Alright, I’m here to give you the scoop on my first machine shop made yoyo! I’ll go full transparency on everything so you know what all I went through, my thought process, and the future.
Background
I had a grail yo-yo in mind, but it didn’t exist yet. I wanted a super durable yo-yo for every-day-carry, or the apocalypse, you choose. Something thin and pocketable, that played well, and could withstand abuse. I wanted to be able to leave it in my pocket and wade into salt water, get mud on it, drop it in a puddle of oil, clean it with a harsh cleaner, whack it on the ground, and then have it come out of all that and still play great. After a lot of research I selected Ultem as the material. It’s a very popular super plastic but hasn’t been used in the yo-yo world yet. Which leads me into…
Machining
None of the normal yo-yo machine shops worked with Ultem so I sought out quotes from about a dozen different general purpose machine shops. For 3 prototypes prices ranged from about $85 per unit to more than $900 per unit. A lot of shops boasting the ability to turn one off projects ghosted me. Eventually I selected PartsBadger as the shop. They are based in Wisconsin but also have overseas machining capabilities. Final price when ordering 3x protos came to $91.12 per unit.
The Throw
Here are the stats.
55mm diamter
27mm width
55 grams
2.8mm gap width
8mm axle
8x 2mm response holes
One piece fixed axle construction
Beat Blasted
It’s designed with high walls near the axle for stalls that open up to a wider butterfly shape. It has a little 8mm indented “bubble” at the axle for pulls starts. My favorite feature though is it’s big rounded cozy rims which let me play with it like a worry stone.
Now that I have them in hand and confirmed that I do in fact love them, and that they haven’t fallen apart or melted during play what are the plans?
First stop. I’ll be putting together a PIF, probably the week after next. I’ll put forward two of the three protos in two separate boxes so it can go out to a couple people at once.
As far as production runs go. I have a few options but I’m not sure what I’m going to do yet.
Full production run. I have heard that often yoyo companies will do a run of 300, but I’m not sure there is a current market for that many fixies. If I do a run of 100, I could lower what it costs me to probably $25 per unit give or take.
I could also do a kind of group buy, have folks sign up and prepay a certain amount, lets say $40, and the remaining balance would depend on how many people signed up, if only a couple signed up the deposit would be half. If a ton of people signed up the deposit would cover the entire cost.
There might be other in between options I haven’t thought of yet.
Challenges
Taxes? Honestly I’m more worried about having to hire an account for taxes than I am about trying to make a profit. I don’t want to accidentally make a profit and get audited lol.
My disability. The yo-yos arrived super filthy with dust from being bead blasted and had to get scrubbed up before use, strung up, and tested. Doing that with 3 was fine but with my physical limitations I’m realizing that doing that 300 times isn’t feasible. I might be able to do 100 over a few weeks if I rope my kids in to help clean them. It’s a challenge that’s on my mind.
i keep checking for a Jurassic mosquito cuz it looks like amber. Don’t think i’ve ever seen a one piece plastic fixe. this is dope.
6 Likes
fradiger
(the world is a beautiful cat and i must meow meow meow)
4
personally I would consider this project a labor of love from the community where we all come together (spearheaded by you! badass.) and get something amazing out of it, so I think asking people to clean up the yoyo on their own is totally fine unless it requires some specialized tool or process. Even then if the tool could be.. printed and distributed still totally fine.
Totally in for one, whatever the option ends up being. Also don’t mind being on team “I can try and clean mine myself”
It’s a Jurassic Throw and we gotta dust them off like fixie paleontologists.
Sounds like it was a huge success, so glad it worked out on first proto!
Especially glad that the plastic is so strong that the string doesn’t harm it at all.
With you stating it needed a dab of chapstick to be just right on response, if you were to do a run, would you reduce the gap size a tiny bit or do you feel it’s just right as is?
I think I would be inclined to leave the gap so there is more room for tricks but if the overwhelming verdict from PIFers is tighten the gap I’ll listen.
I can’t precisely 3d print it at home due to some of the design features. I would basically have to axe the sweet rounded rims and also make it a 3 piece.
But I did take inspiration from some of my past designs, subconsciously I think I kind of refined the Waffle Stomper shape a little.
This is such a great project, and I’m stoked that the first prototypes came out so well. I’m in for sure. Also willing to clean my own, or even help clean a large batch if there’s some way to do that.
still totally fine.
much less yoyo ones.