Body
Most modern yo-yos are made from a "take-apart" design, designed to be taken easily apart and reassembled by the player. This design was first created by Tom Kuhn. This enables the replacement of yo-yo components, including the string, renewable friction sources, or even trans-axle components.
In order to increase spin times, extra weight was added to the outermost portion of the yo-yo. The first to do this was Dale Oliver (Spintastics Skill Toys, Inc) with the addition of steel rings when he brought out the Tigershark yo-yo early in 1998.
Some take-apart designs allow the player to reconfigure the yo-yo's halves. In the Tom Kuhn No Jive 3-In-1, the halves may be attached in three different configurations, resulting in a traditional, butterfly, or "pagoda" silhouette. In the Yo-yo Factory FlyMaster, the body has two different "shells" to convert to and from an off-string yo-yo.
Another innovation to the yo-yo is the ability to adjust the gap between the two halves of the yo-yo, in order to increase or decrease response. In most designs, this is accomplished by twisting the yo-yo halves, but some designs (such as the Tom Kuhn Silver Bullet) can be disassembled for adjustment without twisting. This second option eliminates the possibility of the yo-yo coming out of adjustment during play.
- John Jerome McAvoy, Jr. was awarded patents for the gap-adjustable yo-yo: patent #5389029 on February 14, 1995, and #6066024 on May 23, 2000.
- In 1998, HSPIN launched the Handquake series of yo-yos, which sported an adjustable gap by using shims of 0.1-0.5mm thickness. By adding or removing shims, the gap could be widened or shrunk by +/- 1mm.
- Harry Baier (creator of the "Mondial" yo-yo) and the Flambeau Products Company (owner of Duncan) were awarded patent #6162109 on December 19, 2000 for a gap-adjustable yo-yo which has discrete positions for specific gap widths. This patent was first implemented in the CameYo Mondial before being bought by Duncan.
- YoYoFactory's productline of Speed Dial yo-yo's feature "Fully Adjustable Starburst Technology" which allow the gap to be adjusted using a dial on the yo-yo. This allows for a more discrete response setting that stays the same after the yo-yo is taken apart and put back together.
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Famous quotes containing the word body:
““... The grave and my calm body are shut to your coming as stone,
And the endless beginning of prodigies suffers open.””
—Dylan Thomas (1914–1953)
“And deep into her crystal body poured
The hot and sorrowful sweetness of the dust:
Whereof she wanders mad, being all unfit
For mortal love, that might not die of it.”
—Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950)
“The history of work has been, in part, the history of the worker’s body. Production depended on what the body could accomplish with strength and skill. Techniques that improve output have been driven by a general desire to decrease the pain of labor as well as by employers’ intentions to escape dependency upon that knowledge which only the sentient laboring body could provide.”
—Shoshana Zuboff (b. 1951)