colins

What happens when you take a slash down on the top of that blade around the middle of the hole section? I gotta think it's fairly easy to crack the 'bridge' section that way. If so, it's not a design I imagine will hold up well for anyone taking a lot of draws at Center. colins

No it’s not in the regular catalog it’s a team option for Junior/Pro leagues.

I wouldn't mind trying a Base Reign LT, but the only blade option is the Xtra Stiff +. I don't know what it plays like but in general I usually prefer a dampened blade like on the Nexus vs a pingy/stiff blade you get on some models. That blade doesn't sound like it's very dampened? The other stick options that have various blade choices are out of the weight range (Nasty is 455g) I would be looking for. colins

I would argue 410-430g is the sweat spot when well balanced. Below 410 and it starts feeling a bit hollow / unsubstantial. colins

I've been doing the same, and just ordered a 2018 and a 2019 Nexus Team edition from a small vendor in Ontario. But the path to these sticks is convoluted, I'd love to have a more direct option through a proper Bauer reseller instead of waiting for them to trickle down to the prostock guys via team equipment sell offs. It seems some retailers in Canada at least had access to batches of Nexus Team sticks that they sold via their websites, but they quickly sold out and now the flex and pattern options are very limited (ie: no Left 77 Flex P92 anywhere except via prostock sites, and rare there too). The 2019 Nexus team stick - technically called the S19 Nexus League stick - at 415 grams is fantastic and beats probably anything out there in the $150-$200 range. These should be lining the shelves of every big hockey shop, but I guess Bauer doesn't want to eat into the profits of the 2N Pro at the retail level. That's fine, I don't mind ordering online, I just wish they were easier to come by. colins

Seems like such a huge opportunity for a Base type of company to offer custom sticks in the $150-$200 range that match the material and build quality of these $300+ retail models. But Base is such a disappointment to me - their customer facing website for customs is tacky and the shaft options look like they are a poor man's Warrior from 10 years ago (the 'Johnson' era). Give me a modern webpage to choose between a mid kick or low kick shaft, 75 or 85 flex, about 420-440 grams, well balanced, with a choice of dampened or lively blade, big catalog of curves, and put some clean simple graphics on it then sell them in packs of 3 or 5 min order for $200 or so each... no brainer! Base seems to be so close to being that ideal custom option but the retail/consumer side of it just falls flat when you go to their webpage and look at building a custom stick. Who's going to fill that space? Retail with 3 curve options and a $350+ price point for the top end is nuts. Give us access to the 'team edition' sticks in the $150-$200 range that match the build quality and often exceed the durability of the retail, but make it easy to order instead of sifting through prostock websites with re-paints and questionable curve options. colins

Lots of CCM P90T available as pro stocks. P90TM (Max Height) less so, but I have seen them on hockeystickman.com colins

Maybe I'll try one more way... You know the indicator lights on the top of your Sparx? When you have a ring installed and the lights get down to the half way mark (half lit, half unlit), this means you have made 160 passes with this ring on various skate blades, and you have 160 passes left before it is worn out and needs to be replaced. At the point that half the lights are off, you may have successfully sharpened 1 pair of skates, or you may have successfully sharpened 80 pairs of skates. The number of successful sharpenings at the half way point of the lifespan of your grinding ring will be entirely up to how you yourself define a successful sharpening and how many passes you made on each blade along the way to get there. All rings regardless of packaging will do 320 passes before they are worn out. Does this help or are you still ready to sue Sparx to get your money back? If so - please proceed to do so and leave this forum to users who want to enjoy and share info about their Sparx. Come back after the lawsuit and let us all know how it went. colins

Where does the packaging say anything about cycles? Ok, you seem to have confirmed you don't understand that all Sparx rings last 320 cycles. And you are confusing cycles for pair sharpened when you state 'You can't sell a product for the same amount of money, stating 20 less cycles'. I don't think there's much else anyone can do to help explain it. Are you just trolling at this point? colins

All rings Sparx has ever delivered have a lifespan of 320 cycles. Do you understand?

https://www.sparxhockey.com/pages/faq-grinding-ring 2. How long does a Grinding Ring last? A Grinding Ring (Radius Ring or FIRE Ring) will last for 320 cycles. If you’re freshening up your blades after every skate, you’ll get 50-60 sharpenings (or even more!) per ring and if you’re sharpening your skates after every 5-6 hours of ice time, you’ll get about 40 sharpenings. We like to say its about $1 per sharpening.

Both give you 320 passes. Count the passes and see for yourself. The number of pairs that translates to is highly subjective, as explained ad nauseam. I think the Marketing team at Sparx is fighting a losing battle, only because not all consumers can be assumed to be rational. As proven in this thread. colins

Are you losing money at 3,2$ a sharpening? Do you anticipate no repeat business and only damaged uneven edges always coming through your doors? You bring valuable new experience/data to the group - but your conclusions are difficult for some of us to understand.

Because he's sharpening super damaged and very uneven edges on every single pair he does, and he can't relate to anyone who isn't. Nor can he see 10 yards down the road, where if his 'customers' are happy they'll come back with even edges that are just normally worn and he won't have to do more than 4 passes the second time he sharpens the same pair of skates. I dunno... the guy has come into this thread and crapped on Sparx from the get-go. It's getting a bit tiring to be honest. We all appreciate new info and rational debate about the product, but that hasn't been the case here. colins

So you averaged 6 passes per skate? That's a lot. Your statement "Getting 40 pair of skates out of one sharpening ring is only reachable if you're exclusively sharpening your own skates by basically maintaining them every 2-3 hours of skating." is somewhat misleading. If you exclusively sharpen your own skates every 2-3 hours of skating, you'll get over 50 close to 60 'pairs' sharpened at an average of 2-3 passes per skate. That's what I do. It's 320 passes per ring, use them however you like, that's how long a ring lasts. And the amount of material it removes per pass is fairly significant, at least when compared to the ProSharp for example. You might be better off with a traditional machine like a Blademaster 850 if that's the typical type of usage you're going to see. Would be a lot cheaper in the long run. colins

