Sparx Skate Sharpener - At home sharpener

[hsypsufan 0]

On 10/18/2017 at 9:36 PM, WhosUrDaddy said:

Frustrated with mine.  Alignment becomes off no matter how centered it is at the beginning.  The machine goes through different brands of skates (CCM and Bauer) and different steel (Bauer, SpeedBlades, Stepsteel, etc.).  Every other pair, I need to re-adjust the centering wheel.  

Maybe the clamp or something is loose?  Is there anything to tighten?

Edit:  I check the edges with several edge checkers and even have an HDI gauge.  I know they are off...

I am having the same issue, even when working on the same pair of skates.  The right or left skate will need adjusting when I switch them out to sharpen. Did you contact Sparx?

[weasel 3]

On 10/21/2017 at 4:57 PM, hsypsufan said:

I am having the same issue, even when working on the same pair of skates.  The right or left skate will need adjusting when I switch them out to sharpen. Did you contact Sparx?

I’m not having this issue but would be interested in hearing what the fix is. Report back after contacting Sparx.

 

[WhosUrDaddy 2]

On 10/21/2017 at 4:57 PM, hsypsufan said:

I am having the same issue, even when working on the same pair of skates.  The right or left skate will need adjusting when I switch them out to sharpen. Did you contact Sparx?

Sent an inquiry.  Will keep you posted.

[beardacus 0]

Anyone know if Sparx will be having a black Friday or cyber Monday sale on the machine this year? 

[Skate Guru 1]

Just tested the new Sparx PS100 commercial unit in my pro shop for 3 days.

Set up (9/10) - easy to set up right out of the box

Adjustment (4/10) - you center the disk to the blade by looking through a 10x magnification window. Problem is that the adjustment is in intervals and not graduated. So you are one click left or right and can not dial it in perfectly. Any experienced sharpener knows that CCM blades are wider than Bauer blades, and you get a different sharpen on sparx with each one, so you have to make adjustments to each skate.

Ease of use (10/10) - could train staff to use this thing in 5 min. Very easy and simple to use. Any player over age 10 could handle it safely.

Speed (7/10) - I can sharpen a pair of skates faster, and I really take my time to make sure they are perfect. Advantage is you can set it and leave and work on other things. About 7 min a pair with changing the skates out.

Quality of equipment (4/10) - it is a heavy-ish unit, however heavy does not mean quality materials and construction. For a commercial piece of equipment, it looks and feels more like a toaster oven. The vacuum (that you must buy or they void your warranty) is a bucket mount POS that you can buy at home depot. They do include a hepa filter that is just a piece of foam (we are sucking up metal - the only thing needed is something that does not allow the metal particles to go in or near the motor). The motor is bigger than the one that comes with the home unit, and they say it is good for 3200 pairs a year. I dont believe that for a second, however I have no evidence or facts to support my statement. The edge checker is crap. The lines are very far apart, and the general construction is not good. The stone is also crap, but not really a big deal for a pro shop as we have plenty of high quality stones.

Cost of use (2/10) - they say 3-6 cycles per skate (a cycle is back and forth once) Standard is 4, Probably 10 (max) for a new pair of skates. They say 30 - 50 pairs per disk. $49 US per disk. So if we say 40 is average that is approximately $1.65 Canadian per sharpening. A regular grinding wheel that is dressed A LOT would be 100 pairs for around $21. So around $0.21 Canadian per sharpening. If you leave one head at 1/2" all the time they will do 200 pairs no problem. So on a busy weekend I would be spending over $100 on disks. So doing the math each sharpening costs 8x as much as a traditional sharpener. The other issue is the sparx can not jump around on hollows easily. So if a customer brings in skates with a 3/8” hollow and wants to try 5/8” you have to run the whole 10 passes, or use their cross grinding disks which are $69 US each. This could really add up fast.

Quality of sharpening (3/10) – we tested many pairs of skates and had two of them tested on the ice. After much fine tuning and adjusting, we could not get a single pair to come out with level edges at both ends of the skate. Not out by much, but out enough that I would never let them leave my shop that way. Part of the issue is the click adjustment setting, and the other is that I think the rail the motor and disk runs on was not straight. Not out a lot, but enough that skates were not level at both ends. You could get one end level but not the other. Click it one adjustment the other way, and it would do the exact same thing the other way (vice versa). One pair tested on the ice was by a coach and he said they were fine and felt no difference. The other was tested by a Bantam player, and he knew right away that the edges were out. The disk leaves a very heavy burr (compared to a standard sharpening wheel) along the entire edge of both sides of the blade. This can be removed with a course stone with extra passes. With standard sharpening a fine hone works great. The hollow itself does have a little bit of chatter. Probably about the same as traditional sharpening. However, if you make a slower last pass and / or use finishing oil or wax, traditional sharpening has a far superior blade finish. This was a brand new in the box demo unit (we were the first test). Maybe this was a bad one, or maybe this is normal for the sparx. Either way the quality was not good enough for me to actually send a pair back out over the counter to a paying customer.

