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Hi everyone, Russ here from Sparx Hockey. The topic of the Cross Grind Ring and our consumer machines has been raised before here on ModSquad and there’s been quite a bit of inaccurate information to why that decision was made. I thought it was important for me to jump in here and explain why cross grinding is not available on the at-home Sparx Sharpener. Below, I will go into quite a bit of detail, but here is an overview for those looking for the quick answer! 1) First things first – do not ruin your Sparx Sharpener by modifying it to do something that it was not manufactured to do. Not only will modifying it instantly void the warranty, it will most likely damage the machine and alter the high-level of precision that has become the hallmark of the Sparx Sharpener. 2) When you purchase a Sparx Sharpener, you are investing in years and years of research, design and development. We have spent literally thousands of hours testing our products – both in real world and laboratory settings. We take those in-depth learnings to make the most accurate, safe and easy-to-use automated skate sharpening products on the market. 3) The on-board dust management system of the Sparx Sharpener is one of the most important aspects of the machine. Said as simple as possible – if you want a small format (i.e. portable) skate sharpener WITH this important dust handling feature, cross grinding is simply not an option. 4) The real need to cross grind is very limited for the at-home home user. The main reason our commercial customers use cross grinding is to prep new steel and in that rare instance when an at-home user needs to sharpen new steel, it can easily be done with a traditional Sparx Grinding Ring. Also, the increased cost of the Cross Grind Ring simply does not make financial sense for 99% of home users. If you think you must have cross-grind capabilities, you should update to the Sparx Commercial Sharpener or visit your local shop. Ok, now here’s the FULL story: As engineers at Sparx Hockey, we are tasked with designing our products to be the very best for our customers. This is very important to us since many of us at Sparx are the customer and use our own products every week for our own families. The Cross Grind Ring was initially launched with the First Generation Sparx Sharpener. When we did our detailed and in-depth research before launching the company, we quickly realized that all other home sharpeners in the market were being run without dust collection capabilities. This seemed crazy to us as the metal dust (called swarf) that's generated from the sharpening process needs to be captured for obvious reasons. How could someone design an at-home sharpener where the dust isn't captured and disperses throughout the air, especially when those sharpeners were going to be placed inside homes and locker rooms? We were not going to allow that to happen with the Sparx Sharpener. From this important observation, we made the decision to integrate a HEPA filter into the Sparx Sharpener. We did in-depth (and expensive!) testing at external labs to make sure our chosen filter material captured the particle sizes that were generated. When we released the first generation Sparx Sharpener, we noticed many users were not replacing their filters on time. While some people figured they could save a little money by not replacing the filter, not replacing the filter causes the filter to lose its effectiveness, among other things, when they get clogged with the swarf. It is important to replace your filter when it expires. As it relates to the Cross-Grind ring and the filter – an important observation from real-world use was that swarf produced by the Cross Grind Ring was significantly bigger and hotter than the swarf created by the standard Sparx Grinding Ring. As we always do in the product development process at Sparx Hockey, we took these important real-world details and behavior seriously. From those early observations of user behavior with the first generation Sparx Sharpener, we determined that cross-grind swarf was not ideal in the consumer sharpener system where on-board dust collection is located within the immediate sharpening chamber. As mentioned, on-board dust collection is a very important feature of the Sparx Sharpener. Beware of sharpeners that don’t have onboard dust collection – this just doesn’t make sense for many reasons. The only choice we had was to move the cross-grind ring, which is mostly necessary in the commercial setting anyway, over to a new sharpener platform - the Sparx Commercial Sharpener. The Sparx Commercial Sharpener has a dust collection system specifically designed to handle the larger cross-grind swarf. A standard Shop-Vac is NOT an acceptable alternative to the Sparx Commercial Vacuum that all Sparx Commercial Sharpeners utilize. Shop-Vacs are not designed to handle sharpening swarf and they most likely aren't designed/tested to be HEPA compliant. The Sparx Commercial Vacuum has a metal-lined collection tube and a filter specifically designed for these types of environments. If you absolutely want a Sparx Cross Grind and you don't want to buy the commercial sharpener, we strongly recommend visiting your local hockey shop for those very, very rare instances when you might need a cross grind. Sparx Sharpeners are now used in well over a thousand hockey retail locations around the world and there's a very good chance your local hockey shop is using the Sparx Commercial Sharpener. I hope this helps explain why the Cross Grind Ring went away from the at-home, consumer machine. For the very few times you'll actually need a cross grind in the consumer world, just remember that the cross grind is simply a coarser abrasive. You can achieve similar results with a standard Sparx Grinding Ring by adding a few more cycles (roughly 3:1 standard to cross grind is the ratio). Happy Sharpening! -Russ

Catalyst customs are now like Bauer/CCM where it’s a standard boot with adjusted foams. The SVH is like the traditional True customs with the boot built around your foot. Pretty sure that’s how I understood it