Like, I have a design for my yoyo, it’s an aluminum body with stainless steel rims and with POM rims too so it’s forgiving if I hit myself, so basically like a xenon prime, but I don’t know how to machine bodies, bearings, axles, and rims and color it.
That’s a really big question. Like a how do I eat an elephant question. So you gotta ask yourself if you really wanna eat that elephant all by yourself without any elephant eating experience.
Without any machining experience jumping right into a tri material design is gonna be a messy, expensive, time consuming process.
Personally I would hire one of the larger yoyo oems to make it.
I use a shop that isn’t a traditional yo-yo shop and I wouldn’t have them do a tri-material and they do machining for aerospace and super complex stuff. Because even with their experience a tri material Yoyo is a complicated thing that would require a lot of experimentation and sunk cost.
I would go to one of the shops that already will know how to machine those designs. Somewhere like top-yo, fpm, etc.
I’ll note for an oem especially fpm who has a long waitlist they may not respond right away to a new brand and unless the order is big they won’t prioritize it over established brands they work with often. I’ve heard some folks wait 6 months to a year stuff with fpm because of that,
Yeah honestly all the oem brands are like that. A large part of why I sought out and found a different machine shop, even if they can’t (at this time) do bi metals and such. Some of the oems didn’t respond to me. Some told me the waiting list was very long. One tried to rope me into a pyramid scheme. None were friendly.
If you are going to jump directly into tri material it’s gonna be a bit of a slog I expect.
A bi-metal with Delrin might be pushing your luck. Unless you’re going to become a machinist and start your own machine shop, you could try talking to machine shops in your area to see if any have the necessary equipment & tolerances to make mono-metal yoyos and work from there.
Pom itself doesn’t make it more forgiving if it hits you, it really comes down to shape and surface area. Anytime you add weight you’re increasing the impact force. Similar to boxing gloves, they increase the force but also increase the surface area so it ends up being less painful. Pom is also softer so it will take damage easier than metal so that might protect some things yoyo, body, or environmental
Yeah maybe it’d be better to use something squishy if you want it to hurt less. Otherwise it’d have to be a material that gets badly dented/shatters when it collides with you. So like, playdough or plywood or something.
For finding a place to make a small prototype run, I’d recommend reaching out to yoyo-specialty machine shops like TopYo or YoyoEmpire. As others have mentioned, it can be a bit hard to get them to respond—especially TopYo—but the assurance from knowing that the final products will be smooth and suitable for play is well worth it
Play-yough.
when you got play-yough anything yos![]()
Sadly soft like rubber or anything like that often turns into painful in other ways as it’s grabby and getting hit with a rubber rim often leaves a painful mark. You anyone that’s thrown that rubber rim yomega thing you know what I mean.
I was visualising it being coated with a thick layer of marshmallow. ![]()
Marshmall-yo.
I know but I mean,like the same angular shape and same 50-60 mm width
from the outlier 5-6