Cost of unit (4/10) – cost of the commercial unit including vacuum, edge checker, pick guard, all 3 blade holders for loose steel, and a 3 pack of stones is $3244 CDN. If you run a busy pro will need all of those things. One scary thing is they do sell a 2 year and 3 year add on warranty? Why do I need that if it is designed for commercial use? Most skate sharpeners in shops are good for 10+ years easy. You get a 5% break on disks after you have purchased your first 30 (big deal). You can get a really nice single head portable for less money than that.

Practicality for a pro shop (5/10) – It has some good points and some bad. Good is ease of use and training staff. Bad is quality of sharpening and cost of each sharpening. As a back-up machine to a regular sharpener it might have some value if it produced quality sharpenings. As a stand-alone machine in a pro shop no chance. There are too many variables it can not accommodate for. Bent blades, differing thickness of blades, nicks, gouges, changes in hollows, bent holders, loose blades, etc. For home use on 1 to 5 pairs of skates all at the same hollow it would probably be ok.

Hope this help anyone looking at this machine or sparx in general

 

[IPv6Freely 2093]

Wow that’s not a very glowing review! Hopefully Sparx can address your issues. 

Any photos of the machine? It must be significantly different from the consumer model to have this many issues.

[marka 526]

Howdy,

Interesting to read a pro review.

Is the clamp system the same as the home unit?  On the home system, I'd have said that by design it would accommodate different thickness blades, since it clamps to a centered position, not one edge.

 

Mark

[Skate Guru 1]

I did not take any pictures of the unit. Sorry. They show it on their website.

By no means am I bashing sparx. This was an honest review. I sharpen over 3000 pairs a year and know my stuff. I have heard some good stuff about the home units.

The clamp system is the same as the home unit. The skate stays stationary and the disk moves. I agree with you that once centered blade thickness should not matter. But since this one could not be perfectly centered diffeent blades come out better or worse. This is why I think the motor rail is not straight not the clamp. If the adjustment was free you could perfectly center it.

The advantage to a traditional sharpener is that the blade is always 100% square and you adjust the skate to align with blade. Adjustments on skate holders are very fine. The sparx adjustment is not very fine.

[colins 246]

6 hours ago, Skate Guru said:

I did not take any pictures of the unit. Sorry. They show it on their website.

By no means am I bashing sparx. This was an honest review. I sharpen over 3000 pairs a year and know my stuff. I have heard some good stuff about the home units.

The clamp system is the same as the home unit. The skate stays stationary and the disk moves. I agree with you that once centered blade thickness should not matter. But since this one could not be perfectly centered diffeent blades come out better or worse. This is why I think the motor rail is not straight not the clamp. If the adjustment was free you could perfectly center it.

The advantage to a traditional sharpener is that the blade is always 100% square and you adjust the skate to align with blade. Adjustments on skate holders are very fine. The sparx adjustment is not very fine.

I think 2 to 3 clicks on the Alignment Adjustment is .001", as per Sparx documentation here: https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0932/7770/files/Sparx_EdgeChecker_Instruction.pdf?8101190776335265406. That means 1 click is in the range of .0004"-.0005". How fine then is very fine? I've got the home unit, not the commercial one, but I used my edge checker to dial in my alignment so it's dead center consistently on the Step and Bauer steel I'm sharpening. I did find that polished CCM steel throws the edge checker off - my alignment was still fine, but the sidewall inconsistency of the polished CCM steel throws the checker off.

As far as I know, Sparx has only one edge checker, and it's one of the nicer edge checkers on the market that I've seen. If there's a knock on it, maybe it's that it's over-built and more expensive than it needs to be. You described it as "The edge checker is crap. The lines are very far apart, and the general construction is not good." - are we talking about the same checker?

 

colins

[Buzz_LightBeer 969]

Those magnetic level tools are a huge pain In a high volume shop setting as they attract every speck of sharpening dust in a 12 foot radius. 