Are you able to measure the hollow somehow? How do you know the manual 1/2" is closer to a 'true' half inch than the Sparx 1/2"? Here's an interesting video from Sparx, it's about their Fire rings not Radius but it will give some insight into the kind of depth they put into precision with this machine when it was created: Their Youtube channel has a bunch of great technical content mixed amongst the marketing stuff. The 3 history/prototype videos that show the creation and evolution of the machine I found quite interesting. The first in the series is this one:

It's not just vacuuming the tray you have to replace the internal filter more often. In the USA especially there's an issue of liability. "I followed the directions in the manual which said change the filter every 4 rings, I didn't know the Cross Grind ring could cause my machine to start smouldering and burn my house down"... once those original manuals went out with the firmware coded for forcing a filter change every 4 rings, you can't put the cat back in the bag. Yes, they could have revised the firmware and revised the documentation, and forced more frequent filter changes, but at the end of the day they determined using cross grind rings on a machine designed with only internal filtration was not something they wanted to do. And as a true consumer oriented home user, do I care at all? Not a bit - I probably would have bought a X-Grind ring just to have it on hand, but I've had zero instances in the past 4 years of ownership where I felt I really needed one. Was I f*'d in the face and somehow missed noticing it? Why are you so upset about that but it doesn't bother me at all? If I wanted the X-Grind I'd sell my unit and get the PS100. But that makes no sense to me as a home user.

Do you have a good edge checker? The alignment tool is decent, but most users have found that even after using the alignment tool, a good edge checker is required to exactly dial the alignment in such that you get perfectly level edges. Once you get steel sharpened on the Sparx to a particular ring/hollow, it shouldn't take more than 2 or 3 cycles for a maintenance sharpening, I do that all the time. However if one of my kids brings home a teammates skates that were sharpened somewhere else are are very damaged, it takes 4 or more cycles before I'm satisfied to send them out the door. In either case, I always use my edge checker to verify I'm cutting perfectly level edges, and if I'm concerned about the hollow I'll use the marker test. colins

Its comments like that which leaves me scratching my head... again what kind of crazy conspiracy theory is that? I was on the Kickstarter with many others here, go re-read the Campaign and FAQ and updates from Russ and hopefully you'll see what kind of foolishness this looks like to those who got involved early. colins

The Sparx page has a table comparing the capabilities of the ES100 vs. PS100: https://www.sparxhockey.com/pages/commercial-homepage The units are essentially the same, with the PS100 having added external filtration, which Sparx determined was necessary for high volume use and for Cross Grinding. The rings are the same but the consumer rings are coded for the ES100 and the commercial rings (which are discounted) are coded for the PS100. I don't think any of this is news to you as you've figured that out from web sources and questions here already. The rest was about how to possibly use the cheaper ES100 unit with the discounted PS rings - this would obviously not be supported by Sparx and would requiring altering the ring or the unit. I was just suggesting that conversation be taken to a different thread specific to hacking the Sparx. Others including myself are no doubt interested in this, but it may be confusing for the average Joe coming here reading this thread who just wants to know if he should buy a Sparx to sharpen his kids' skates. Bottom line is if you want support from Sparx, Cross Grinding and discounted rings, do the math and see if the extra expense of the PS100 makes sense or not.

Or keep it and use it the same as you would a cross grind ring (ie: taking steel down to eliminate sidewall nicks or badly damaged edges). Or for cutting new steel which requires 8-10 passes. It'll help save the lifespan of your usual ring. colins

If lfc26 wants to continue to look at ways to hack the ES100 and/or PS100 or ES100 rings, perhaps that discussion belongs in a new thread? The theme so far seems to be "I've bought the cheaper unit but want all the advantages of the more expensive one" which is going to be a bit confusing for the average Joe looking for Sparx info in this thread.

Russ, the creator of the Sparx, is a member of the modsquad community here. The conspiracy theory you propose above seems like a bit of a stretch knowing how Sparx has approached their customers so far I would say? The X-Grind ring was not part of the initial launch of the product nor do I recall it being part of any contractual breach to the original Kickstarter participants. The X-Grind ring debuted on/around Nov. 13th 2016 (My Sparx shipped in July 2016) and the warning about the swarf issue and the need to change the air filter was emailed out to owners on Jan 29th 2017.

If you search this thread you'll find some previous comments from Sparx employees confirming RFID is being used to track the cycle counts on the ring itself by overwriting the serial number field. I'm not sure anyone has talked about or figured out how a PS grinding ring is detected vs. an ES ring.

The rings do 320 passes. Conversion of passes to 'sharpened pairs' is arbitrary and has been stated different ways on occasion since the Sparx first shipped. I keep my steel well maintained and 'sharpen' my skates every 3 or 4 hours of use with a couple passes per skate, which I judge mostly by the absence of nicks in the steel sidewalls, and by a uniformly smooth pitch/sound for the full pass back and forth the runner. Unless my blades have suffered trauma from hitting a post or stepping on debris or metal around the dressing rooms/benches, I find two passes every 3-4 hours of icetime means perfect edges all the time. It's quite liberating to play like that, and I think most new Sparx users quickly realize constant 'touch up' maintenance like this trumps letting your blades get bad enough to require 4 or 6 or more passes. So based on my metrics of two passes per skate I can "sharpen 80 pairs" of my own skates per ring. But on the flip side, I do sharpen way more frequently now that I would if I still had to drive to a shop and pay $8-$10 per sharpening. colins