I found an interesting comment on Reddit from Tyler Severance about the capped Severe and its Hypernova remaster, thought it was worth sharing:
It’s a little more angular than the 2009 severe - the OG model had more curves - the latest version is 100% better and more improved while maintaining the soul of the original design though
each machine shop will make each CAD file you send them a little differently - like if I made hypernova at a different machine shop, they would turn out slightly different - most shops have little pre-written design cues to make their machine processes more streamlined (bearing seats, chamfers, little things). And unless you’re very adamant about the shop following your design exactly, then it’s going to slightly change - super small insignificant changes
That all being said (apologies for the rant) the new capped version is a huge upgrade - the original version came with FAST 201 caps which are injection molded, and maintaining concentricity on the FAST 201 isn’t exactly a priority - so when I was tuning them (16 frickin years ago
) it was a very very arduous process - we also had 2 machine shops at YoYoFactory when we made yo-yos in America - one that was a government contracted super precise, 50+ employee finely oiled organization - and another local machine shop that was a self-taught Machinest, who ran it out of a garage with no air conditioning in Phoenix, Arizona. You can guess which shop made better yo-yos. The local self-taught shop made the 2009 Severe, which was a little more complicated of a design given the cap recess and fit - he does great work, but it’s a trick balancing act, and there’s no telling how many Bgrades we had because of the injection molded caps.
The updated version has machined polycarb caps, so it is incredibly smooth - it maintains the original “full” feeling that a capped Yoyo has. The inertia you feel while playing with a capped Yoyo is very unique.
TLDR - the latest design retains the best features of the original 2009 model, while making modern improvements to the shape and cap production to ensure a very accurate concentricity, producing the smoothest spinning capped Yoyo we could.
