It’s surprisingly difficult to seriously damage an aluminum yoyo. I had to throw it really hard into concrete, multiple times, to get it to majorly vibe. And even then it was still playable!
As far as affecting play, rim damage doesn’t matter at all (except if it cuts your hands, but you could buff that out), what matters is damage to the axle and bearing seats.
Plus my testing was with a plain old 6061 yoyo, not the stronger 7075 or 7068 aluminum variants… much less titanium, which is far stronger than all aluminum and even stronger than steel! Speaking of steel, the steel axle inside the yo-yo is inherently stronger than aluminum, so you’d expect pressure around the axle to cause the aluminum to deform or distort … but a steel axle isn’t stronger than titanium.
Titanium can be made much thinner than Alu because it is so strong, but that’d only be in the rims and cups. The bearing seats and axle area are where the yoyo material is densest, and that’s where my testing showed the real damage has to be if it’s serious. Thus titanium is also going to have a big advantage in the necessarily dense center area all yo-yos have, to fit the axle, bearing, and response pads.
Given all the above… I am thinking a Ti yo-yo is gonna be super hard to break, even if you tried! So I am now wondering: has anyone ever broken a titanium yoyo? I am guessing if it did break, it had to be an extreme damage scenario?
(No, I am not crazy enough to destroy my own titanium yoyo for science … but surely someone out there has?)
I imagine some makers could chime in here. With proto type testing and envelope pushing, someone had to have carved one too thin (otherwise how do they know know thin is too thin?) that gave way or broke in testing. . .
But it also depends on whether you mean: accidentally broken or deliberately broken?
If… you can ‘break’ A Titanium yoyo; then you are most likely the most dangerous person that you know.
It also must be considered if you mean ‘broken’ like in irreversibly broken or broken but repairable?
More likely it would be damaged but fixable. The weakest link would be the first think to go; like the axle. If you snapped the axle off in one side of the yoyo and you could not get the broken piece out of the yoyo half and you could not ez out it; then you may have a serious problemo😳.
If the Anti yo mentioned is the same one I am thinking of; it was purposely beat into submission. Jon Robinson and the Severance brothers got a BSP and tried to mess it up just to see what kind of beating it would/could take? And they Whooped it pretty darn good.
You would have to be pretty brutal to break a titanium yoyo.
50 years ago; my uncle Rudy said something timeless to me. He said you could secretly forge a stainless sphere the size of a bowling ball. Then under cover of darkness; you could sneak out into the desert a hundred miles from nowhere and bury the metal ball 50 feet under ground. But sooner or later; somebody would find it and and figure out a way to jack it up.
Reasonable theory so I guess anything is possible🤔
Tyler and Jon made a video of them destroying the BSP, they finally at the end started to stomp on it, if I remember right, and they finally pushed the axle through one of the sides. Been trying to find that video again. The BSP was surprisingly very messed up but was still playable. Even after cracking the one bearing seat they were playing it That yoyo came up for sale 2-3 years ago, was tempted to buy it to add to my AntiYo collection, not sure who bought it.
Note that the area around the bearing seat and the threads are (necessarily) the same dimensions so they can fit standard bearings and pads, though I’m unclear what is going on in this area?
That’s an air gap to keep grit from getting trapped right up against the bearing. It doesn’t need to be that deep, but it removes a tiny amount of center weight, I guess.
It’s crazy how thin the walls are at that point… this is by far the thinnest point of the titanium, far thinner than its aluminum brother, even proportionally. So if it was gonna break my money is on it breaking there:
I checked a Haymaker X (had to remove a knot and take it apart, it was in-hand) and it does look like, on some yo-yos at least, like bearing seats tend to have an “air gap area” so the bearing isn’t completely flat against the metal. Not sure why though.
If you mean “break” as in something like “shattering” then, no. Breaking something, in that way, would be because it is brittle. You can dent it. You can grind it up until it is dust but it’s extremely unlikely you will find titanium, that has been machined into something, that is brittle enough to break, in that sense.
… but surely someone out there has?)
That yoyo came up for sale 2-3 years ago, was tempted to buy it to add to my AntiYo collection, not sure who bought it.
