The Zamboni

The Zamboni®, named after it's creator Frank J. Zamboni, is the large apparatus that resurfaces the ice before, during and after practices and games. In the old days, a scraper would be dragged behind a tractor which was driven on the ice. People would manually shovel away the shavings, squeegee the ice clean, and spray water from a hose to build up new ice. Obviously this took a while and was inefficient. That's when Frank decided to change the world of ice maintenance.

• First, the blade shaves the ice surface, flattening it.
• The horizontal screw conveyors gather the shavings and direct them toward the center of the machine, where it meets the vertical screw conveyor.
• The vertical screw conveyor lifts the shavings and projects them forward into the snow collection tank.
• Later, in a dump-truck style fashion, the shavings are dumped out of the Zamboni®.
• Next, the conditioner squeegees the ice clean using water from the wash water tank, removing dirt and other contaminants from the ice.
• This water is vacuumed up and returned to the wash water tank.
• Last, fresh, hot water from the fresh water tank is applied over the freshly shaved, vacuumed ice by the towel.
• This steaming hot water bonds with the current ice layers and melts into and over, providing a nice, new, clean, and smooth sheet of ice. 

Zamboni® is a registered trademark of Frank J. Zamboni & Co., Inc.