Profile maintenance with automated sharpeners

[JR Boucicaut 3759]

7 hours ago, 218hockey said:

This thread is looking more and more like pea soup.

Not alter the profile like hand sharpening? A highly trained manual operator will maintain the profile.

 

And now we have numerous claims that the SPARX will not maintain a Quad (or any?) profile no matter what.

 

 

 

Here is an LS4 that has been used/sharpened for a little over a year, maybe 15-20 sharpenings, and many of those at the local hardware store. They were profiled but I can't even remember what it was, maybe 10/11. I have no idea what the profile would be now, does it look that bad?

Rule of thumb - you should be looking to get your profile refreshed after 20 sharpenings.  Judging by your skates after 20 sharpenings, you might as well get new steel.

We were talking specifically about the heel and toe radiii on skates.  It shouldn't be confusing - don't get the pea soup reference.  If you need clarification, just ask.

Interesting, Hills.  Something doesn't seem right there.  I've never heard that - @psulion22 got some Quad steel from me and doesn't seem to have that issue on Sparx.

1 hour ago, Hills said:

So, this is the best I can do to show what I'm trying to say right now.

1st image is where the sharpening should start (or close to it?). But doing so completely misses a lot of the toe because of the vastly different radius. 

 

Second image is where the sharpening wheel makes contact with the heel if you adjust the machine to actually sharpen the toe.

 

Now I am going off of a very quick conversation one skate shop guy told me, so if I'm wrong please say so. Everything he said and showed me made sense to me and after tilting the skate in the clamp it worked great.

[psulion22 402]

3 hours ago, Hills said:

So, this is the best I can do to show what I'm trying to say right now.

1st image is where the sharpening should start (or close to it?). But doing so completely misses a lot of the toe because of the vastly different radius. 

Second image is where the sharpening wheel makes contact with the heel if you adjust the machine to actually sharpen the toe.

Now I am going off of a very quick conversation one skate shop guy told me, so if I'm wrong please say so. Everything he said and showed me made sense to me and after tilting the skate in the clamp it worked great.

So, I'd say that the contact point is closer to being correct on the second pic than the first, and certainly wouldn't be an issue getting up that high.  Inbetween the two would probably be preferable.  If you can't get there between clicks, maybe try adding the goalie riser and seeing if it gives you a something in the middle.  Also, you say that this is where the wheel makes contact.  But you should be inserting the skate with the toe facing RIGHT, or towards the carriage start point.  So, when it gets to the heel it will roll off a little more and not carry so far up the curve.  On the return trip, I feel like it doesn't give as much contact at the start point.

2 hours ago, JR Boucicaut said:

Rule of thumb - you should be looking to get your profile refreshed after 20 sharpenings.  Judging by your skates after 20 sharpenings, you might as well get new steel.

We were talking specifically about the heel and toe radiii on skates.  It shouldn't be confusing - don't get the pea soup reference.  If you need clarification, just ask.

Interesting, Hills.  Something doesn't seem right there.  I've never heard that - @psulion22 got some Quad steel from me and doesn't seem to have that issue on Sparx.

I don't seem to have this problem at all.  I have to cut my skates tonight, so I'll pay closer attention to how much pressure it's giving the heel.  If I have time, I'll pull it off and see how much change there has been against the fresh set.

[marka 519]

Howdy,

Yeah, FWIW I've been having my wheel hit higher up, like in your 2nd pic.  My thought behind that was that if I didn't have it hit higher up than where you are in your first pic, over time I'd end up sharpening that area enough that the steel would be taken away, bringing the toe area that didn't used to be anywhere near the ice more and more into the actual usable profile.

I don't know which is "correct" though.

Mark

[psulion22 402]

Checked my Sparx sharpened steel against the fresh steel and there is no discernable difference in profile between the two.  Also, with the toe facing right, and the dial on the 7 setting, the wheel made equal contact to the heel and toe without any screeching or skipping that would indicate increased pressure to the heel, going in either direction.

[stick9 881]

2 minutes ago, psulion22 said:

Checked my Sparx sharpened steel against the fresh steel and there is no discernable difference in profile between the two.  Also, with the toe facing right, and the dial on the 7 setting, the wheel made equal contact to the heel and toe without any screeching or skipping that would indicate increased pressure to the heel, going in either direction.

This is how my steel is done on the sparx machine, toe always faces right. 

[ZamboniFever 32]

Hi Everyone - Russ here from Sparx Hockey.

 

The Sparx machine was built with the profile of the skate blade in mind. The carriage of the Sparx Machine moves the Grinding Ring across the skate blade with consistent pressure, translation speed, and RPM. This consistency ensures even material removal and a smooth surface finish.  This is true for all skate blade profiles, including those which have been profiled.  We’ve sharpened thousands and thousands of sets of steel here at Sparx Hockey in production (part of our QC test of every machine) and in the lab (where we test durability of Sparx) and we can show you thousands of pieces of steel worn down to basically the blade holder where the shape of the steel is virtually identical* to the original shape but completely worn down.  There is no difference if the blade had a different profile than the one put on there by the factory (remember, there is a profile on the steel from the factory…the machine’s mechanism doesn’t care what the profile is called).  *Does it hold the profile down to the angstrom (google it), no.  Does it hold the profile better than any human could over 1000’s of passes?  Absolutely.

