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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 1 shaves the ice surface, flattening it.
  • The horizontal screw conveyors 2 gather the shavings and direct them toward the center of the machine, where it meets the vertical screw conveyor 3.
  • The vertical screw conveyor lifts the shavings and projects them forward into the snow collection tank 4.
  • Later, in a dump-truck style fashion the shavings are dumped out of the Zamboni®.
  • Next, the conditioner 6 squeegees the ice clean using water from the wash water tank 5, 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 7.
  • 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.