Mk1 Yoyos! - Sean de los Santos

Manufacturer Official News
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Wow, time flies when you’re yo-yoing, huh?

I just started unresponsive in February this year, and it’s been a joyful experience, sometimes frustrating, often relaxing. I’m not the best yo-yoer but I love practicing and sharing my hobby with others. At some point earlier this year, Jordan Blofeld of Smashing Yoyos was helping me get into CAD, and he challenged me to make a yo-yo that other people would want to buy.

With his frequent feedback and help, I now I have my own yo-yo to share, which I call the Diffraction. Making this was a several-month-long process, documented in the Yoyo CAD & Prototyping Adventures thread.

I’ve named my company Mk. 1 Yoyos because my name is Mark and and this is the first version of my yo-yo.

The Diffraction is a full-sized, slightly-wide yoyo with slightly less weight than usual. I designed it to be an all-rounder, with finger-spin, thumb-grind, and finger-grind capabilities. Due to the nature of 7075 aluminum, I was able to reduce the wall thickness to give it enough rim weight, despite the finger-spin area requiring more material near the center.

The engraving was designed by Erin Soward. I know it looks like some text around a circle, but it took 9 designs and different typefaces to get there. Don’t underestimate how much work graphic design can take.

This yo-yo was manufactured by Fenghuida Precision Manufacture Co., who did a fantastic job on both the machining and surface treatment. I am really happy with how the Diffraction turned out, and if you give my yo-yo a try, I hope you enjoy it, too.

I will probably be making another yo-yo next year after this project is done. I need some time to rest and finally learn some tricks I’ve been putting off.

Diffraction Specs:

7075 Aluminum
8mm axle
~64g
46 mm wide
56 mm diameter
4.66 mm gap

Note: These are all spoken for (thank you so much!) but keep an eye on my instagram for whatever my next project may be.

https://www.instagram.com/ggmarkd/
https://www.instagram.com/mk1yoyos/

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Looks great!

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It’s a BEAUTY!!!

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Awesome roll call!

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Will you be at ECM, CHITAG, Ohio states, or worlds this next year? I want to try it out so badly.

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Sorry, it’s unlikely. Hard for me to travel that far from Florida with two kids.

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Did you do all of this in the 30 day demo?

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After the Fusion 360 demo was up I filled out the form for the “Startup license”, which is free as long as you do less than $100,000 of sales per year. Autodesk has some instructions for subscribing this way:

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/fusion-360/learn-explore/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/How-to-activate-start-up-or-educational-licensing-for-Fusion-360.html

It took me about 3 months to learn CAD, practice a bunch of designs, and go through a bunch of iterations before I finalized the Diffraction. Maybe 10 hours per week? Totally doable as a side hobby. :slight_smile:

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This throw looks awesome and as a graphic designer myself I really appreciate your appreciation of how much work it can take! Really looking forward to your next project.

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Thanks! I actually hired a graphic designer for the logo too, here are all the options she created for me:

I did a bunch of mock-ups in photoshop with these overlaid on top of a yo-yo render, and ultimately decided to dispense with everything except the font + spacing in the upper right treatment. It ended up being a bit pricy for such a small run, but the result was much better than my home-made attempts in illustrator.

I did consider not having an engraving, but I want someone to be able to identify it based on the engraving. I might just go with a company logo (Mk1 Yoyos) that I can reuse between projects in the future.

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That’s really cool! I think having something identifiable about your yoyo is never a bad idea.

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I made someone’s top yoyo list for 2018 :heart:

https://www.instagram.com/p/Br-JywqBgw7/

https://www.instagram.com/p/Br5Q6dpBpok/

Both photos are by Lars from yoyoworlddk.

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This looked awesome! Excited to see what you come up with next :slight_smile:

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I got one of these off the B/S/T and kudos, this is a very nice yo-yo. It’s easily on par with anything I’d handle from OneDrop, CLYW, etc. Overall mega professional and polished; I love the packaging too.

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Gorgeous work, dude.

And congratulations on having a goal, and persevering over an extended time to see it through. You should be proud of yourself.

Really like the colorway on these. Hope to get my hands on one someday. Keep going!

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Thank you both!

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Do you have pictures of the packaging anywhere?

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Love it.

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Something exciting is on the horizon. The Diffraction Mk2. I didn’t think this was going to happen, but it definitely is. For a while now I’ve regretted making so few Diffractions as I’ve had folks near and far ask about them long after I sold out.

For this larger run I’ve made several very small quality-of-life improvements in the design, mostly related to rounding off the sharpest edges and adding an additional cut in the IGR that was aesthetically missing. The gap has been shrunk by a miniscule amount, and it has the same weight distribution as before.

Most importantly, it’ll be in 3 new colorways that will make good use of mostly-subtle color fades that you could pretend are solid colors if you spin it real good.

Which one do you like best?

  • Pink/Purple
  • Blue/Aqua
  • Green/Different Green
0 voters
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