Boost Squared Production

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything but I’ve been busy ramping up production of the Boost Squared! (among other secret projects)

I released a batch of raw Boost Squared a few months ago that I called a pre-production run because it really was pre-production. I had some made, but I wasn’t ready for a real release I could be completely happy with given the Covid-19 pandemic. Luckily the mostly complete batch was well received because people didn’t know what to expect with a square yo-yo.

Improvements: Although I was fairly happy with how the pre-production units turned out, there were definitely areas to improve. First, the surface finish was rather poor. I think this was due to the manufacturer keeping cost down even though the entire surface of the yo-yo had to be 3D-contoured. Next, the lack of anodize made the yo-yos look unfinished. Raw looks nice but is really only good for protos/titanium. Additionally, a lack of a laser engraving made it so in the future, people might not be able to identify the square yo-yo or figure out who made it. I was also a bit unhappy with a lack of packaging because once again, it made the yo-yo feel incomplete.

So with these new improvements in mind, I set out to create a new and improved run. I decided to change manufacturers because my previous one wanted to bump up the price significantly. In the mean time I ordered some simple boxes with the plan to put stickers on them.

And the yoyos fit perfectly!

By now I had already worked out a plan with a new manufacturer and I decided to give them my DFM (design for manufacturing) version of the Boost Squared a shot. This version uses steps and big chamfers to interpolate the curve of the last design.

I decided on two anodized colors (green and purple) and ordered them.

A few weeks later a beautiful box showed up at my door.

Assembly time!

I don’t remember if I ever wrote a blog post about the wrenches I made, but these were the last parts I made at MIT before leaving. They were delrin wrenches that fit into the ID of the Boost Squared to help tighten them and clock the halves properly.

Now that I had an assembled and tested batch, it was time to put the finishing touches on the “product”.

Lili helped me design a new logo for these fun designs I’ll continue to make.

And I focused on figuring out how to affordably laser engrave all the yo-yos.

Enter cantilevered $200 Chinese eBay laser.

It did the job.

To make my life easier, I designed this printed bracket and bolted it to the frame of the laser so I could swap out yo-yos without having to refocus or rezero the laser. The funky cutout was for an additional feature that would help with me zeroing the laser but was not needed.

As expected the software that powered the eBay laser was terrible but after about 15 min of poking it was usable.

You’ll also notice I use the set screw hole in the yo-yo as the middle “o” in “boost”.

Another oddity of this home laser process was that in order to get a clean crisp engraving, I had to color the engraving area with black expo marker which served to absorb more laser energy, and block the reflective aluminum surface.

With stickers arriving, it was time to put the finishing touches on the run. I’m super happy with how these turned out and I’m excited to continue to improve my designs/products in the future!