3d Printed Yoyos - New Design For 2021!

jeffreypang911 · February 19, 2021, 4:13pm

Hey!

Seems like people have been printing yoyos a bit more lately with people staying inside due to Covid and such. Andre reached out to help revive an old project I had - and I thought this was a great opportunity to get this spacer kit available at YoyoExpert. Half of them already sold so i sent Andre a new batch.

This kit I developed essentially eliminates all the difficulties and frustrations of 3d printing a yoyo, and lets the user focus on the fun - designing and printing their own yoyo, not fiddling around with getting a bearing seat to work. Plus side is you only need to buy one kit and you can swap them with as many yoyos as you want.

I released these designs free to use, you can use the above measurements to build your own hub and make your own design. Even sell the yoyos you print, I don’t care hah. This is also a good tool to help prototype yoyos you might plan to have machined for your own company, especially to see if the profile feels ok in-hand before sending it off for prototyping - kind of a very cheap pre-proto stage.

Another funny thing is that 5 years back when I was printing a lot, the cheapest printers were around 700$. Now i am seeing some for under 200$ - you could buy a few spacer kits AND a 3d printer, for the price of a modern Bi-metal or Titanium. That I find really exciting and helps more people get into it.

New Design for 2021

I worked on this on and off last few months between Luftverk stuff, here is a new design that I finally got done. Its pretty hard to print but if you have your machine dialed it should do it no problem, with no support. Its cool to hear the wind it creates with all the little pockets. Its in the download link so take a crack at printing it!

Download link: Dropbox Download

Spacer Kit: Fluid 3D Printing Spacer Kit – YoYoExpert

Feel free to post some of your own that you printed below : )

zslane · February 18, 2021, 10:19pm

Hey Jeffrey,

Thanks for this kit!

I have a question for you: how do you print your yoyo cups without supports? I use a resin printer and I can’t get good prints with perfectly smooth (and consistent) surfaces, even with supports (in fact, supports just tend to make matters worse).

Kray · February 19, 2021, 6:46am

FDM printers can easily print angles up to 45-55 degree. So you do not need any supports at all for the cup normally. If you want a spherical cup it can become more tricky. look at the cup design precisely and also on the outer ring. All ~45 degree angles. If you need supports for the nut hole you can make supports just for this tiny spot if you have a slicer that supports it.

Kray · February 19, 2021, 10:02am

If somebody else looks for the correct link like @yoyodoc did.
This one works:

yoyodoc · February 19, 2021, 10:07am

At any random time, there is at least one Genius on the YYE Forum. It’s said that timing is everything.

I found him.

Kray-z -good-luck.

Thanks Kray…

jeffreypang911 · February 20, 2021, 1:54am

Hey!

Sorry about the broken link : P

Should work now!

Cheers

jeffreypang911 · February 20, 2021, 1:54am

Yep! You got it right - no support. I generally try to design without support just due to better surface quality

oneofthenine · February 20, 2021, 5:09pm

This. This is fantastic. I started 3d printing last May and have made a few decent yoyos, but I’ve had to use old A size spacers from my Duncan metal drifter. This should prove to be much easier!

zslane · February 20, 2021, 6:22pm

So on the Fluid kit spacer, is the bearing seat the same 1.5mm depth as the response channel?

jhb8426 · February 22, 2021, 2:30am

Great idea, Jeffrey. Are these by any chance the same size as the Buzz-On SPR kit?

jeffreypang911 · February 24, 2021, 2:31am

I got a few question about that, its not but I tried it on my buzzon element x and it actually scews together. its slightly smaller so if you wanted to get it perfect you could 3d print a ring around it.

jeffreypang911 · February 24, 2021, 2:33am

The seat is actually 1.6 I believe but its a nice idea to have it protrude a hair so the 3d printed surface doesnt catch on the string. Again these are rough estimates and optimized to my preferences. Anyone could easily make more changes to these and upload their own!

zslane · February 24, 2021, 2:37am

So out of curiosity I put a Center Trac bearing into the two halves of the kit and measured the gap with my digital calipers: 4.15mm. That’s really tight. Was that really the target gap width?

I haven’t used this kit in a 3D printed yoyo yet, but how do you install yours? Do you just press fit it in or do you glue it in? The bearing was so tight in the bearing seat that I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to get it out again. I imagine that the whole kit would just pop out of any prototype yoyo when merely trying to remove the bearing.

jhb8426 · February 24, 2021, 3:35am

Thanks. Not in to 3d printing but I’ve used the SPR kit on a couple of spintastics bodies to change them to C size bearings.

jeffreypang911 · February 24, 2021, 4:21am

Yep!

I started using 4.2 in all Luftverk yoyos again as well. The binds are much much tighter and I found wider ones like 4.4 and higher are just comically wide and cause the string to slip near the end. I dont know where this obsession with gap width came from. Id rather get a tighter bind, a harder throw and less kickback, just feels so much better to me, but of course that is an opinion and everyone has their own preference.

The spacer has just presses in. The bearing shouldn’t be that tight, unless the bearing you are using is galled up from being installed and uninstalled multiple times in other yoyos which would change the tolerence. All my centertrac bearings fit really loose in the bearing seats, most just take a wiggle to come out, but they are usually brand new bearings that I install.

By all means if you want to glue it down go ahead but I tend to pop mine out to use with other shapes!

Hope that helps.

zslane · February 24, 2021, 4:48am

I tend to like narrower gaps too, and I’ve found 4.4mm to be the sweet spot for me. I don’t put a lot of string wraps into the gap so I don’t need a really wide gap, and I too prefer more spin off the throw and snappier binds.

The Center Trac bearing I tried was basically new and unused and it was quite difficult to get into the bearing seat, and consequently difficult to get out again. Maybe I should try a different bearing.