SparxHockey

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

There are no plans to discontinue accessories or service on prior models. With thousands and thousands of customers (consumer and commercial) utilizing prior models that are going to last for several years, we are obviously going to support their product needs in the future.

Hi guys - As you can imagine, we've been pretty slammed with the new launch, but yes, we will have plenty of videos coming in the future that thoroughly explain the difference in the two models. Some folks on here have already explained it well, but to confirm, the difference is in the bases. The Sparx Sharpener comes with the standard base, that is compact and lightweight, which makes it great to travel with to games and tournaments. The Sparx Sharpener Pro comes with TWO bases - the standard base AND the Pro Base. The Pro Base is a heavier duty metal base with a tempered glass access door similar to the base found on the original Sparx Sharpener (ES100). The big benefit of the Sparx Sharpener Pro is that you can keep the head unit attached to the Pro Base at home, the team locker or the shop, and then simply lift the head unit off the Pro Base and attach it to the compact and lightweight standard base to bring on the road. There are just thumb nuts that easily remove the head unit. The head units on both the Sparx Sharpener and Sparx Sharpener Pro are the same. And you can buy the Pro Base at a later time to transform the standard sharpener into the Pro, but like most bundles, etc. it is cheaper to buy the Pro model up front rather than buying the base later. Hope that helps!

Hi guys - Steve from Sparx here. There's really no need to do anything different when starting up your machine after a few months. Like a lot of you, some of our machines were unused for a few months and there's no issues in starting them right up and sharpening. Thanks!

Hey guys - Steve from Sparx here! Its been a while since we have been on here.....did we miss anything? 😁 We have addressed this 40 vs 60 pairs of skates per ring several times, but let me explain it again. When we originally launched our product, we recommended four cycles per skate (hence that is why there is a circle around the No. 4 in the keypad). As a small, new company with no machines out in the marketplace, that is how we envisioned the product being used. Fast forward a couple of years - and add in 20,000 machines in the market - and not surprisingly we have learned a few things about our customer's behavior! Like many of you have stated, we learned from our customers (through surveys, events, phone calls) that the AVERAGE consumer was using far less cycles per skate. Many were doing a quick 1-2 passes after a couple hours of skating and achieving great results. People were even boasting online that they were getting 80, 90 and even over 100 pairs of skates done on one ring! Obviously 90 and 100 pairs is not the normal outcome, but we determined that for the MAJORITY of customers, they were doing significantly more than 40 pairs. So....as a small company that is continually learning....we decided to change our packaging (the rings are NOT different nor do different hollows sharpener more pairs) to reflect the results of the average home user. (Obviously a retailer is going to get less on average due to really bad steel, new steel, etc.). This was what is called a "running change" on the packaging so there are some packages that still say 40 and some that say 60 out in the marketplace. Let me reiterate.... this reflects the average home user. Obviously there are going to be people that sharpen 6 or 10 cycles and get 20-30 pairs and there's people that are going to do 1 cycle every time and get 100+ pairs. There is nothing "nefarious," "misleading," or "fake news".....we're just a company that is continually learning our customers' behavior and doing the best we can to communicate those learnings to our existing and future customers. Thanks!

Just watched it - looks perfectly normal, but our tech team will take a look and get back to you.

As long as you set the toe height higher you should be all set. Give it a try and reach out to us directly with any questions.

Hey Steve from Sparx here....All you need to do to address this issue is turn the skate around so the toe is facing right. Although some videos still show the skate with toe facing to the left (towards the handle), we have since recommended the toe to the right for this specific reason - to allow you to set a higher contact point on the toe of your skate which will allow the ring to also ride higher up the heal. That should solve your issue. If you need any help, reach out to us at help@sparxhockey.com

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!