[colins 246]

6 minutes ago, Buzz_LightBeer said:

Those magnetic level tools are a huge pain In a high volume shop setting as they attract every speck of sharpening dust in a 12 foot radius. 

 

What do the non-magnetic ones look like?

 

colins

[Skate Guru 1]

2 hours ago, colins said:

I think 2 to 3 clicks on the Alignment Adjustment is .001", as per Sparx documentation here: https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0932/7770/files/Sparx_EdgeChecker_Instruction.pdf?8101190776335265406. That means 1 click is in the range of .0004"-.0005". How fine then is very fine? I've got the home unit, not the commercial one, but I used my edge checker to dial in my alignment so it's dead center consistently on the Step and Bauer steel I'm sharpening. I did find that polished CCM steel throws the edge checker off - my alignment was still fine, but the sidewall inconsistency of the polished CCM steel throws the checker off.

As far as I know, Sparx has only one edge checker, and it's one of the nicer edge checkers on the market that I've seen. If there's a knock on it, maybe it's that it's over-built and more expensive than it needs to be. You described it as "The edge checker is crap. The lines are very far apart, and the general construction is not good." - are we talking about the same checker?

 

colins

I am glad your sparx unit is working great. I am sure it fits your needs perfectly. My experience was different.

According to sparx each line on their edge checker is .002". They also say that anything within .002" is acceptable and does not require any adjustment. They go on to say that 2 to 3 clicks will move the alignment approximately .001" (2 to 3 and approximately are not good terms for precision work). They also say a bent blade may prevent the sharpener from putting level edges on the blade. You are correct and I was wrong. The spark does have a fine adjustment. My assumption that the guide rail in this machine must have been bent is probably correct.

I was comparing the sparx edge checker ($178.63) to the Blademaster BR100 pro square ($99.95). I agree the sparx one is too expensive, but not because the quality is so good. Everyone is entitled to their opinion.

For a Blademaster BR100 pro edge checker each line is .001". For a Blademaster SH6000 pro skate holder, each click (front and back) is also .001". It looks like the adjustment is not as fine as sparx, however from my experience the Blademaster adjustments are much more accurate. No pair of skates leaves my shop that is not perfect (>.001"). The sparx unit I tested in my shop could not achieve this.

[Skate Guru 1]

On 10/18/2017 at 7:36 PM, WhosUrDaddy said:

Frustrated with mine.  Alignment becomes off no matter how centered it is at the beginning.  The machine goes through different brands of skates (CCM and Bauer) and different steel (Bauer, SpeedBlades, Stepsteel, etc.).  Every other pair, I need to re-adjust the centering wheel.  

Maybe the clamp or something is loose?  Is there anything to tighten?

Edit:  I check the edges with several edge checkers and even have an HDI gauge.  I know they are off...

This sounds very familiar to me. Chances are the rail the motor travels along is bent or not installed perfectly straight (ever so slightly).

Edited November 7, 2017 by Skate Guru

[IPv6Freely 2093]

Hopefully you are in contact with them already for a resolution. 

[ZamboniFever 32]

Hello MSH'ers,

This is Russ from Sparx.  I'm hoping to be able to add some color around Skate Guru's review.  This is a long reply so I had to clear out a couple hours on my schedule to write it which is my excuse for not replying sooner.  Grab some popcorn and a comfy chair if you're going to read this one.

Some background, we now have hundreds of shops using Sparx and our flagship install at New England Sports Center (NESC) in Marlbrough, MA has been using Sparx for 1.5 years now.  They have sharpened 10's of thousands of pairs of skates on Sparx already.  We work very closely with NESC and everything we learn there benefits all of our other customers.  We also have an R&D lab in Boston where we run durability tests on all of our equipment.  Sparx is built to last - both the consumer machine and the commercial machine.  Now let's dive into each of the points Skate Guru (SG) makes in the hopes that I can provide a bit more detail.

SG:  Set up (9/10) - easy to set up right out of the box

Sparx:  If it's easy to set up right out of the box ... what would we need to do to earn a 10?  The one thing we hear from nearly all of our customers is that they can go from receiving their Sparx sharpener to sharpening a pair of skates in 10-15 minutes without ever having sharpened a skate before in their life.  I know I am biased but I might give Sparx a 10 on this one.

