Initial Yo-Yo Design
Picture Inspiration
Our team was inspired by the above picture of a lotus flower. We plan to sit the petals and stigma of the flower on top of a green lily pad and submerged in a cool blue body. See the initial design of our yo-yo on the right.
Yo-Yo Initial Design
Our design features two interlocking layers of white injection molded petals (lightly colored with a spritz of spray paint) that are held together in a press-fit with the stigma. The entire flower will interface with the thermoformed lily pad below and snap into the blue body, representing water.
Initial Thoughts on Design Decisions
We were unanimous in our decision to choose a lotus flower as the inspiration for our YoYo! Other ideas that we had brainstormed were: Aquarium, Ocean Themed, Cherry Blossoms, Gudetama, Lanterns, Sunflowers, Kiwis, Multitools, Headphones, Ramen Bowl, Girl Scout Cookies, and Soda Cans. We plan to have the base of our yoyo body face to be a lily pad with the lotus flower on top of it. We plan to thermoform rather than injection model the lily pad because all of the other parts appear to be too difficult to thermoform. We were inspired by the succulent design from last year and hope to draw on their leaves design when we develop our petal design. We saw that they had difficulties getting their injection molded center pins to fill completely without defects, as well as align correctly. One initial idea we have to mitigate this is to simply make our center pin (the stigma of the lily) bigger in diameter and in such a way that its snap tolerances are more forgiving.
Potential Difficulties:
- Non-planar parting line
- Achieving a smooth color gradient during post processing
- Hiding gate marks and ejector pin marks on all cosmetic surfaces (especially since the petals are curved)
Blog post written by Kim Veldee, Riley Davis, Annie Zhang, and Toria Yan