When you machine a stainless steel fixture for an aluminum yo-yo, you know it’s going to be good 
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Part of the beauty of machining. Don’t have domething? ”Eh, I’ll just make it, no biggie.”
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It is really nice to have the right tools for a job. It is not uncommon to spend more time making a tool or fixture than making the actual part you want. Especially when you are making low quantities of things.
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that looks very cool, cant wait to see the finished product!
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Hi!
It’s been a while so I’ve been wondering how it’s been going? 
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Looks cool. If I were you I would do the cup side first then do the catchzone side, I think it’s gonna be hard to clamp the catchzone side down accurately.
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Just stumbled into this topic. Any updates?
Seems like this is a topic that a lot of people are interested in. I tried a few times and a few different ways to use the cnc mill to make a yoyo. Obviously it’s not ideal, but I have heard that it is possible. But with my skill and setup I just couldn’t do it well enough to be proud of the results.
But about a month ago the new cnc lathe that I have worked for 2 years to get approved finally arrived. IT IS SUPER AWESOME. The only problem is learning how to use it. The past month or so I have been teaching myself everything I can about using the cnc lathe. This machine is very well suited to machining yoyos actually. I will highlight some of the best features.
It has a bar feeder and through bore of 2.5 inches. This means it can be filled up with several 5 foot long bars of material and load it automatically.
It has a secondary spindle, which means it can machine one side of the hub, then grab it in the secondary spindle and machine the back side. This means in theory it can machine the whole hub without human interaction. This creates better accuracy and the machine can run un-attended.
It has a part catcher, so the finished parts slide out of the machine and it starts the next part.
So hopefully, I will be able to teach myself enough about this machine to machine some yoyos. This has been a dream of mine for the past several years or so. It is not an easy thing and I have spend a long time teaching myself all about machining. But hopefully it will come true.
Right now I am learning how to program the lathe. A buddy of mine is making a full scale R2D2 robot and needs some parts made on the lathe.
I can post some photos of the machine if people are interested.
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I’m interested in seeing the machine. It sounds really fancy!
Thank you for the follow up post.
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Very cool! Sounds exciting. Photos of the machine would be great. Interesting to hear about the secondary spindle, sounds like that would make things a lot more automatic and would be really helpful. Congrats for receiving it, it sounds awesome.
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Sounds awesome, thanks for the update.
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Here are some photos of the new cnc lathe. This the whole machine.
This is the turret which holds the tools.
This is the chuck which holds the raw material while it is machined.
And this is the sub spindle which can hold the part for machining the backside. We dont have a holder mounted on it yet though.
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any luck making yoyos so far?
Thanks for sharing.
Love watching/seeing these type of videos/images.
I thoroughly enjoyed watching this video of 5-Axis mill, thought yo’all would to.
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probably overkill for most yoyo machining (except for the most extreme designs 
)