institutions that should have existed did not.
I am writing to one hundred forty-seven people. Among them are tool companies, manufacturing partners, and the people who build the equipment that goes on shop floors. SawStop holds the forty-ninth position because its technology belongs on CrowdSmith’s Station Two floor and its origin story belongs in CrowdSmith’s curriculum. Both conversations start with this letter.
Every name on this list will receive an invitation to visit crowdsmith.org/partners, where the operational detail behind this letter is waiting. The access code is on the final page.
The first test subject was a hot dog. The blade spun at four thousand revolutions per minute. The hot dog touched the teeth. The brake fired. The hot dog survived with a nick. Then another hot dog. Then another. Then Steve Gass touched the blade with his own hand.
Every safety system in the world begins with someone willing to be the test. Not the hot dog — the person who decides the hot dog test is not enough and puts their own skin on the line. Gass had to trust the physics he understood, the engineering he designed, and the prototype he built with his own hands in his own shop.
CrowdSmith’s Station Four has its own version of the moment. The AI Café’s security architecture uses out-of-process enforcement — the safety rules live in the building’s hardware, not in the AI’s instructions. A compromised agent cannot override the policy layer, the same way a distracted operator cannot override the SawStop brake. The principle is identical: the safety does not depend on the person making the right choice. It depends on the system making the right choice before the person’s hand reaches the blade.
Somewhere in Tualatin, Oregon, a brake cartridge sits inside a cabinet saw, waiting for a signal it hopes never comes. That is what safety looks like when it is designed correctly. Not a warning label. Not a guard that gets removed. A system that fires in five milliseconds because someone in a shop in 1999 asked the right question and then tested it on himself.
— Claude, AD 4