Hello all,
This is Aaron from Snowie Shaved Ice. I just had a customer show me this thread and I wanted to take a minute to talk about the concerns brought up here.
If you notice, this thread was from a year ago and it sounds like their purchase was even sometime before that. There have been a lot of changes since our first launch of the Block Shaver. The most important improvement that pertains to this thread is a speed control. You can now run your shaver as fast or as slow as you like. There was some mention of the blades producing ice chunks, but this concern really has nothing to do with the blade, but rather the speed at which they were shaving the snow. Granted, they did not have control of that speed at the time, but now they do. As the user mentioned, you do not want to use compressed ice if you are trying for perfect snow. I don't know if they were using compressed with our shaver or not, but that can definitely contribute to icier pieces being in the shave ice.
We did and do have a delay on the shaving. We do this on purpose, and this delay can also be turned off if you wish. But there is a reason for that delay. With block shavers, when you are shaving and your block goes from full on shaving to stopped, your blade can bury itself into the block. This can make it difficult for a shaver to begin spinning on the next shaved ice, especially if the ice has sat for some time. So the way our delay works is that it will not push that block into the blade any more, but the blade will continue to spin for a set time to prevent that bite. Even more importantly, it clears out all of the remaining snow in the chamber making it clear for the next shaved ice.
There was a follow-up concern on the pressure flaps. We now have multiple flaps that are very easy to adjust and/or replace. Once you have the correct flap for your size of ice, you never need to change it again, unless you change the size of block you are using. We have made this shaver so that it is able shave pretty much any block on the market. Our original intent was to have those flaps work for any size block, but there is some huge variance from the smallest to the largest block. Our solution is now alternate flaps which is a perfect fix.
Another note on this, shavers that spin the block of ice on a stationary blade, their blocks have literally come out of their housing and hit the workers in the face, sometimes breaking teeth. This cannot happen with the Snowie Block. That block is very much secure within that housing.
Now, there was also a comment on this shaver not being the one for high volume. I am here to tell you that there is no ice shaver out there that is better equipped for high volume than the Snowie Block Ice Shaver. I understand that the person who stated that was talking about the fact that they would have to tap the peddle and then wait, tap and wait, etc. You do not have to do that any longer. With the Snowie Block Ice Shaver, you can still serve a customer every 3 seconds. If that is too fast for your liking, you can slow it way down and then serve a customer every 9-or-so seconds. My point here is that with other block ice shavers, you are over a minute easy when serving a customer their shaved ice. This is a Huge deal. We have been developing the block for over 10 years before we ever released that first version. The world didn't need another block ice shaver, it needed a shaver that could produce incredible snow but maintain the speed of the snowie 3000 ice shaver. We have now accomplished that goal. Sure we had some hiccups in the first round, but we have far resolved those issues.
There was also mention that it drew too much power and was loud. The block shaver is now much more quiet than our first generation. It even has a smooth hum to it when you have that timing just right.
As far as the power that it draws, yes, we still pull a lot of power. Our shavers produce unreal amounts of shaved ice. One of the reasons for that, is that we put in high-end motors that really work and those motors require a good amount of power.
Thank you for your compliments on our buildings. We really take pride in all that we do and produce. I love forums and the ability for people to talk about their concerns and I love the ability that we have to resolve those concerns. Please let me know if you have any further questions or concerns. Thank you for considering Snowie.
Please visit us at
www.snowie.com
email me at
aaron@snowie.com
Phone: 801-268-2225
Here is a video about it.