SG: Adjustment (4/10): Problem is that the adjustment is in intervals and not graduated. So you are one click left or right and can not dial it in perfectly. Any experienced sharpener knows that CCM blades are wider than Bauer blades,

Sparx:  Adjustment intervals are graduated on purpose to make it clear to the user the exact amount they are adjusting.  Each "click" translates to the grinding wheel moving in or out by 0.0015".  This increment amount is more than enough resolution to position the grinding ring for even edges (note: moving the wheel in and out has a roughly 4:1 effect on edge height adjustment).  For example, if a 1/2" ROH shows 0.002" of edge height misalignment (1 line up on the right side of the edge checker and 1 line down on the left) this requires the user to adjust the Sparx by turning the adjustment knob between 5 and 6 "clicks" - or moving the grinding wheel in or out by 0.008".  This amount of accuracy in Grinding Ring movement is really impressive when you consider the alternative which is an iterative trail and error approach to alignment (like you get with traditional manual sharpening equipment).

The comment "Any experienced sharpener knows that CCM blades are wider than Bauer blades" is just plain inaccurate.  As I write this I am holding a Bauer LS2 and a CCM SB Stainless blade in my hands.  I am measuring their thickness on a Fowler Micrometer with a reading out to 5 decimal points.  The thickness of these two pieces of steel is statistically identical (0.1140").  Saying that CCM is wider is wrong and could be misleading to readers of this forum.

What is true is that all steel varies in its thickness.  This is especially true of Black Steel and Chromed Steel and the like.  We will soon be posting the results of a study we're doing on steel thickness and this data is going to surprise a lot of folks.  Stay tuned to our Facebook page or our website for that post soon.

The beauty of Sparx, and one of the main motivations for starting Sparx, was to build a product that doesn't care about the variations in steel thickness.  This variation is what makes manually sharpening skates so difficult and time consuming and full of opportunity for people to make mistakes or be lazy.  The centering skate clamp of Sparx, which is the exact same clamp design and hardware for both our consumer and pro machines, puts the blade over the center of the grinding wheel every time.

SG: Ease of use (10/10) - could train staff to use this thing in 5 min. Very easy and simple to use. Any player over age 10 could handle it safely.

Sparx: Thank you.  We had ease of use as one of our most important design criteria when building Sparx.

SG: Speed (7/10) - I can sharpen a pair of skates faster, and I really take my time to make sure they are perfect. Advantage is you can set it and leave and work on other things. About 7 min a pair with changing the skates out.

Sparx:  This one really depends on the user and the type of install.  Take the home user.  I am an adult league hockey player and I have a first year bantam player at home.  Both of us sharpen every time we skate and we use 2 cycles per skate.  A cycle on Sparx is about 45 seconds.  This means I spend a bit over 3 minutes each time I play to prep my or my son's skates.  This is about the time it takes me to put my gear in my hockey bag so I get both done at the same time.  Now consider the pro user.  New England Sports Center, an 8 rink facility in Massachusetts, has four Sparx Pro Sharpeners.  With these sharpeners, they can sharpen 2 pairs of skates in under 4 minutes.  All this while keeping the quality and consistency of the sharpening very high with any employee.  This is a major win for their retail operation.  Depending on the store size and volume, a Sparx commercial user will choose the number of machines that best serves their operation.  For any retailer, losing even a small fraction of business on account of super long sharpening queues or inconsistent sharpening results is a terrible thing.  Sparx makes running a commercial sharpening operation more streamlined.

SG: Quality of equipment (4/10) - it is a heavy-ish unit, however heavy does not mean quality materials and construction. For a commercial piece of equipment, it looks and feels more like a toaster oven. The vacuum (that you must buy or they void your warranty) is a bucket mount POS that you can buy at home depot. They do include a hepa filter that is just a piece of foam (we are sucking up metal - the only thing needed is something that does not allow the metal particles to go in or near the motor). The motor is bigger than the one that comes with the home unit, and they say it is good for 3200 pairs a year. I dont believe that for a second, however I have no evidence or facts to support my statement. The edge checker is crap. The lines are very far apart, and the general construction is not good. The stone is also crap, but not really a big deal for a pro shop as we have plenty of high quality stones.

Sparx: All things equal, heavy is typically a good thing when trying to reduce vibration in a piece of equipment.  Look at any milling machine and you'll notice the cast iron base that it is sitting on.  There are far lighter ways to construct a base but this help minimize vibration in the mill.  SG is right that this doesn't automatically mean quality though.  The main component in the Sparx chassis is an incredibly beefy and stiff extrusion.  The rest of the chassis is a thick steel enclosure.  This is where most of Sparx's weight comes from.  The plastic components that dress-up the Sparx unit are just covers... similar to the way automobile companies trim the steel and aluminum structure of the car with plastic bumpers and ground effects for aesthetics.  We wanted to make a skate sharpener that not only sharpened well but also looked beautiful so people would be proud to show their friends.

