Technology - Consistency

Consistency has been the focus when creating our ice speed skating blades. Machining time is expensive and blade manufacturers grind the steel in batches at high speeds to reduce costs. This results in the steel warping due to the high temperature of the grinding stone grinding the steel. Our aim for the GT3 and the Platinum was to make every blade the same so we purchased the best grinding stones from Germany and we slowly grind one set of steel blades at a time. This is an extremely slow process with higher costs but the result is steel that has no warping. All skaters, not just Olympians, should enjoy perfect blades. However, we didn't stop with the grinding. We looked at the other aspects of making the blade even more perfect. We developed a new stronger glue that allowed us to reduce the tube slot width by 0.1mm. The tube slot needs a certain amount of room for the glue on either side of the blade. The greater the gap, the more chance the steel has to warp while the glue sets. By reducing this gap, we improved the consistency of the straightness of the blade after gluing. Lastly, we invested heavily in jigs. Each blade is clamped in 9 locations while it sets and we let the blades set for 14 hours until the glue has fully cured. This means that we can only make a few sets of blades per day, but each set is perfect.