Does Titanium actually offer an advantage for yoyo design when compared to 7068? I’m wondering why we often see companies release 6061 monometals and titanium versions of those same yoyos for much more money, when they could have just released a 7068 or even 7075 version in the first place (Mowl, Turning Point for example).
When it comes to optimising weight distribution 7068 seems like it should be superior to even G5 Ti except for when you want a lot of weight in a specific place due to its lower density, but in all cases it performs much closer to titanium than 6061 does.
7068 definitely closes the gap with titanium in terms of performance, but strength-to-weight doesn’t tell the whole story. Titanium’s higher density (this is the main difference) lets designers concentrate more mass exactly where they want it while machining other areas extremely thin. Stiffness, durability, and minimum wall thickness matter too.
But honestly, a big part of titanium in yo-yos is simply feel. Ti has a distinct feel, sound, and character that you don’t really get from 7068, or any other alloy. A well-designed 7068 monometal can perform every bit as well as, or better than, a ti for much less money. Titanium isn’t necessarily a straight performance upgrade imo. It’s a different material that gives designers different options and produces a different playing experience.
While Al7068 had a better power-to-weight ratio than a grade 5 titanium, it does lag behind in a fair amount of strength and corrosion-based factors (i.e.: tensile strength, material elongation/flexibility, etc.). Also, the inaccessibility of 7068 makes it harder to find a supplier for that utilizes the actual material. That is, a good chunk of yoyo-focused shops that supply the material don’t actually use genuine 7068. Aside from that, the distribution of mass that the materials can be optimized for is vastly different due to their considerable difference in density, which gives both their place in design
This doesn’t really answer your question, but for what it’s worth my friends have prototyped 7075 down to .7mm thick walls and they’re good. Slightly too vibey to be able to sell to consumers expecting smooth yoyos, but you can get incredibly efficient designs with 7075.
I think a lot of what you see on the market is just brands understandably wanting to make things that are mostly safe to produce. Titanium designs in my mind are more about achieving a specific look/feel, not actually trying to minmax efficiency.
What I was thinking of when I wrote this post was how Turning Point has the St Tempest and Mustang ST, but the Mustang ST is like 5x the price. I feel like if they made a 7068 St Tempest they could achieve most of what the Mustang does for not much more than the 6061 version already costs. Seems logically inconsistent to say you prefer 6061 to 7068 but then at the same time say Ti is worth that much more money.
Yeah that whole fake alloy thing also makes me wonder how much thought goes into alloy choice. Seems like it should be obvious if a yoyo you designed was made with the wrong stuff unless the machine shop was also altering the CAD, but I don’t know the details of how that went down.
My manufacturers have told me this too. That there is fake 7068. Only way to truly prove it, is to have a stamped mill cert (from the best of my knowledge)