The motors used in the commercial Sparx were tested to tens of thousands of sharpenings in our lab before they were ever released to customers.  We plan to do a YouTube video soon that highlights our R&D labs and test chambers.  We have a chamber where we can run 24 Sparx Sharpeners 24 hours a day 7 days a week.  These ran continuously for months before we released the Sparx Pro machine this past summer.  The sound of 24 Sparx machines running simultaneously was really awesome.  If you consider Sparx vs our closest competitors, we stand behind our machines by NOT having a cycle limit on our commercial product warranty.  Other machines limit their warranty to a cycle limit.

SG commented "The edge checker is crap".  We disagree and believe our edge checker is actually the most accurate on the market.  Our measurement lines provide the same 0.001" edge height resolution that the other edge checkers have on the market.  Our measurement lines are machined into the edge checker in the same machining setup as the blade slot which ensures that the relationship between the blade and the lines is the most precise that it can be.  We also have a few features on our edge checker to preserve the integrity of the measurement lines and the measurement bar so that use doesn't cause the accuracy of the edge checker to deteriorate.  Not so on competing edge checkers.   We also QC every edge checker before it goes out with a "gold standard" blade to make sure it reads accurately.  There are some nuances to blade thickness and taper which can throw off any edge checker - and we'll be putting out a post based on our research in this area very soon.

SG: Quality of sharpening (3/10) – we tested many pairs of skates and had two of them tested on the ice. After much fine tuning and adjusting, we could not get a single pair to come out with level edges at both ends of the skate. Not out by much, but out enough that I would never let them leave my shop that way. Part of the issue is the click adjustment setting, and the other is that I think the rail the motor and disk runs on was not straight. Not out a lot, but enough that skates were not level at both ends. You could get one end level but not the other. Click it one adjustment the other way, and it would do the exact same thing the other way (vice versa). One pair tested on the ice was by a coach and he said they were fine and felt no difference. The other was tested by a Bantam player, and he knew right away that the edges were out. The disk leaves a very heavy burr (compared to a standard sharpening wheel) along the entire edge of both sides of the blade. This can be removed with a course stone with extra passes. With standard sharpening a fine hone works great. The hollow itself does have a little bit of chatter. Probably about the same as traditional sharpening. However, if you make a slower last pass and / or use finishing oil or wax, traditional sharpening has a far superior blade finish. This was a brand new in the box demo unit (we were the first test). Maybe this was a bad one, or maybe this is normal for the Sparx. Either way the quality was not good enough for me to actually send a pair back out over the counter to a paying customer.

Sparx: There is a lot of stuff to comment on here.  First, there are NHL teams putting players on the ice in NHL games with Sparx.  These pro hockey players have the 10,000 hours of skating experience to make them the best in the world.  SG is telling us a couple funny things here.  The first, "I would never let them leave my shop that way" is just totally false.  We have visited dozens and dozens of shops and heard this exact same claim.  When we then go and randomly grab a pair of skates from a shop's finished sharpening pile they almost always have some amount of uneven edges.  Then comes the excuses about why this pair or that pair...  come on.  Respectfully, the same goes for NHL guys sharpening.  When someone says they never let a pair go out that aren't perfectly level don't listen to them.  Skates are perfectly level when within 0.001" of perfectly level.  Trying to get them more level makes no sense.  The accuracy of every part in the tolerance stack to make the edge height measurement exceeds the accuracy of the exactness you're going for.  This is engineering 101.  Blade thickness taper alone is such a major factor in this edge height measurement.  The second comment that needs to be addressed is "One pair tested on the ice was by a coach and he said they were fine and felt no difference. The other was tested by a Bantam player, and he knew right away that the edges were out."  Really?  So NHL players can't tell, the coach you sharpened for can't tell, but this 13-14 year old Bantam player is proof positive that Sparx is inaccurate.  Hmmmm.  Seems like we might be jumping to a conclusion from a very small sample set.

