A guide block is provided for supporting a blade within a saw, such as a band saw, the guide block being formed from a ceramic material. The buffer is formed by a polymer that is flexible and can be etched, contains a coefficient of thermal expansion that does not significantly differ from that of the chip andor a combination of CET and elasticity that retains a physical connection with the side of the chip and the metal carrier over the temperature range of operation anticipated for the chip. The slave station then transmits a transmission request packet containing a total amount of data packets to be concatenated to a master station. In addition, the computer-implemented method may include providing a notification to at least one of the first and second computing devices to alert a user of the first computing device that the current distance between the first and second computing devices exceeds the maximum distance and to indicate a location of the second computing device.