Hello, this is my first forum post in a while and I think this is probably the most appropriate part of the forum to post this in.
I just finished my first year at college and took an AutoCAD class. The program that I used in the class was AutoCAD Civil3D 2015 and from what I know, it is very similar to ‘regular’ AutoCAD. I still have access to the student version (which is the same as a regular version only with a watermark when printing) and was just curious as to what anyone thought about this program in general.
Designing and making my own yoyo has always been on my bucket list and now that I have access to a professional program and actually know the basics of it, I should probably do something with it before I forget what I learned!
Naturally I have a few questions:
How ‘easy’ is it to design a yoyo on a CAD program? Assuming one knows how to use it of course.
How ‘easy’ is it to send your design to a local machine shop and get exactly what you made?
How much would it cost to make a few aluminum yoyos?
Thoughts on the program that I am using?
I understand I am asking a lot of questions and that the answers to these questions are probably floating around the forum if I looked. Also, I really want to do this just for fun / as a personal project, not to sell or make a profit. Any help is appreciated! Thank you.
Ok, so if you want to start a company do it. First you need to calculate all the cost and a good advice is to look for many different machine shops. I had to go through at least 5 before there was a cheap/reasonable priced machine shop. You might want to try OneDrop if you cannot find any shops that you think is good, they are behind schedule though last time I checked.
By the way it is so easy to design a yoyo in CAD. You literally only need to know how to draw half of the cross section of a yoyo, the revolve feature, and the hole feature (this is what they are called on Inventor). Designing yoyos is so simple even teenagers like Tropic Spins can do it. Now designing a good yoyo is hard.
I would recommend reverse engineering a few of your favorite yoyos and finding the general weight distribution of the yoyos so you can use them as future references to design a yoyo that plays the way you have in mind. Some of my posts might interest you, they are questions about how to design yoyos and they have good replys. Other people you could ask if you have questions could be 2sick Joey, yyfben2, or The Machinist.
I have used AutoCAD but hate it. I prefer Autodesk Inventor and if you are a student then you should be able to get it free for 3 years. But I would recommend trying out a few other programs and see which one you like the best.
If you are doing this for personal projects I would not recommend it since it does cost quite a bit for just prototyping. Some of the quotes I got were $500 for first piece and setup and 50 for another half another quote is $70 or $80 for each halve. Remember this is just for 1 yoyo or 2 halves. The prices for each part decreases the more you manufacture.
If you have questions you could ask me but I am only just starting to get my company started. If you want we could collaborate or I can help you on your design since I am currently on break, too. Just PM me. Hope this helps. ;D
Sorry, I misinterpret what he said. But still if you want to do it, do it. You can spread your love and idea. It also would be cheaper and more worth it if you make 5-10 yoyos then keep 1 or 2 and sell the rest. You don’t have to be a manufacture.
Like gomel said, making yoyos in a cad program is really easy. I have actually been working on making yoyos for more than a year now. My uncle and I have built a CNC lathe and I have just recently made a 3D printer as well. I still haven’t made a yoyo on the lathe but I have made a few on the 3D printer. I’m not sure why most people are outsourcing the machining as people who are this far into the hobby seem to be engineers for the most part anyway. There are a lot of issues that arise when you build these things including a high up front cost, but if you want to make more than one or two designs from onedrop you could have made your own lathe setup and could make yoyos for pretty much the cost of the aluminum.
First off, I am part of a new company and we are working on our first metal yoyo and having fun with the CAD programs right now ourselves. We use Autodesk 123d for our stuff.
Now, to answer your questions in my opinion:
Yes, it is “easy” once you learn how it works. However, it can be time consuming if you want to get it just right.
If you just email the file and tell them to set a screw for an m4x10mm axle in the middle of the design, they should be able to do that.
It all depends on who you use. We are using Foxland Precisions and it costs us $375 for 4 prototype yoyos. Then, you must pay for axles, bearings, response, and any other accessories.
I have no thoughts about your program because I have never heard of it or tried it before, but if you can design a legit yoyo, I’d say you’ve got a good enough program.
To be honest the process is just a lot easy processes clumped together and as zorro said, to make it perfect is time consuming.
I also would not recommend 123d. If I emember correctly, you cant calculate the weight of you model. To everyone out there who are students and want to design yoyos, I highly encourage then to get the “high end” Autodesk CAD products (Inventor or even AutoCAD is OK) free while they can. Students can install almost all their goods for free for 3 years.
Thank you for all the input! This is more than I could have expected. And as stated, if it was too easy, then it would be no fun! I’m going to get started soon and just toy around and see what happens.
Yes, this is correct. However, for someone just “learning” CAD like we are, this is the perfect thing to try. However, when it comes time to actually make the yoyo, I would suggest SolidWorks.
If you don’t about this, my company attempted this and it backfired hard.
