Anyone who thinks that a CNC machine is essentially a digital computer periphery and that since “it’s all 0’s and 1’s, therefore perfection is guaranteed” wins all my lols.
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Indeed!
There are (still) plenty of manufacturing processes that involve sophisticated (computer-driven) machines that nevertheless require skilled human participation.
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Nobody actually said this. Modern machining can be pretty exact to my knowledge though, and I think that was the point Coding was trying to make rather than imply that it is a simple process to calibrate and configure “perfection”. A lot of us here would appreciate your insight instead of your condescension, but apparently we should just go to reddit.
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Perfection is a strictly human concept.
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The downside of being present on the forums is that you represent your brand and can make people associate your personal negative attitude with the brand your associated with.
Why would I buy from someone who comments in a negative manner when there are so many other options?
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Here’s where we start. Familiarize yourself with this scale. The biggest circle is that of the average human hair. The dot in the upper section is one ten-thousandths of and inch or .0001 When we cut our Critical Features, we maintain .0002, so two of those dots.
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Yay inches 
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What do these three countries share: Liberia, Myanmar, USA?
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Are they the only nations not on the metric system or something?
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Last 3 countries that use “standard”
I’m just used to it from my aerospace days so thousandths of inches is more intuitive for me than mm.
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I’ve been in physics for twenty years, where we use the metric system exclusively & extensively. The benefits are clear for what we do. Yet the English system is still nearer to my heart, and what I think in.
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I’ve wondered about the tolerances in yoyo production for a while. .0002 is a crazy tolerance to hold. I think the tightest tolerance I’ve ever ran was aerospace stuff that had a +/- .001 on most dimensions.
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+/-.001 is .002 total, or 10x what we hold. I’m jealous.
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Yeah man it’s crazy lol. I knew yoyos had to be precise, guess I never realized the extent of which that was true.
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Well, modern performance yoyos spin in excess of 6000RPM, maybe even as high as 10,000RPM, so you can imagine how being even a “little bit” off can become rather noticeable.
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We often marvel that we have to hold tolerances usually higher than even aerospace and still get complaints about micro vibe.
One thing not often recognized is that tolerance costs money. As mentioned before, we have noticed some of our competitors make the tolerance window bigger by expanding it into a tighter bearing post. This saves money because it’s just much easier to hit .001" than it is to hit .0002".
One other little bit of info here is that even our CNC machines have a tolerance (nothing can built perfect). .0001" is the error in the machine. Said another way, we are producing parts on the daily at the maximum accuracy of the machines we own. This is very unusual - even in aerospace.
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Thanks for the super insightful post. This is nuts.
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Whoa thanks @The_Machinist and @da5id for the knowledge bombs. I love hearing this nitty gritty, behind-the-scenes stuff. And since the community—myself included—enjoy talking about aspects of this hobby that we have limited knowledge about out of curiosity, I really appreciate the responses.
So if the community expectations were lowered, are there designs you would like to pursue/experiment more with? My original point was that if expectations around vibe weren’t so high, it would open up some breathing room for companies to experiment with less orthodox designs a bit more than they currently are. Since you guys are both B2C and B2B, I’m curious what your opinions are.
Also, I’m really curious about the issue around raw bearing seats given how common (and sometimes sought after) raw yoyos are. Is it a problem with just raw aluminum or any raw material like titanium or stainless steel?
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I’m also why raw bearing seats are a terrible idea. Idk if I’d say there’s A LOT of raw yoyos floating around but there’s definitely a few and they are sought after
I’ve had multiple raw yoyos over the years and one of them ive had for 5+ years that I still throw on a weekly basis and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with it
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Re: raw bearing posts, this is from wikipedia, because lazy, but still spot on:
Galling is a form of wear caused by adhesion between sliding surfaces. When a material galls, some of it is pulled with the contacting surface, especially if there is a large amount of force compressing the surfaces together. Galling is caused by a combination of friction and adhesion between the surfaces, followed by slipping and tearing of crystal structure beneath the surface. This will generally leave some material stuck or even friction welded to the adjacent surface, whereas the galled material may appear gouged with balled-up or torn lumps of material stuck to its surface.
Galling is most commonly found in metal surfaces that are in sliding contact with each other. It is especially common where there is inadequate lubrication between the surfaces. However, certain metals will generally be more prone to galling, due to the atomic structure of their crystals. For example, aluminium is a metal that will gall very easily, whereas annealed (softened) steel is slightly more resistant to galling. Steel that is fully hardened is very resistant to galling.
Galling is a common problem in most applications where metals slide while in contact with other metals. This can happen regardless of whether the metals are the same or of different kinds. Alloys such as brass and bronze are often chosen for bearings, bushings, and other sliding applications because of their resistance to galling, as well as other forms of mechanical abrasion.
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