How to Make SawStop Brake Changes

I've had a SawStop table saw in my shop for a really long time. I demonstrate on them quite frequently at woodworking shows and one of the questions I often get is what does it really take to do the brake changes? Now, I'll tell you what, when the saw first came in and I had a lot of woodworking classes going on in my shop, I was concerned about time we might lose when students were doing brake changes as we went from one operation to another such as conventional table saw blade to a dado head, which requires a brake change or vice versa, dado head to conventional blade. So, here's the deal. We're going to show you how this happens.

We're going to show you in real time, with no editing or compressing, the time it takes to happen, so that you understand about this process. So, I've already got my dado head out. The dado brake is in there right now. There's a lever down here that controls the clamp that would be on the riving knife or the splitter. So, that comes up out of the way.

Take this pin out. The dado brake comes off. And of course I'm doing everything from above the table. Like I normally would. When the new brake goes on, there's a hole in it that aligns with a pin at the bottom, a second hole that aligns with the pin at the top.

This pin goes back in with a red handle up. Turn that down That locks it in place. Clear! That's it. So, the brake changes are really fast, especially once you've done them a few times.

When I had those brand new students in my classes and they had never used a SawStop before, a little bit of edumacation about how to use the saw and how to do the brake changes and they were very comfortable making these changes on their own. To finish this off, I really don't have a rat living in my table saw. That was just to see if you folks would catch it as it came by. So, that covers brake changes on a SawStop saw. Real fast, real easy to do.