Over the months I played v1 quite extensively. I analyzed it, and compared it to my favorites, primarily the Metal Zero and MMC. (I forgot to state in my first entry, this all started around the end of 2021. I received prototype v1 on the last day of May 2022.)
When I first played it I thought it was amazing, it actually still is. To me, there was something that worked out with the added step lip. On that same note I knew that it had to lose some weight off that lip - it was ever so slightly too heavy - even as a 63g~ throw. To other people, it wouldn't feel heavy, it would probably sit in "just right" territory. But I was seeking a little bit more "float" in the play. Not necessarily a bad thing, just not what I wanted for my goal. The whole "shot in the dark" worked out merely because I was merging two concepts together and in theory it all worked out. The issue was my understanding of weight distribution with a 7068 yoyo that is rather uncharted territory.
After June came and left, I spent a lot of that time playing my yoyo, but I found myself falling back to some of my favorites. I wasn't sure why, I thought it was the diameter, but felt it could be more than just that. What was wrong? It's such a great yoyo, but yet I'm not throwing it, was the gap the issue? My response design didn't give me enough performance boost?
I needed to figure out the reason why and couldn't quite put my finger on it so I started to change the most obvious things to me before worrying about that - hoping that these things I discover from my observations and comparisons will work itself out.
First on the list was to change the diameter. 60mm diameter is "oversized" for most people, and falls into a niche category. But my whole goal around the 60mm concept was a few things. I felt larger diameters inherently carry more float by design. So I was "forcing" float through increasing the diameter in concept while maintaining stability with the step ledge.
The next was that I have an in 50mm - 58mm, and almost 59(Metal Zero). I always felt like the larger diameter of the metal zero felt better in the hand so I wanted to test 60mm as it was the largest I was willing to go. However, I think that in play something around 57-58 is where the sweet spot is while still maintaining a good hand feel after extensively playing my yoyos.
The next thing I knew was that the response area would be changed to a Shmoove Ring concept like the Parlay. This was planned before I even sent in the first prototype. I needed to test the difference between my design and the shmoove ring to decide on a final design element for my production yoyo. If the shmoove ring didn't improve the performance at all then I would default back to my double response bump design.
The next thing I had to change was the rim shape / design. I wanted to try a sharper edge to see what looked better to me from a visual aesthetic standpoint. The concept I was going for within the yoyo design was to have straight hard edges within parts to break up the soft curved nature of the shape inside the hub.
After that it was trying to move around weight to make the yoyo play floatier. I felt the yoyo was too heavy feeling due to the added ledge in the hub design.
During this time I was wanting to add caps to my design so I started researching yoyos that implemented caps in order to get the dimensions correct. I really felt like caps sitting on the ledge was a perfect of a setup - so that was the goal. I wasn't even thinking about how the weight distribution of a cap sitting in the middle of the yoyo vs. the rim of the yoyo would affect the play.
The issue with caps is that it's not always a one size fit all design. XT caps don't always fit in Freehands, and vice versa, sometimes caps are too loose to fit into an old yoyo, or the next gen caps won't fit on a fh1 design, etc.. I felt like this was such a waste of caps, why didn't they all just fit? I should be able to use all caps between all FH style yo-yos.
This whole time I was messing around with ideas in CAD, trying to figure out where to move my weight. I still didn't understand the issue - but I was trying my best to analyze other yoyos I really like to implement their features into my design. One day while I was fooling around with some ideas with the cap design with my yoyo I saw it.
I saw that my yoyo's IRG I created was actually the perfect spot to put a rubber weight ring to press fit into the cap on the ledge. This would allow for a "press fit" for any cap that was too small.
It all clicked instantly like many ideas do, I opted for a 3mm diameter ring. At the time, there was no reasoning behind it other than the fact that duncan caps are also 3mm in thickness so I knew depth wise it would hold the caps with no issues.
With that, I knew that the caps are 3g each and the rubber rings were 1.5g each. A duncan Freehand is 66g~ with caps. So that meant that I had to hit 57g stock with my yoyo. This was the most difficult part of designing my yoyo for me. I knew I had to drop weight regardless of what design I chose, because my v1 proto was too stable, and felt ever so slightly too heavy even though its a 62g yoyo. I knew where to shave the weight, it was just a matter of balancing everything so that I felt the weight distribution worked while being able to incorporate all of the design elements of the caps and rubber weight ring.
In the beginning of my designs I knew that there was no point to order a new set of prototypes until my measurements to fit everything worked. I finished my first mock up and sent it to a 3D printing company to measure things. This one failed, nothing fit, all of my measurements were off by a little - I was not giving a big enough ledge for the caps to sit on. I revised and sent in the next version. Again, things needed to be tweaked, but I was also playing around with the size of the shmoove ring design. I didn't want it to be so large that it disrupted the look of the organic shape, but it needed to be big enough to give noticable improvement. I took this chance to also test this area of my design. Finally the last version was sent in and I had something that "worked" by all means. The only thing I didn't know was how it was going to play.
Initially the design was far more in line with the v1 prototype. It had a straight wall that led down into the hub and a rounded off rim. My final design took influence from other designs because I was trying to fit everything while shaving off more weight from the 3D printed prototype. Hitting 57g while maintaining aesthetics, weight distribution, and my design elements wasn't an easy task.
I finally finished my design and felt like I had made something really special. I sent in the final design to the manufacturer and they said that it would cost $100 extra because it was difficult to machine. Pushing the weight to the extremes while maintaining the design elements were holding me back because I made a few of the angles far too sharp on their overhangs. So I was once again back to designing the yoyo to make it less harsh on the overhang angles while still meeting my weight goals. I completed it and sent it in, they confirmed that it was easier to machine and began working on my prototype.
I will admit I felt a bit rushed here. Due to my v1 getting pushed back I had less time to play test it, then that lined up with my brother's wedding, all together really pushing me back 3-4 months in total than my expected trajectory. Because of this I felt I needed to get my new design to them ASAP. I was too honed in and focused on designing a yoyo with all these features, trying to get a prototype to me asap to test it that I fell into a tunnel vision, and lost sight of the obvious right in front of me. The main reason for needing to release something this year is that I already bought t-shirts that are printed for "2022" so releasing in 2023 doesn't really work out.
I felt good about my yoyo, but I was also worried. There's so much at play with a design this complex. How will all of the concepts play together, will the design look okay? Is it too light, will it be too unstable.. so many things running through my mind I started to really second guess myself as I waited for the v2 prototype.
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