I know At Design is a small time company and I don’t want to give them bad press but I wanted to put out a warning for their new silky coating.
I picked up their new zero in the silky coating and it was smooth and played great but the first time I unscrewed the throw it damaged the bearing seat. I guess the tolerances were just too tight for this coating. It went from being smooth to vibey by just taking it apart once. I contacted them to let them know about this issue but I think they’re just going ahead with sales for this.
TLDR: Don’t unscrew your yoyos because it can cause damage and possibly vibe.
Edit 1: They just messaged me that they’ve checked their stock to see if any of the other silky coated zeros have this issue.
Edit 2: At Design sent me a replacement throw so I’m going to start a pay it forward when I get home.
This seems very similar to a moon rock colourway, the most useless colourway ever even if it looks cool, me and so many people had the same issues as you, will be not surprised if the yoyo also cut the string
I actually like the moonrock coating on some of my other throws but this is the first one that’s been damaged because of it. Also this isn’t the moonrock coating from fpm but they used the same process from a different place. At least that’s what At design informed me. @Albertino
Could be a matching tolerance issue then the coating only made it worse, sometimes also overly tight bearings.
In general, in 2023 this should not be an acceptable issue, a replacement should be provided and if this is a mass issue within the run, there should be warnings + a mass discount on the product. At this point the brand should be in talks with the manufacturer to find out what went wrong and asking for a partial refund on the work or credit towards a future run.
I don’t see how the coating could have caused that to be fair…
I agree with what others have said, that looks like super soft aluminium that got ruined when screwing the halves.
Thank you for mentioned about issue. As mentioned from few people, Issue is not from coatings, but from dimentional tolerence between bearing and body. There were possibility by specific combination of body and bearings due to the individual differences. Additionally, also small dust between bearing and rock can be considered. We all checked all silky coating product which will be released tonight one by one and changed bearings for smooth attach and disattach. We will learn from this experience and work to prevent its recurrence in the future.
Dear Joe,
I contacted to you by instagram, please check my message.
At Design messaged me and let me know that I could get a replacement for this which I appreciate. They sent me a little snippet that they checked all of their stock for this issue to make sure it wouldn’t happen with any of the others.
Looking at the provided images, the top of the seat where the thread is tapped seems to be coated as well. I deduct from this observation that the entire halves are coated during manufacturing. The fact that the contact areas of the bearing and the seat are practically raw aluminum indicates that the tight fit between bearing and seat caused the finish to shear off. This phenomenon can be found quite often, especially with surface treatments like electroplating or titanium anodization. Anodized aluminum is more durable in this regard but depending on the tightness of the fit and the thickness of oxide can still show this kind of wear. In most cases this is only an optical effect and performance is not affected.
I would put the root cause in the seat dimensioning and subsequent finish application. The bearing seats were machined to proper dimensions and ideal fit without the additional thickness of the coating in mind. After coating the bearing seats were practically too large in diameter to accommodate the bearing. Those were forced onto seats while shearing off the coating from the seat in the process. That material was then pushed down the seat and jammed between seat and yoyo half creating more damage along the way. Unscrewing repeated the process and removing the bearing entirely damaged the raw unprotected seat even more. Combine this with a softer alloy <= 60x and you are about to have problems.
sorry, I misunderstood, anyway bearings never have protrusions, protuberances in their tracks, neither external nor internal, both rings are always ground even those of lower quality. this is a very important aspect precisely because it is clear that this characteristic would ruin the component on which they are to be mounted and to carry out their work they must always be mounted with a very low tolerance, practically due to interference. if the bearing is loose to turn on the pin it does not work as a bearing but as a bushing and this must never happen.
Not exactly true. One Drop Design has mastered this “Fit”. Some companies just have a death grip on the post and it gets mauled upon bearing removal. I’m not saying this is what happened here as yoyojoe has more than enough experience to not let this happen. I’m just countering your statement.
Maybe the mfg captured debris between the bearing and post in production. ???
I state that before as now I was referring to the general world of mechanics and not only to the world of the yoyo (which is no exception anyway).
When you find (or anyone else finds) a bearing that has a lump or lump of metal on its raceways, show me (show me), I’m very curious and very patient.
The operating concept of the bearing is based on the fact that it must be mounted on a pin having a good grip on it, if this does not happen, the internal track could slip on the pin ruining/wearing it out during normal work and this must not happen… the bearing serves to avoid this. In all of this there is nothing to dispute and if I have not been clear before, I hope I have succeeded now.
