Why Body Sensing is Essential for Band Saw Safety

BladeStop, with its revolutionary body sensing technology, reduces the high risk of bandsaw operation-related injuries and has a multitude of injury saves reported globally. BladeStop has quickly established a high sense of morale around bandsaw operators within processing plants.

Chris Taylor, National Safety Manager at Woolworths Meat Company came back to Scott after a severe injury was avoided, with the use of BladeStop:

“A Bandsaw operator was cutting Rib Cages in the Boning Room at our WOW Meat Co. Bunbury Site. He received a minor cut to the tip of his little finger on his right hand when it made contact with the Bandsaw blade triggering the “BladeStop” safety mechanism. The “GloveCheck” system wasn’t triggered due to obstruction caused by hand & finger placement underneath the primal. The injury received was very minor in nature compared to the potential had we not implemented BladeStop bandsaws in our business. We now have 26 BladeStop bandsaws in operation nationally. This equipment has all but eliminated serious band saw injury from our business and in turn will continue to prevent our most valuable asset (our people) from being seriously hurt”.

BladeStop’s body sensing technology reduces the risk of serious injury or amputation to a meat saw (band saw) operator. The blade will stop upon sensing skin contact with the blade, meaning that even if the operator’s hand is out of the camera’s vision, the body sensing technology is still there to reduce the risk of injury. Body sensing technology provides a level of protection that a ‘camera only’ system can not, including hands/limbs out of the camera’s zone, slips and trips onto saws, fatigue, operator mistakes, and close cut protection.

Recently, other safety saw solutions that only provide camera “vision only” protection have entered the market, these systems do not protect the operator when their limbs are not in the camera’s sensing area. This includes hands being under the meat whilst it is being processed. Operating a band saw with a vision-only system leaves the operator open to serious risk of amputation or severe injury.