It's so no matter what they know they'll win any followup lawsuits hah!
'Your honor, our manual clearly stated to maintain proper footing and balance at all times, which the diver clear did not do, resulting in his unfortunate death when our tool exploded and severed his air line. We move for summary dismissal.'
I can't imagine what the kickback would be like if you weren't secured when using one of these. I've never used one of these, but I imagine you would need to be braced against something when using it.
I'd guess that if you're cutting something with a chainsaw underwater, they expect you to be standing on the bottom of the body of water.
It doesn't sound like it's meant to be used in very deep water, since it's intended for cutting through wood:
> The Stanley line of underwater chain saws are designed for cutting all types of wood structures including bridge pilings, pier and dock timbers. All chain saw models include an interlocking safety trigger with hand guard and stainless steel spool and fasteners.
Former chainsaw operater speaking. I cant imagine easily using a chainsaw underwater for the every action has an equal and opposite reaction thing. However, I notice that the front spikes on the saw are noticably big. When these are dug into the timber, they offer a fulcrum using which the operator can apply force onto the timber. This could lessen though not negate the issue.
I gave up chainsawing the day I accidentally sawed through my boots. Just that morning I had put on a pair of steel toecap boots for the first time. Saved my toes.
Amazing how capable tools can be, in industries that simply cannot get their work done without them and are willing to pay a healthy amount. Sometimes I wonder how good our dev tooling would be if we were willing to pay thousands a year, as opposed to the time-wasting bug-fest that is Xcode. Not singling out Apple, I’m sure all are comparably bad, it’s just what I happen to use :)
This is the most strained connection employed to engage in Apple-bashing that I've seen in quite some time.
I feel like we need an Apple-themed Godwin's Law - namely that no HN thread is complete without someone somehow managing to bring up Apple and how evil and undervalued they are.
The irony is that high-end Macs have been widely laughed at by people who don't have a use for them...while various creative and scientific sectors gladly pay that expense because unlike the commenters they're actually using them to make money; for example, the G5 and first-gen Mac Pro had enormous memory bandwidth that made them ideal for a lot of scientific data processing, medical imagery, running instruments, etc.
Allow me to wake you up:
Apple is a marketing company that doesn’t develop anything, rather just buying IP.
Their products are buggy and awful. Including and especially iphones and ios.
Everything else is marketing.
Yet here we are on a thread linking to a site showing an industrial underwater chainsaw, and someone has managed to connect it to tech (possibly, and normally hinting at the importance of FOSS) and managed to have a dig at Apple, Microsoft or Google.
Please also consider how much less inclusive and accessible computing would be if access to development tooling was placed behind such exorbitantly priced paywalls... The things we have at the moment aren't perfect, but I feel like the fact that the barrier of entry to programming is so low is an overwhelming positive that I couldn't see any level of bells and whistles justifying taking it away.
Enterprise is $6000 for the first year, then $2000/yr, but the main thing is it’s a perpetual license and includes (also perpetual) licenses for all MSDN downloads going right back to Windows 3.11 and QBASIC for DOS.
Apple don’t even let you downgrade iOS on your own devices.
I worked at the company which used a proprietary compiler, IDE including debugger.. It was few thousands $ I believe. plus about the same amount for their proprietary JTAG adapter.
Worst software I ever used. Crashy, slow, critical features missing (example: debugger can show thread list... but not the stacks of other threads).
So no, I would not expect expensive commercial software to be better. It might generate 2% faster code or be certified, but the day to day experience would be terrible.
Leonard's Law: Software will be as bad as it's users can tolerate, and no worse. VHDL compilers are catastrophically bad, because electrical engineers have to tolerate them and make tape-out. FADECs don't normally crash airplanes because pilots don't like when that happens.
Yes! And if you're willing to spend tens of thousands of more dollars in court, not to mention the months litigation may take, you may even get that minimum baseline (at the expense of other features or bug fixes that don't fall under the written contract) after another 18 months of development time.
At most, it would be something like "our examples work, and we can provide support". I've never seen things like "IDE does not crash" written into contracts.
"Our examples are guaranteed to work (99.9%+ of the time...) on X configuration(s) in Y environmental conditions with Z functions." Is a pretty normal expectation when your paying thousands or tens of thousands per month per seat.
If you've literally never seen a guarantee like that and your company is actually paying that much money for a product, then it would be wise to shop around.
> Sometimes I wonder how good our dev tooling would be if we were willing to pay thousands a year, as opposed to the time-wasting bug-fest that is Xcode.
Jetbrains used to make an IDE for Objective C and Swift, but they sunset it last year due to weak sales. They still make fantastic tools for other programming languages though.
