My partner and I are planning on making a sustainable Yo-Yo for children. I was inspired to make this Yo-Yo during our physics unit because I really loved to play with them when I was younger. I was very intrigued by how they worked so I thought it would be fun to make one and learn. However, the task was to make something sustainable and wooden Yo-Yos already exist. I looked into it further and saw that companies only started making them recently and out of fresh wood and they tend to still have plastic in it or a glaze over so that the product would last longer. This made it so that the wood toy couldn’t be converted into bio-fuel and with the shape and size, Yo-Yos would be difficult to repurpose.
On top of this, majority of the Yo-Yos today are still made out of steel and plastic which takes longer to decompose than wood. This is why we decided to make the Yo-Yo out of scrap wood. We also will only sand it to smooth it out and keep it pretty large so that it can easily be re-purposed. Something I have to be careful of when making this is what machines I’m going to be able to use in the FABLAB since I am not very skilled with the lathe.
Another point is we only have 3 classes since I missed the first class so I have a lot to catch up on. I am going to just start with my final project and skip the prototype and hope that it works. The current plan is to first use the saw to cut 4 circular pieces then glue them together on the first day, then use the lathe on the second and third to round the pieces. third day is to construct everything together.