GERMANY – Altendorf GmbH convinced a 12-member jury with its novel safety system for sliding table saws in the category “Industry and Crafts”.

This is an important area of development as a workers’ hands are only a few centimeters away from the high-speed rotating saw blade when they guide workpieces during sawing operations. Every day around the world, work-related accidents occur when various materials are cut using sliding table saws. For the most part, commonly known protection systems use technology that relies on the conductivity of skin to detect a hazardous situation and to then pulsate the saw blade to a stop. The problem with this approach: All existing solutions require that contact between the saw blade and hand takes place for the safety system to kick in. In some systems, the machine’s internal components are damaged to prevent continuation of work after the incident.

Altendorf’s system relies on the ability to detect the hazard at a very early stage. Various defined situations are optically detected and classified. For this, two cameras collect data which is then processed by a powerful hand-detection program. When the system identifies a dangerous situation, the hazard is eliminated: Within a quarter of a second the whole saw unit quickly slows down and the saw blade abruptly stops. After the safety assistant has been activated, the machine can immediately go back to work. No damage to the machine or saw blade occurs and the productivity of operations remains intact.

Karl-Friedrich Schröder, Head of Development at the Altendorf Group, explains the motivation for the ground-breaking development: “We’ve always been uneasy about the fact that existing systems only ever kick in after the accident has happened. And they cause damage to parts of the machine as well. We wanted the machine to act sooner, first and foremost to prevent accidents – that is, to protect the operator. So we developed a system that gains us valuable time, one that enables us to disable the danger before contact even happens.”

The OWL innovation award recognizes companies located in East Westphalia, Germany, for their innovative products, services and processes and is an important business award with strong participation. A total of 85 companies with 91 innovations submitted applications to the 13th award competition.