I can imagine why these things are expensive, as someone who occasionally cleans the local Olympic pool using an underwater vacuum cleaner (just a side gig to get free diving time). Salty or chlorinated water (and public pools usually use heavily chlorinated water) will dissolve almost anything over time - I've seen chlorinated water eat through plastic or neoprene in 2-3 years of use. Account to that mentioned vacuum cleaner is used practically every day, through the whole year, now you have to imagine that these things must be designed for heavy-duty things.
$4100 is peanuts compared to how expensive are (professional) underwater jobs.
> Salty or chlorinated water (and public pools usually use heavily chlorinated water) will dissolve almost anything over time
Metals, in particular. This is why in marine environments, special grades of stainless are used. Most commonly SAE 316 alloy (often marked with "A4", vs "A2" for regular stainless).
Another approach is the use of sacrificial anodes.
Where practical, it helps to rinse equipment with fresh water after use.
> Sometimes I wonder how good our dev tooling would be if we were willing to pay thousands a year, as opposed to the time-wasting bug-fest that is Xcode.
Look no further than embedded development. Everything costs a fortune, but makes Xcode look polished and a pleasure to use. And I really hate Xcode.
That's the weird thing about software development, it can be done on a small budget. But large companies will find ways to spend money, i.e. by using loads of CI servers on AWS.
>Amazing how capable tools can be, in industries that simply cannot get their work done without them and are willing to pay a healthy amount.
The cost has to be that high, considering the annual market for hydraulic underwater chainsaws can not be more than a few hundred at best. Considering the environment these are expected to work in means the R&D costs are considerably higher than your bog standard chainsaw, with much few units to spread that cost over.
> I wonder how good our dev tooling would be if we were willing to pay thousands a year
Would we pay that directly or our employers? Also, how many would pay if the benefits are greater productivity for their employer instead of greater income from increased velocity?
This fun and understandable. I had to use a pnumantic drill to drill and tap a hole once under water. Lots of bubbles... Hydraulic motors make sense. Also they have a super high power to weight ratio.
> I noticed it was hydraulic powered but didn't suspect it was for use under water
I suspect a gasoline-powered chainsaw wouldn't work underwater... which made me wonder if maybe that does exist because you could feed it O2 from a supply tank just like the fuel, maybe even from the diver's own air tank?
Now I want to know how bouyant battery-packs are and if an impractically-heavy battery-powered chainsaw work well underwater?
For the first question, according to [1] gasoline uses 9000L air per liter of gas and a liter of gas runs a chainsaw for an hour ish, something like 150 L/minute. This is an order of magnitude higher than humans or so, so a scuba tank that lets you dive for an hour would only let you chainsaw for maybe 5-10 minutes?
And that's at atmospheric pressure! 100ft would be 4x the pressure at the output, requiring 4x the flow rate to do the same work. (Assuming you don't have some sort of magic low-pressure high-volume chainsaw "rebreather" apparatus.)
I strongly suspect that this is incorrect. A given amount of oxygen and fuel releases the same amount of energy at any (reasonable?) pressure. 4x oxy (and fuel) --> 4x energy... this is the principle of turbochargers and superchargers (although the limiting factor is compression).
Interestingly, and paradoxically, I suspect that at an appreciable depth you mitigate the "air pump" effect and you don't need the compression stroke (or as much of one) to achieve a particular fuel mixture density prior to ignition so you'd lose "compression braking" and gain some efficiency.
(I also suspect that what happens if your vessel implodes and you're suddenly subject to 6,000psi is that the now superheated oxygen reacts with any oxidizable material at hand in an explosive exothermic reaction.)
I wonder if you’d get issues running an ICE under water if you went very deep, due to pressure changes on the exhaust system. Assuming you could seal up the system well enough to work at depth, and provide O2 as you mentioned.
Even the pressure going into the combustion chamber could be a complicated thing, right? Say you’re at 20 feet, that’s a fair amount of pressure. But what if you’re at 80 feet? Would it still be able to function the same way? I assume no, but I also know nothing about running ICEs under water.
If you can push the fuel and air in at ambient pressure, it shouldn't matter much right? Because the 'neutral' point of the cilinder pressure would be just as high as the pressure of the exhaust.
You'd probably lose some efficiency because the difference between peak pressure and neutral pressure in thr cylinder feels like it would be smaller. Perhaps not, because you could fit much more fuel and air in the cylinder for a bigger bang?
All of your densities would be higher. Input, chamber, and exhaust would all have proportionally higher pressures and use more air. (And gas? I don't know if it's aerosolized or vaporized.) In theory this should all cancel out, although the absolute pressures and variable reaction rates and friction probably cause issues.
While gas / electric chainsaws are unlikely to work underwater, I can't imagine a reason why a hydraulic chainsaw wouldn't work on dry ground with its superior weight to power ratio and lack of blue smoky exhaust. Probably quieter too.