The comment about a Sparx leaving a burr that is bigger than a traditional vitrified bonded wheel is something we can't argue.  I would have to say on average, I do wind up working out more burrs with Sparx than I do with a traditional wheel.  The reason is for this highlights a few aspects of a traditional sharpening wheel that could be problematic.  The bonded wheel of a manual sharpener is consumed by the skate blade during the sharpening (put your hand in the swarf of a traditional sharpener and you'll feel the wheel dust flying off the wheel as it sharpens) and the blade itself digs into the wheel and the burrs are taken off by the wheel.  This means two things that might not be good... even though there is less of a burr.  The first is that the ROH on a bonded wheel is constantly changing.  When dressed to a 1/2" ROH, a bonded wheel holds that ROH accurately for a couple rotations of the wheel hitting the skate steel.  The ROH is then getting altered in the process of sharpening.  This means inconsistent ROH from pass to pass and skate to skate. The Sparx grinding rings are precision machined steel substrates with a single layer of superabrasive coated onto them.  The ROH doesn't change from the 1st pass to the last pass on a Sparx Grinding Ring.

The second is that the edges are being dulled by the traditional grinding wheel as it wraps around the steel as it wears and removes the burr in the process.  With Sparx you do need to, on occasion, put a few more seconds into deburring but this isn't a big deal and we suspect in the end the burrs are equally removed from both sharpening types.

SG: Cost of unit (4/10) – cost of the commercial unit including vacuum, edge checker, pick guard, all 3 blade holders for loose steel, and a 3 pack of stones is $3244 CDN. If you run a busy pro will need all of those things. One scary thing is they do sell a 2 year and 3 year add on warranty? 

Sparx: Our costs are shown on our commercial website here.  https://www.sparxhockey.com/pages/commercial-homepage

I wish we could do something about the USD/CAD exchange rate but that is beyond our control at Sparx.

We sell the add on service plans in the same manner that nearly all products do.  The sharpener is warranted, as I mentioned above, for unlimited cycles in the base time period.  If you want to add calendar years to this coverage this is an additional charge for peace of mind for a business that desires it.  Many of our commercial customer love Sparx for all of the labor flexibility benefits and the ability to sharpen many more pairs of skates with fewer resources.  These customers often want to buy additional insurance so that,if they ever have a problem with their Sparx machine in years down the road, we will support them in a white-glove fashion.  These extended service plans provide that insurance and peace of mind.  Again, this is a very common practice with durable goods such as our product.

SG:  Practicality for a pro shop (5/10) – It has some good points and some bad. Good is ease of use and training staff. Bad is quality of sharpening and cost of each sharpening. As a back-up machine to a regular sharpener it might have some value if it produced quality sharpenings. As a stand-alone machine in a pro shop no chance. There are too many variables it can not accommodate for. Bent blades, differing thickness of blades, nicks, gouges, changes in hollows, bent holders, loose blades, etc. For home use on 1 to 5 pairs of skates all at the same hollow it would probably be ok.

Sparx: We already have 100's of commercial users.  NESC here in MA sharpens more than 10 times as many skates as SG does per year and they use Sparx as their primary equipment.  Hard to argue with that.  Bent blades should either be straightened or replaced... independent of sharpening equipment.  Different thickness is accomodated for by the Sparx centering clamp.  Nick, gouges - easy to address with Sparx.  The commercial Sparx machine also has cross grinding (possible on the commercial machine due to the external vacuum).  Changes in hollows - easy with Sparx.  We have 24 ROH types including flat bottom profiles.  Bent holders, loose blades - should be fixed... independent of sharpening equipment.  All of the arguments put forth here do not provide any basis on which to reject Sparx as a skate sharpening machine option for anybody - proshop or home user.

I hope this helps anyone considering Sparx for Home or Commercial Use.  Please reach out to us at help@sparxhockey.com if you have any more questions.

Cheers,
Russ

Edited November 7, 2017 by ZamboniFever
formatting error in paragraph 1

[ZamboniFever 32]

One last comment...

The rails that are on Sparx are not bent.  We QC test all machines before they ship.  If they were bent it would be evident in the test.

Typically, the culprit here is the skate steel.  A first step, if possible, is to sharpen the steel out of the skate holder.  This usually allows the steel to be straightened by the Sparx clamp and the edges come out even.  If that doesn't work, I then dive in checking to see if the edge checker readings are consistent when flipping the direction of the edge checker around while measuring.  If they are inconsistent there is a high probability that the steel is tapered and throwing off the reading.  Try sharpening another skate to see if you get the exact same results (preferably on a skate with at least 3 mm material removed from the blade - not brand new steel).  Usually the results are different and many times this second skate will be dead even.

Best approach once you arrive here is to trust that Sparx is sharpening your skate even... even if the edge checker is showing an inconsistent measurement (will still usually be within 0.001" of even).

