Proto to model - the easy and hard way

I used the weekend to update some toys. First up Eric Wolff's Silk. The brief was simple - we need about 2g more rim weight (per halve). The interesting this about the Silk (apart from the fact that is was the first mass-produced CNC Delrin yo-yo) is that is really is quite an organic design - unlike other yo-yos out there lately, this one was initially hand-turned to perfection and then adapted for CNC lathe manufacturing. In short, where other yo-yos are designed using CAD programs, Eric turns his models and when they feel right, they get considered for actually mass-producing.

In the case of the Silk, mass production means cutting the right prototype in half, taking very accurate laser measurements and converting it into something a CNC machine can understand. Finally out of this process you can have a DXF of the actual yo-yo model. So, I received a DXF in the mail and set out to change it. This means importing the DXF into SolidWorks, re-tracing the lines, converting to a 3D model and then making the required changes. A simple 30 minute exercise turns into a much longer exercise to get it right. Overall I'm quite pleased with the results, I may like the next run of Silks even more than I currently do.

Second exercise for this weekend is something that will still have a revision or two before it is ready for the big-time. Isaac Kanarek's metal yo-yo. Once again this is a hand-turned aluminum model that needs to make the step up to CNC manufacturing. In this case however, we have no nice DXF to work with - what we have are some prototypes, with one even cut-in-half and scanned for accurate measurements and profile. So no accurate laser measurements, rather dozens of printouts scatterred around the room with various little notes and measurements on them. In the first revision I've sent out, I came quite close to capturing the actual profile 100% and in the very least capturing the spirit of the model. There should be one or two more iterations before everybody is 100% happy and then we should have little protos floating around for testing.