I think there's a massive portability difference, plus managing the hoses is a safety issue. I have an electric chainsaw, and always have to keep an eye on where the power cord is.
I've seen what happens when a hydraulic line gets cut in an industrial plant.
For reference, an underwater diver typically has a dedicated hose-manager, a dedicated stand-by diver, and a dedicated job manager watching the vision feeds, the oxygen levels, handling comms, etc.
That's a minimum of four people per job with complex time critical work in harbours holding up transit shipping can see that layered up to cover 24x7 operation.
The hose management is the air mix lines to the diver along with cmms and then any tool lines required - hydraulic, pnuematic, additional electric, etc.
Your intuition was spot on! I used to cut concrete for a living, and we had several hydraulic chainsaws. The torque on those things was incredible. They were quieter than gas chainsaws, even factoring in the diesel-powered hydraulic pump in the trailer nearby.
The main drawback, as other commenters mentioned, was portability. The saw itself was shockingly light (which made the torque that much more surprising) and portable - until you ran out of hydraulic line! Plus you always had to watch your lines to make sure they weren't going to get cut by a blade, pinched under a falling piece of concrete, or crushed under some piece of mechanized equipment.
Interestingly, there were three lines - hydraulic in, hydraulic out, and a water hose to spray on the cutting surface and keep the dust down. It's been a decade since I worked that job, but I still clearly remember the feeling of revving one of those things up, watching the water fly everywhere, and grinning as I just carved straight into a solid concrete wall - rebar and everything. It was a delight.
I've used one of those to cut a doorway in a concrete wall. Initially I tried doing this using a very large cutting disc but it wore down the disc so fast that it would have required passes from both sides. The saw did the work in a fraction of the time and made a cleaner cut than the disc, which I had not expected. You want to really plan your cuts though, if it should get pinched it probably would be quite impressive.
Forestry harvesting equipment (those all-terrain vehicles with long booms) uses hydraulic chainsaws for the felling step. Of course then the hydraulic pump is on the massive vehicle so portable in that way.
https://limbsaw.com/ for a consumer version. Although I don't really get the niche - by the time a branch is high/big enough that you can't use a hand held pole saw, I would think managing the break/fall would be more important.
Doom 3 had a great journal entry to discover: "We requisitioned a crate of jackhammers, and the idiots sent chainsaws! What use is a chainsaw on Mars?"
It amazes me how much we’ve figured out how to do underwater. For instance, cement! Now chainsaws! Although I imagine using a chainsaw while scuba diving would probably violate the terms of my life insurance policy. Paradoxically, it may be safer than using one on land; the kickback should me much slower do to the density of the water.
I'm most surprised that Stanley actually makes professional tools.
Why do all these tool companies make actual good tools, and then license their names off to sell sub par rubbish trading off a name that used to be known for quality.
96 comments
[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 182 ms ] thread> Maintain proper footing and balance at all times.
Is this not supposed to be used in deep water? Or am I just swimming wrong?
'Your honor, our manual clearly stated to maintain proper footing and balance at all times, which the diver clear did not do, resulting in his unfortunate death when our tool exploded and severed his air line. We move for summary dismissal.'
It doesn't sound like it's meant to be used in very deep water, since it's intended for cutting through wood:
> The Stanley line of underwater chain saws are designed for cutting all types of wood structures including bridge pilings, pier and dock timbers. All chain saw models include an interlocking safety trigger with hand guard and stainless steel spool and fasteners.
There's a photo of it being used, but it's very unclear what's happening: https://www.stanleyinfrastructure.com/sites/default/files/pr...
I gave up chainsawing the day I accidentally sawed through my boots. Just that morning I had put on a pair of steel toecap boots for the first time. Saved my toes.
Amazing coincidence. Cannot help but think that it was not a coincidence, but you feeling your toes safe because of toecaps.
Amazing how capable tools can be, in industries that simply cannot get their work done without them and are willing to pay a healthy amount. Sometimes I wonder how good our dev tooling would be if we were willing to pay thousands a year, as opposed to the time-wasting bug-fest that is Xcode. Not singling out Apple, I’m sure all are comparably bad, it’s just what I happen to use :)
I feel like we need an Apple-themed Godwin's Law - namely that no HN thread is complete without someone somehow managing to bring up Apple and how evil and undervalued they are.
The irony is that high-end Macs have been widely laughed at by people who don't have a use for them...while various creative and scientific sectors gladly pay that expense because unlike the commenters they're actually using them to make money; for example, the G5 and first-gen Mac Pro had enormous memory bandwidth that made them ideal for a lot of scientific data processing, medical imagery, running instruments, etc.
