I would love to purchase a couple either from you or wherever you stock it
Okay updates.
For the bearing blanks - I never heard back from YYE about the possibility of stocking these. I put in for a business license, and if I still don’t hear back I’ll make my own site (with blackjack and… nvm) for sales. I’m also gonna go do mr85 and maybe half spec c blanks.
For the yoyo itself. I’ve completed v2 revisions based on community feedback from the PIF. Changes: new gap width of 2.3 mm. Larger response holes. The tiny baby hub replaced with a shallow cone. (Imagine if something like a blood cell sloped linearly down into a singularity instead of being a curve). See pics because I probably don’t make sense with words.
Machine Shop - my original shop raised prices. A LOT. About triple the original quote for 200 units from back in August. It would have been cool to stick with the American machine shop but I went into this wanting it to be an accessible yoyo and not something I have to charge $100+ for just to not lose money, so I’m changing shops. I’m courting some machine shops in Mexico and China at the moment.
I am confident enough though in the new revisions that I’m gonna Leeeeeeroy Jenkins it over doing a second prototype run, but not until that business license is approved because I don’t want to pay sales tax on several thousand dollars worth of yo-yos.
Aw why we get rid of the nice dimple!
So the dimple was very very tiny. About the size of the flying lemon post dimple. It worked for folks with the right fingernails but it just wasn’t accessibility friendly. I don’t want to have to send everyone to the salon for acrylics to be able to pull start it. I tried making a larger dimple but that interfered too much with the response holes and would have made response worse.
Small reason, it was also a hot spot when using it as a worry stone.
Ah! Fair enough! Looked cool tho hehehe.
It did look very cool. Honestly the new geometry is kinda hard to show even in the images but I think the new hub will look just as cool when I get these in. We shall see.
Sign me up!
The updates look cool! I’ll be interested in getting one if it all comes together for you!
Man, that’s a bummer that the machine shop wants to upcharge you now. Considering the narrative to encourage US-based manufacturing that’s definitely not encouraging. I wonder if their workload went up and now they can’t be bothered with your likely comparatively small project.
Most likely ultem stock shot up in cost due to tariffs and also it’s become really popular in the sharp object and pew pew community’s recently and not allot of shops want to or know how to work with it as a material. Puts a premium on the effort sadly
Also threats of higher tariffs in the future aren’t helping along with further inflation on the rise in the US. Heck the federal reserve abandoning the dual mandate recently alone is going to wreck the value of the dollar as they try to prop up the stock market and keep jobs from falling further.
All that to say.. yeah it’s a mess I’m not surprised it costs more now than it did previously to make these
Yeah I have a tiny cnc machine I got recently (haven’t set it up yet) and was curious about getting some Ultem stock to machine myself for fun. I can’t even get raw stock for the price of machined yo-yos from the china shop. Even with tariffs. Seems like there is maybe a run on Ultem in the US. I also suspect some shops are busier a lot of small US shops that claimed to do small jobs just ignore me, meanwhile I have shops in China DMing me on WhatsApp eager for the job.
Ooooh, I’ve been eyeing small CNC machines. What did you get?
Boedeker Plastics in TX still has moderately reasonable prices on PEI (Ultem). They also have great prices on POM/Delrin stock.
I got the Cubiko! My laser engraver arrived the same day though so I’ve been messing with that and haven’t set up the cnc
Sure… put it on a dye it.
@Eric_Newlin was making some awesome wood fixies with something like this a couple years back. He hasn’t been as active lately but he may be able to provide some advice on setting it up for making yo-yos if you need any assistance.
Hahahaha
Eric actually provided an incredible infodump in discord which I have saved. He is using the same brand of router.
Hahaha when I inquired he also gave me all the info I needed. Such an awesome source of info. If the CAM wasn’t so difficult for me I probably would have followed through.
Just want to say that @MarkD is a treasure to the yoyo community and has provided me with invaluable advice on business stuff so that I don’t go completely in the red on this haha, thank you Mark!