19mm silicone pad stickers, is there a standard thickness?

Yo-Yo Mods and Maintenance
1

I haven’t had to replace silicone pads much on my yo-yos to date, probably because I have a ton and I don’t play any individual one anywhere close enough to wear them out. As they say, variety is the spice of life!

I do however have one favorite deep state that I play a lot and its response was getting kinda weird. So I pulled the silicone stickers out with some precision tweezers (highly recommend these, by the way, also good for knot extraction if you don’t want to unscrew the yo-yo) …

… and I replaced them with some other 19mm silicone pad stickers I had lying around, but they were less thick and more recessed than the old pads. There was a visible “indent” in the response groove with those new pads installed, they were nowhere near flush with the interior of the yoyo body. As a result I think the response suffered.

After playing around with that Deep State more for a day or two, I was unhappy about the situation. I rooted around in my stuff and found some different 19mm silicone pad stickers and they were indeed thicker. I replaced them and … :boom: all better.

So that got me wondering: I think the yoyo industry has roughly standardized on 19mm silicone response pad stickers (for the majority of c bearing, unresponsive yoyos)… nobody really messes with flowable silicone any more at scale … but is there a standard 19mm silicone response pad thickness as well?

I also have the Confusion here, can’t say enough great things about that yo-yo! It is of course a smaller bearing and different response sticker diameter, but it ships stock with the “thick” responsive orange silicone pad stickers that poke out a bit from the response recess groove… and comes with an extra set of “thin” white response pads (and a wide bearing) for people that want to play more unresponsive. This also made me wonder couldn’t you adjust bind snappiness on an unresponsive yo-yo by sticking thinner or thicker response pads in?

Here’s a pic of the optional white “thin” pads installed on a Confusion GT, versus the stock “thick” pads on a Confusion.

image image

You see what I mean about silicone response pads being flush, versus poking out a bit… or even being recessed! Do companies intentionally ship silicone response pads in a choice of thicknesses so you can “tune” the bind snappiness of an unresponsive yo-yo?

2

One Drop uses a slightly different size pad (Flow Groove) which might explain what you are seeing

1 Like
3

By “different size” you mean thickness, though?

4

I did find these YYF response pads:

There is this “extra thick” one:

Green

The Green pads are the extra-thick responsive pads, replacement for the responsive versions of the ONE/Dv888/Hubstack/Replay. These sit above the normal pad area in any large/slim padded Yo-Yo to make the string grab much easier.

Not included in that pack though!

5

One Drop standard Flow groove pads are the same dimensions as 19mm slim pads, but they’re much thicker at ~1.6mm

Standard YYF slim pads are ~1mm thick. One Drop makes a slimmer flow groove pad that Is ~0.7mm thick also.

The extra thick YYF pads are ~1.5mm thick, so pretty much the same as the One Drop Standard Flow Groove Pads.

2 Likes
6

My recollection is that the OD pads have a larger OD as well.

7

Aha! this is super helpful.

I have tried playing the Confusion GT responsive with both thin (white) and thick (orange) pads installed and it is a very interesting difference. The response works fine with the flush response pad, it’s just a tad less snappy… but you also definitely notice the extra drag on the string from the poked-out orange silicone response stickers, too.

1 Like
8

Same ID/OD, just the thickness is different.

IMG_7105
IMG_71052448×2448 602 KB

EDIT: That’s a picture of a YYF yo-yo with a One Drop pad in case it wasn’t clear lol.

3 Likes
9

Good discussion topic, imo. If I may jump in…

I know One Drop has two standard 19mm pads, flow groove and slim fg. I can’t really vouch for many other brands, because I really only own One Drop [Top Deck, Mantis, SK, and Kuntosh], Magicyoyo [n12, v2 Avocado, Purple Line, and several k1’s], and one CLYW [Compass].

CLYW use snow tires, they’re really only compatable with CLYW. Magicyoyo uses the industry standard 19mm slim pad afik.

I do my own flowable pads every couple of months or so when response starts getting slippy, so honnestly I don’t really bother with buying replacement pads. I enjoy doing it that way too.

Just a note on One Drop fg and slim fg pads. I think the reason they have 2 standard sizes is because in certain models like the Mantis, during the design process they were actually able to remove more material out of the center of the yo-yo in that spot to reduce center weight. The same volume of silicone weighs less than the same volume of aluminum. And that yoyo is also machined out of 7075, which is heavier [denser] than 6065. The Top Deck uses the slim pads, because it was also machined out of 7075, and that yoyo was designed to fully utilize the properties of the aluminum. It has a crazy thin center, so it only needed slim pads. They both feel extremely different as far as weight distribution goes. G2Jake features both the Mantis and the Top Deck on lcayy if you’re curious.

So that’s my theory on OD’s pads. Now, as far as using thicker/thinner pads on unresponsive yoyo’s to tweak the response, here’s my opinion. There’s no rule that says you can’t, and if you have the time, patience and resource to perform a scientific method type study on it, I say go for it.

I don’t, and just like to use my unresponsive yoyo’s with flush, or slightly recessed [natural property of flowable, it usually shrinks a little while drying] response. I did own a Replay once, and it came with beefy pads that sat proud of the gap walls. I threw in a wide bearing and made it unresponsive. I found the pads slowed the spintime and reduced stability significantly because they would almost constantly contact the string during play. I actually took a razor and trimmed them flush because it was that frustrating to me. But then I had to spin up a thicker string for it because it got too unresponsive, the gap is just really big on that particular yoyo. But I degress…

So, to sum it up, good discussion point. Response is a pretty integral part of modern yoyo, and deserves some love.

4 Likes
10

Great post! It just never occurred to me that you could “tune” a yoyo by varying the silicone response pad thickness … in the same way you can “tune” a yoyo by using a thicker string, a wider bearing, more (or less) lube in the bearing, etcetera.

1 Like
11

Yea, that’s one of the most enjoyable parts of this hobby to me. Getting to know each yoyo’s unique personality, that is. It’s crazy, once you get past the rudiments of unresponsive and they become second nature, you can really feel the thoughtfulness (or lack thereof) of the design of each individual model, and the sum of their parts.

4 Likes
12

YoyoFriends’ stock pads/response grooves are 19mm OD, 14mm ID, and 1.2mm thick/deep.

1 Like
13

Do you, or anyone else here have the exact thicknesses of One Drop’s two standard pads?

Oh, and Snow Tires too.

2 Likes
14

OD slim pads are slightly thinner than YYF slim pads - around 0.8mm thick I believe. Snow Tires are around 1.5mm from what I remember. Not in the office now, but I can get more accurate measurements tomorrow.

2 Likes
15

I’d appreciate the accurate measurements. It’s for… uh… science

2 Likes
16

anything for science :+1:

4 Likes
17

OD Flow Groove Pads: 1.65mm
OD 19mm Pads: 0.85mm
Snow Tires: 1.9mm

Rubber will vary slightly in thickness, but I think these measurements are pretty accurate.

4 Likes
18

Excellent, thank you sir!

1 Like