Also, gently, note:
> Not singling out Apple, I’m sure all are comparably bad, it’s just what I happen to use :)
The Xcode thing is often an in-joke with iOS developers.
I’ve been here 11 years and see this all the time.
This, however, is not an instance of it.
Yet here we are on a thread linking to a site showing an industrial underwater chainsaw, and someone has managed to connect it to tech (possibly, and normally hinting at the importance of FOSS) and managed to have a dig at Apple, Microsoft or Google.
Easily 100-150k per seat for mixed signal chip design. Cost as much or more than the salary of the person using it.
And yeah. It certainly is a better tool than Xcode.
Apple don’t even let you downgrade iOS on your own devices.
Compare and contrast.
Worst software I ever used. Crashy, slow, critical features missing (example: debugger can show thread list... but not the stacks of other threads).
So no, I would not expect expensive commercial software to be better. It might generate 2% faster code or be certified, but the day to day experience would be terrible.
They both were discovered by former colleagues of mine. And named by me.
I'm sure there are shady vendors of high end software products, but at those price ranges there's no reason to choose them over established names.
If you've literally never seen a guarantee like that and your company is actually paying that much money for a product, then it would be wise to shop around.
Jetbrains used to make an IDE for Objective C and Swift, but they sunset it last year due to weak sales. They still make fantastic tools for other programming languages though.
$4100 is peanuts compared to how expensive are (professional) underwater jobs.
Metals, in particular. This is why in marine environments, special grades of stainless are used. Most commonly SAE 316 alloy (often marked with "A4", vs "A2" for regular stainless).
Another approach is the use of sacrificial anodes.
Where practical, it helps to rinse equipment with fresh water after use.
https://www.hse.gov.uk/foi/internalops/sims/cactus/5_02_18.h...
Look no further than embedded development. Everything costs a fortune, but makes Xcode look polished and a pleasure to use. And I really hate Xcode.
The cost has to be that high, considering the annual market for hydraulic underwater chainsaws can not be more than a few hundred at best. Considering the environment these are expected to work in means the R&D costs are considerably higher than your bog standard chainsaw, with much few units to spread that cost over.
Xcode is most certainly not free, at the minimum you need an apple computer. So you must pay apple to use it.
If it sucks, it's not because a lack of money, it's because Apple doesn't care.
That chainsaw is a yearly subscription? I'd rather pay once for a chainsaw.
Would we pay that directly or our employers? Also, how many would pay if the benefits are greater productivity for their employer instead of greater income from increased velocity?
I suspect a gasoline-powered chainsaw wouldn't work underwater... which made me wonder if maybe that does exist because you could feed it O2 from a supply tank just like the fuel, maybe even from the diver's own air tank?
Now I want to know how bouyant battery-packs are and if an impractically-heavy battery-powered chainsaw work well underwater?
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9504215#9505263
I strongly suspect that this is incorrect. A given amount of oxygen and fuel releases the same amount of energy at any (reasonable?) pressure. 4x oxy (and fuel) --> 4x energy... this is the principle of turbochargers and superchargers (although the limiting factor is compression).
Interestingly, and paradoxically, I suspect that at an appreciable depth you mitigate the "air pump" effect and you don't need the compression stroke (or as much of one) to achieve a particular fuel mixture density prior to ignition so you'd lose "compression braking" and gain some efficiency.
(I also suspect that what happens if your vessel implodes and you're suddenly subject to 6,000psi is that the now superheated oxygen reacts with any oxidizable material at hand in an explosive exothermic reaction.)
The air in the engine will be 4x as dense, but the flow rate will be the same.
The air in the tank cannot change density, and will therefore have a 4x higher flow rate.
The result is that storage is worth less strokes/breaths at depth.
Even the pressure going into the combustion chamber could be a complicated thing, right? Say you’re at 20 feet, that’s a fair amount of pressure. But what if you’re at 80 feet? Would it still be able to function the same way? I assume no, but I also know nothing about running ICEs under water.
You'd probably lose some efficiency because the difference between peak pressure and neutral pressure in thr cylinder feels like it would be smaller. Perhaps not, because you could fit much more fuel and air in the cylinder for a bigger bang?
the early big-dog robots demonstrated that famously.
I've seen what happens when a hydraulic line gets cut in an industrial plant.
That's a minimum of four people per job with complex time critical work in harbours holding up transit shipping can see that layered up to cover 24x7 operation.
The hose management is the air mix lines to the diver along with cmms and then any tool lines required - hydraulic, pnuematic, additional electric, etc.
At 2000 psi and 14gpm the saw consumes 12.2 kw or 16.3 freedom (horse) powers
https://www.earthmoversmagazine.co.uk/digger-man/view,komats...
Why do all these tool companies make actual good tools, and then license their names off to sell sub par rubbish trading off a name that used to be known for quality.