I would assume that the additional resistance of a finger is fairly negligible compared to the density of hardwood or metal
In: Engineering
It is based on the capacitance of the finger. The technology is quite similar to modern touch screen technology which is only able to detect fingers but not gloves. Wood is usually too dry for the sensors to trigger and the metal is too small for it to trigger. This is of course something the designers have to take into consideration. Possibly the hardest thing you can put in them is soaking wet wood for example if you are sawing raw lumber out in the rain but they have apparently been able to set the sensors to handle this as well. However as the SawStop patent is about to expire and competing products have already been shown to the market as being much cheaper to trigger there might be some advantage to triggering on metal as well protecting the blade.
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