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Probably because when these skates launch the stick will be on the AS3 at that time. Simple solution is to stop with new sticks every year. Since Bauer stopped yearly refresh cycles for sticks I have a feeling CCM will stop in a few cycles.

Hey guys - Steve Jones here from Sparx. Thought I would make an "official" Sparx Hockey account to answer any questions that have (or will) come up! We recently changed some of our marketing language around pairs of skates per Grinding Ring. We initially based the 40 pairs of skates on everyone doing four cycles, but based on the actual useage of our entire customer base - specifically the home user - they are doing far less passes per sharpening (which makes sense, because if you are sharpening more often, you can easily do fewer passes as a quick touch up.) We have seen rings last 80-90 pairs of skates and on the other hand, we've seen some last 40 pairs based on four cycles as originally estimated, but the actual average is closer to 60 for the home user. Again, it all depends on how many cycles you are doing per sharpening. Hope that helps clarify any confusion - it was a running change on packaging, so there are definitely some boxes with the old language still out there!

Yes. Preheat the oven to 175 degrees F, convection. Get a cookie sheet and put foil on top. Once the oven is at 175 degrees F put the speed plate insoles on the foil/cookie sheet. You will then watch them through the oven window and once the thermo-chromatic ink on arch turn white they are ready. Take them out, one at a time and put them in the skate. Then put your foot into the boot and lace the skate as you normally would. Stand for 30 seconds and then sit with your knees over your toes, in the hockey position until they cool. This is about 5 minutes.

It’s not much better down here. The shipping cost is atrocious. So much so that I’ve passed on a number of items I wanted because of it.

Howdy, You may not like it, and that's totally understandable, but to the average guy that wants to get his damn skates sharpened, most shops _DO_ suck. And there's no way, as a regular consumer, to reliably find the ones that don't. Particularly when its the standard thing like "Joey is the guy at Pure, but Billy sucks and Jill isn't bad but can't deal with weird stuff either. Good luck! May the odds ever be in your favor". Oh, and then Joey leaves anyway because, surprise, working retail isn't a destination career for most folks. Meanwhile, despite your obvious dislike of these machines, lots and lots of people are happily using them very successfully. Because they do a pretty good job and do it consistently. You sound _EXACTLY_ like the typical machinist from 20 or 30 or 40 years ago when CNC machines were taking over. Manually sharpening a skate is an admirably skill. And, done well, you can get an extremely good result. But that takes lots of training/practice/feel and at the end of the day, there's not enough folks around that do it well vs. a hack job that destroys profiles, has edges so uneven you can see it with the naked eye, that nods their head when someone requests a roh and uses "the standard" anyway, etc. etc. etc. This is a process that begs for automation. The stuff about consistent travel speed, consistent pressure, etc. that it takes a while to get the right feel for is exactly what automation is good at. edit: And in the beginning, where was the money for Sparx to build those free sample machines for the shops? I would imagine they weren't doing a kickstarter project because they decided to turn down big money investors. They saw a need, had an idea for a product that filled that need, and were able to successfully market it to the people that wanted to fill that need. And guess what... Those people were mostly consumers, not pro shops. Or at least they were, until pro shops realized "hey... Wait a minute. You mean I can teach someone to sharpen skates in 30 minutes? And the results will be good?" Mark