Hope this helps,

Russ

[Hills 712]

@ZamboniFever thanks for the replies. Just an fyi, the instructions for the edge checker says "the space between each line indicates an edge height difference of .002"

So I think that is a source of confusion.

[ZamboniFever 32]

@Hills  Good point.  Let me explain.  When an edge checker shows a deviation of 1 line from perfectly level (e.g. 1 line up on the right side of the edge checker), the opposite side of the edge checker should also show 1 line of deviation in other direction (e.g. 1 line down on the left side of the edge checker).  This reading shows a combined 0.001" up on the right and a 0.001" down on the left or a total of 0.002" of height difference between the left edge and the right edge.  To put this measurement magnitude into perspective, I just used a micrometer to measure the diameter of an eyelash.  The micrometer reads 0.00325".  The fact that the Sparx Edge Checker can measure your edges, in a repeatable fashion, to a fraction of the diameter of an eyelash is pretty impressive - speaking merely from an engineering perspective.  Also, the Sparx Edge Checker and the other popular one on the market have the same measurement resolution.  The lines may have slightly different spacing because the widths of the edge checkers are slightly different.

Hopefully this makes sense.

Cheers,
Russ

 

[Skate Guru 1]

First off, I have no skin in this game. I don't work for a sharpening company and I don't care if anyone buys a sparx or any other sharpener. The reply above is from a salesman trying to sell more sparx machines, not correct inaccuracies. I get it, it's his job to sell more sparx machines. I gave an honest review and I am a professional skate sharpener. The only comment I made that he acknowledged as good was the one they got 10/10 on. Even the 9/10 was an issue, and he added a sales pitch to defend it:

The one thing we hear from nearly all of our customers is that they can go from receiving their Sparx sharpener to sharpening a pair of skates in 10-15 minutes without ever having sharpened a skate before in their life.

I have a few questions:

This amount of accuracy in Grinding Ring movement is really impressive when you consider the alternative which is an iterative trail and error approach to alignment (like you get with traditional manual sharpening equipment).

How is traditional sharpening trial and error? How is it any different than sparx?

The centering skate clamp of Sparx, which is the exact same clamp design and hardware for both our consumer and pro machines, puts the blade over the center of the grinding wheel every time.

How does it do that? The clamp never moves... Why not center the ring under the clamp at the factory and don't provide any adjustments?

When dressed to a 1/2" ROH, a bonded wheel holds that ROH accurately for a couple rotations of the wheel hitting the skate steel.

Where did you get this information?

First, there are NHL teams putting players on the ice in NHL games with Sparx.

Which NHL teams? Which NHL players?

The first, "I would never let them leave my shop that way" is just totally false.

How do you know how I run my business?

We have visited dozens and dozens of shops and heard this exact same claim.  When we then go and randomly grab a pair of skates from a shop's finished sharpening pile they almost always have some amount of uneven edges.

Which shops? Where? When? You can just grab a pair of their sharpened skates?

 

My post was a fair an honest review. This reply seems more like an attack against me personally or anyone with a differing opinion, filled with inaccuracies, and heavy duty on the sales pitch. I am a professional sharpener and an engineer. Buy one, don't buy one, it makes no difference to me. What I can tell you is that for MY pro shop the quality of the sharpening delivered by the sparx commercial unit I tested was poor.

 

 

[IPv6Freely 2093]

21 minutes ago, Skate Guru said:

The reply above is from a salesman trying to sell more sparx machines, not correct inaccuracies. I get it, it's his job to sell more sparx machines.

Just so we're clear, @ZamboniFever is not a salesman. He's the founder/owner and is an engineer. 

[colins 246]

28 minutes ago, Skate Guru said:

 

My post was a fair an honest review. This reply seems more like an attack against me personally or anyone with a differing opinion, filled with inaccuracies, and heavy duty on the sales pitch. I am a professional sharpener and an engineer. Buy one, don't buy one, it makes no difference to me. What I can tell you is that for MY pro shop the quality of the sharpening delivered by the sparx commercial unit I tested was poor.

 

 

 

Unfortunately, you have created a credibility problem for yourself which is why there's this back and forth on your review. Readers know (or can find out) who Russ Layton is and what his credentials are. They are public here: https://www.sparxhockey.com/pages/team.

