i service my own fixed gear bikes at home and i know where you’re coming from with respect to packing everything with loads of grease when performing maintenance on a bike. but it’s less so to allow the bike to roll faster than it is to ensure that the parts don’t wear down over time.
with a bike, we are constantly supplying more and more force into the system and all of the parts are constantly grinding/rubbing against each other. without grease, these parts would whittle down to nothing in no time at all.
with a yoyo, running the bearing dry/nearly-dry is ideal because it’s a simple system with just the single ball bearing, and we want it to run with as little friction as possible to maximize spin time. there is still danger of wearing it down over time but because there’s so much less constant force being introduced into the system, it’ll take way more time to wear it down
It’s not about the speed of the bearing at all? It’s about the relation between the rotation of the YoYo to the bearing. Right?
The thicker lube in some sense makes a stronger connection (clutch) between the two “wheels”. And as you reduce force on the string by letting it go slack, you let the bearing go free, which let’s the clutch (Lube) engage the rotating YoYo, which gets the rotation going, which winds the string up.
A clean bearing will be the least restrictive bearing. That is why most playing unresponsive do not lube their bearings.
Lube has various attributes based on viscosity (Thin vs. Thick). One we think of from a maintenance side is that it protects the material the bearing is made of. Usually Stainless Steel. The Coating basically prevents oxidation.
However; Lube adds resistance to the spinning parts of the bearing (Slowing it down). When the bearing is moving slower than the body of the yoyo, it “Sucks” slacked string into the gap, where it then hits the response and returns.
In the Responsive world, this is one way we “Tune” the response of the yoyo to our play style and liking.
For example; Clean Bearing is unresponsive, I will add thin lube. If thin lube is still to “Slippy” I will add thick lube. If that doesn’t work, I move to grease.
It is a balance of Response wanted vs. Spin Time. Thicker the Lube, less spin time of the yoyo.
Hope this helps you visualize it more.
Not Quite. Under Load, string has weight/tension, the bearing spins at the same speed as the yoyo. When you slack the string, the bearing applies the Breaks if you will. Slower than the Yoyo. The connection is the Bearing to the String, Not the Bearing to the Yoyo.
The inner race of the bearing is physically attached to the yoyo through the post and axels. Its the outer race that is affected by the lube (The part the string is wrapped around).
I think its more about the total friction in the system. With a dry clean bearing almost all of the friction comes from the string and response. When you tug the string I don’t think the yoyo comes back because of the motion but because of the slack in the string increasing the total amount of string in the gap.
I worked as a mechanic in a bike shop for a year, so I get the whole bike aspect. The grease reduces the wear in the bearing not only by reducing the chance of corrosion but by actually making the parts of the bearing slippery, less friction, so the parts slip in relations to each other.
If we continue this concept and apply it to unresponsive; The purpose of the “Bind” is to stall the outer race of the bearing. Meaning, when we “Pinch” the string and pull it in, we are allowing the outer race to rotate until the string stacks up.
Same concept. Slow the Outer Race to get enough string to grab the pads.
We just choose when we want the yoyo to return, manual if you will.
Thanks for putting it so nicely. I tried to more or less say the same thing, in a worse way. I know all that talk only in german and have to find workarounds for terms. So my message is often lacking.
You are also describing a bearing that has to work under a Load. A different application of principle verse a yoyo that has no inherent load force on the bearing itself.
It makes absolute sense, that the “response” happens as the string gets caught by the “grippy” pads on the body of the YoYo. So the bearing mostly remains stationary in relation to the string and only the force from the rotating YoYo acts as the moving mass, the motor in the system.
I don’t quite get what you mean by this since the outer race doesn’t spin while the yoyo is sleeping.
The way I think of it is that the outer race of the bearing rolls up the string once we’re able to transfer the rotation of the yoyo to the outer race by increasing the total friction so that they become “one piece”. With lube there’s a bit more friction so this is a bit easier.
But isn’t it also a very miniature bearing in comparison to the mass of the YoYo?
And if we consider, that a bearing binds up with even the most minimal amount of play, which gets worse as the parts get smaller (0.01mm play in a big 50mm bearing is noting, but in a 1mm to 2mm bearing its a lot), that force adds up, if you see what I mean?
Edit: And if a dry bearing has too much play it will start to bind more in comparison to a bearing with lubrication.