 

Let me first start by saying that I am a big fan of human skate sharpeners.  Sparx Hockey now has hundreds and hundreds of retailers and equipment managers who use our product (many in the NHL…  including a team sporting some new bling they picked up in Vegas… not naming names)  I think these guys/gals are great.  I mean absolutely no disrespect with my next comments.

 

There is NO WAY that a human skate sharpener can be more consistent in material removal than a Sparx can over 10’s, 100’s, or 1000’s of passes.  It’s just not possible.  How could anyone be more consistent than a machine with a tuned constant force mechanism, constant RPM, and constant translation speed?  Hopefully people reading this post are also shaking their head and realizing how suspect a claim such as that would be.  Humans are great at many things…  this task however is just something that a machine can do really well.

 

If people want proof on the above…  look at skates that have always been sharpened at even the highest-end shops… they have greater material removed in certain sections – usually in the heel and toe where the human operator is removing the blade from the wheel or changing directions.  These areas have the greatest variability in translation speed of the skate over the grinding wheel and thus variability in material removal.  As consumers, we all have experienced this and know that it’s just the way it is.

 

Regarding the heel/toe comments.  For some of our commercial shops and NHL teams we have designed angled lifts that sit into the holes of the Sparx Sharpener jaws where the goalies risers connect. These lifts tilt the skate a small amount to allow the grinding wheel to make it higher up on the toe sections (where profiles tend to be pulled back the most).    We don’t think these lifts are necessary (as thousands of customers are doing just fine without them… including many of us here at Sparx who have been using Sparx as their only sharpener for years now) but some of our commercial/team customers insist on this option and they sharpen enough skates that it warrants us making these adapters for them.  This same effect is also easily accomplished by tilting the skate in the jaws before clamping.  We’ll post a video response to this email in the next couple days demonstrating how this works.

 

I hope these points help clarify come of the questions raised in this topic.

[IPv6Freely 2083]

9 minutes ago, ZamboniFever said:

Regarding the heel/toe comments.  For some of our commercial shops and NHL teams we have designed angled lifts that sit into the holes of the Sparx Sharpener jaws where the goalies risers connect. These lifts tilt the skate a small amount to allow the grinding wheel to make it higher up on the toe sections (where profiles tend to be pulled back the most).    We don’t think these lifts are necessary (as thousands of customers are doing just fine without them… including many of us here at Sparx who have been using Sparx as their only sharpener for years now) but some of our commercial/team customers insist on this option and they sharpen enough skates that it warrants us making these adapters for them. 

Any plans to offer these lifts on your store for consumers? I don't need them, but it seems some here would like to have them. 

[ZamboniFever 32]

@IPv6Freely Thanks for the request.  We hadn't planned on making the risers in volume since we think demand wouldn't be there to justify the tooling cost to make them (similar process to how we make our goalie risers).  I'll circle up the engineering team to see if there are any bright ideas for how we could produce them inexpensively.

[oldtrainerguy28 478]

Sparx, Russ.... I respectfully disagree. All 3 skates are 1 or more season of sharpening old. All are different players and all were sharpened at my shop by myself or one of the 4 employees I have. 

Yes, at least 1 complete GTHL season! Profile adjusted mid-season and checked. You can't do that on any other machines than by hand. Is there a place in the market for a machine like yours? Yes, there is. But the amount of bad-mouthing by some in the "home sharpening" group is getting annoying. Are there some bad people sharpening skates, there is. 

But you cannot fix maintain and adjust blades on a Sparx like you can on a full-size sharpener with an experienced operator.

PS: The Prosharp is an old one a friend asked me to sell to another friend who lives an hour away. Using it for maintenance between visits. 

Edited June 15, 2018 by oldtrainerguy28

[IPv6Freely 2083]

Unfortunately “experienced operators” are so rare these days it’s not really a good argument.

[marka 519]

Howdy,

It seems like you guys are talking about two different things.  Russ and some others are pointing out that a machine is better at repetitive tasks / consistent speed / consistent pressure than a manual machine.  Old Trainer is pointing out that a Sparx cannot cut or check a profile.

Seems to me like both statements are true?  I don't think anyone would argue that a Sparx is quite good / better than most manual machines/operators when you stay inside its capabilities.  Equally, it's not going to be very good if you need something it doesn't do.

Mark

[IPv6Freely 2083]

1 hour ago, marka said:

Howdy,

It seems like you guys are talking about two different things.  Russ and some others are pointing out that a machine is better at repetitive tasks / consistent speed / consistent pressure than a manual machine.  Old Trainer is pointing out that a Sparx cannot cut or check a profile.

Seems to me like both statements are true?  I don't think anyone would argue that a Sparx is quite good / better than most manual machines/operators when you stay inside its capabilities.  Equally, it's not going to be very good if you need something it doesn't do.

Mark

Yup yup. Exactly.

[JR Boucicaut 3759]

To clarify, it was in regards to the heel and toe radii.  As in where the grinding wheel first touches and where it exits.

13 hours ago, marka said:

Old Trainer is pointing out that a Sparx cannot cut or check a profile.