But your identity is not clear. It seems you hadn't ever posted here before but showed up a few days ago to share an opinion for the first time. You say you're an engineer and a professional skate sharpener. But you also in the same breath you said the sparx edge checker is crap because the lines are too far apart. I needed to confirm you were speaking about the same edge checker I own because the one I have has lines close enough together to get a very accurate reading. So I couldn't make any sense of your comment. I have to question your credentials once you put out a nonsense statement like that. 

 

I hope you understand, its not personal. But when you make comments about a product and you don't have an existing reputation in the forum to be judged upon, you should expect to be challenged on the points that people can't make any sense of. 

Sparx's business model is an obvious threat to some guys with >$10K investments in traditional Blademaster and Blackstone stations. That's fine, there's a time and place for both setups. But play fair - if you want to point out any shortcomings in the Sparx product, base it on facts instead of opinions that don't hold up under scrutiny. 

 

colins (Hockey dad to two boys, rec hockey player and Sparx owner. I'm not an engineer. I do have a B.Sc in Computer Science. I'm not a professional skate sharpener. My edges are perfect, and I would put them up against anyone's).

[IPv6Freely 2093]

8 minutes ago, colins said:

Sparx's business model is an obvious threat to some guys with >$10K investments in traditional Blademaster and Blackstone stations. That's fine, there's a time and place for both setups.

Let me shed a tear for the shop owners... Actually, no. If you’re a craftsman, like a SERIOUS craftsman who has worked on your art for decades, you have nothing to worry about. If you seriously feel threatened by a home sharpening machine, you can’t be all that great.

Lets face it, 90% of pro shops suck, because 90% of them aren't staffed by people who REALLY know what they're doing. And in reality, if the pro shops near me weren't so terrible I never would have even considered something like the Sparx.

Put simply: I wish there wasn’t a market for Sparx, but there is. As an analogy, I wish something like Uber wasn’t needed. But, since the cab industry is shit, it is thriving. Cabbies are all pissed off about Uber stealing their business. And then every time I take an actual Taxi I’m very quickly reminded of why I love Uber.

Regardless, you'll get the occasional cabbie on MSH complaining about Uber stealing their rides... 

[215BroadStBullies610 435]

Pretty much where I'm at. With the change at Pure Hockey, I'm 18 sharpenings away from paying for inconsistent cuts from all local shops. To drop almost 1K bones is asking a lot from me but I'm on the ice way too much to be dealing with unsatisfactory work. I was spoiled in college. Had a kid who never screwed up. I graduated in 2010 from school on the other side of the state haha. Sparx seems more of reality now. Whether I like it or not. 

[marka 526]

Howdy,

10 hours ago, ZamboniFever said:

One last comment...

The rails that are on Sparx are not bent.  We QC test all machines before they ship.  If they were bent it would be evident in the test.

 

 

My primary question re: Sparx at this point is "why are all the grinding rings on back order?" with a concern of "if Sparx goes out of business my cool Sparx machine that I love (really, I saw one at Summer Fest and thought it was great!) is a paperweight because I won't be able to get grinding rings.

But your comment makes me wonder... are there pictures of the internal guts of a Sparx somewhere?  And have you QC tested one _after_ the shipping company lauched it off a dock to a 4' fall?  :-)  I don't believe I've ever seen a piece of machinery with moving parts that has been unable to be whacked out of alignment.

Mark

[ZamboniFever 32]

Thanks for the question @marka

The Grinding Ring backorder situation was one that we anticipated but didn't catch quickly enough before the demand from our customers outstripped supply.  This is an unfortunate, but not uncommon, problem for a rapidly growing company.  I'm not using this as an excuse but letting you know what happened.  I apologize for the inconvenience this is causing.  The GREAT news is that we have doubled our production of Grinding Rings over the last month and are now working weekends at Sparx Hockey to build, pack, and ship product to our customers.  Quality is also priority #1 for us.  While we are growing quickly, rest assured that we are not cutting any corners on quality.

We have the back order message on our website so that we are 100% transparent with our customers and also to set worst-case expectations.  We strive with every order to beat the estimated time.  In many cases these orders ship faster than the stated shipping delay.

We fully anticipate to be flush with inventory of Grinding Rings and out of backorder in the next couple weeks.  We will also be updating the message on the website soon since the delay to ship has been reduced from when we first posted this message.  Many thanks to all of the MSH'ers who are Sparx Hockey customers.  We appreciate your business and patience as we ramp up production.  One silver lining from these short term shipping delays as we ramp up production is that this overwhelming demand for our product further solidifies us as a company - no worries about us being here for the long run.

Sincerely,

The Sparx Team