From Zero Gravity Return Tops: We have a tendency in wanting to turn everything we see into a yoyo. Some ideas from this tendency are, of course, kind of crazy but some others are kind of cool. One day, having this obsession in mind while looking at a knuckle roller, we asked ourselves our typical initial question: what if…

And here we are introducing the KnuckleYo. The KnuckleYo pushed our very own limits in creating a knuckle roller that is capable in turning into a yoyo—hmmm we are not sure now if it was the other way around: a yoyo that is capable in turning into a knuckle roller?

The initial challenge we hit right away was the weight and dimensions the KnuckleYo needed to have in other to be functional as a yoyo and as a knuckle roller. We played around with different dimensions, shapes and materials. Some worked perfectly, some just did not such as Titanium. One of prototypes we made out of titanium did not perform the best as a yoyo. The limitations of the dimensions and its density did not play well.

For such reasons, we ended up using only Stainless Steel, Brass and Copper. All of them have similar densities but different enough to have a different weight distribution for each material. In other words, although the weight is the pretty much the same, each material variation has a slightly different weight distribution.

The other challenge we had was in the designing part. We wanted to have thin walls with thick rims but the size of the cup prevented to use standard tooling. This of course led us to work with the machinist and create customized tooling.

The initial idea was to accommodate begleri as part of the features by using a 275 paracord that fit the M4 hole size no problem. It worked perfectly. The problem we had was that the axle was going through the cup side making the yoyo assembly a little bit frustrating. For such reason we ended up adding a stop to prevent the axle to go to the side of the cup, but that reduced the diameter of the ending part of the axle hole. For such reason, a <2mm diameter paracord could do the trick to turn the KnuckleYo in begleri.

For the engine of the yoyo, we did not want to use a mini bearing. We wanted instead to use a a bearing size that had a good performance and that was easy to find out there in the market. At the same time, we wanted the bearing to be concave to some how reduce the friction of the string with the pads. We ended up choosing an A size bearing and customized pads to properly fit the bearing and yoyo dimensions—by the way, our Throw Key can also remove this bearing if it gets stuck ;)

Playing with a mini yoyo is challenging. This is not the exception but definitely has great stability to perform complex tricks and to improve your yoyo accuracy. One element that definitely is key with this throw is the string, we tested several combinations in terms of materials, length and thickness along with Zipline to find the perfect match that suited the KnuckleYo not only from the performance perspective, but also from the winding up and binding perspectives. When not in yoyo mode, you can toss it in your pocket and start using it as a knuckle roller practically anywhere you go.

This project made us connecting with different people with different skills to test the prototypes and to receive feedback after testing them. We would like to thank them all for their time and extraordinary response that helped us to develop this project.

As we always say, let nothing hold you down.

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