Last few months have been a bit interesting. Things here in Ontario are finally starting to open up again, which feels like a light at the end of the tunnel. I finally got to see my yoyo friends here for the first time since March in 2020 - almost a year and a half. Of course I brought many titanium yoyo prototypes, including the new Acadia.
Being the group I have hung out with for almost 15 years now, they were always the first ones who got to try the Luftverk stuff since its conception. It was really flattering to hear that a few thought the Acadia BTM was the best playing yoyo I have ever designed. It was interesting since if you look back in the past, besides the bimetal 000, all other performance oriented yoyos I designed were aggressively V shaped. This was a somewhat unique departure - instead of going full extreme like the Fulvia or Ultima, it was based on the beloved Evora which was a very casual, mid weighted yoyo.
The idea of this yoyo came in late 2020, when I re-released the Evora for the 5 year anniversary of Luftverk. Im not sure if I lean too much into traditionalism, but I really didn't want to change the Evora too much. The performance gain I made for the released version was noticeable but in the grand scheme of things it still remained a more casual player. To the performance oriented individual it would still probably be considered lacking stability. I knew this would be the case as to not ruin the overall feel of that yoyo. It just felt too special, perhaps sentimental, to change too much and still call it an Evora.
This created the Acadia BTM project. The Evora was always what I considered my "signature yoyo", or the one that I take no influence or suggestions for the design from anyone but myself. The design still to this day I think is very beautiful with the hard lines and large protruding nipple. Yet I knew I could improve so much on the play characteristics of it. It only felt natural to work on a way of maximizing the performance, with the constraints that its aesthetics still remain similar to the Evora.
This proved to be quite difficult since the beauty of the original heavily dictated the play characteristics. Certain lines and profiles could only be created because of where that material was. The larger hub and nipple had a lot of weight that was just there for feel but did nothing for performance.
Essentially the design process was mostly trimming as much material off the hub as possible. It meant a smaller hub area, much thinner wall thicknesses and smaller features. It uses a shorter axle, which meant the nipple could be shorter as well. The diameter was increased from 54mm to 56.5mm. This was mostly inspired by one of the best playing titanium yoyos I have ever owned, the Onedrop Citizen (which I still regret selling lol). This larger diameter meant so much more stability. It feels super comfortable doing speed combos and also helps with the feel in the hand. The final thing was adding all that weight back to the very edge, with the help of stainless steel rings.
It was somewhat of a nightmare making these, because of the extreme weight distribution on an H shape, I had to work closely with the engineer to figure out a design that would be stable and have a high enough success rate. With the absurd cost of titanium, it was a struggle to keep trying revisions but eventually it was figured out. I really feel like the weight distribution straddles the thin line of high rim weight on the edge, while not creating a pulsing vibration.
I felt that the price point of this yoyo was probably going to be too high for most, so I did end up converting it to a monometal. It is always interesting to see how it feels when I do this, since you can really see how the weight distribution changes a yoyo's feel especially in titanium. It is noticeably less rim weighted and stable, but still a massive margin more than the original Evora. The thicker rims also give it a slightly different look.
Assembly of the rings is still done by myself which is required when I do anodized variants but also helps with making sure they are as smooth as possible. The advancement in cheap 3D printers meant this time I easily printed assembly tools instead of machining them out of Delrin. Being able to try different sets of rings is a blessing, but takes a lot of time. I also worked out a cool solution to an annoying problem with my anodizers regarding the bearing seat tolerances. Because of how many issues I had in the past with this, I sourced out a bearing seat "mask" so the seat tolerances remain unchanged from a raw yoyo. I tried this with O-rings before but the solution was a square cut one from McMaster Carr. This time around, it seemed easier to half match out a smooth yoyo, compared to before where there were just a lot of B-grades.
The anodizing came out beautiful - they had some issues matching the colors I wanted, so the brown is slightly lighter than the Rootbeer I was going for but anodized titanium is always such a different experience than aluminum. The three iridescent colors change slightly depending on the lighting. The Blue is super rich, which is similar to the 2020 edition Evora I released a few months ago. The light green was inspired by a color "Millenium Jade" made popular in the car world by the Nissan R34 GTR, which, as a car enthusiast, I made for myself. The photos don't do it justice, and the stainless steel rings in the BTM version really adds to the overall aesthetics for all of them.
With so many production delays, design challenges, and material price increases, I am just happy these turned out good. I made a slight bit more than usual on this run - I am really hoping to get these to stores to help out overseas customer shipping prices. They will be first released here on the Luftverk website - again a limited numbered quantity. I am very excited to hear what people think about this one since it's what I consider my own signature yoyo, especially those who own the original Evora.
The Acadia in Bimetal and Monometal variants will drop Sunday July 11th, 2021 10:00pm EST time.
It has been a year an a half living in Osaka, crazy how time flies. I remember releasing the Plastic Fulvia just before leaving Toronto, a product that I could argue changed the trajectory of everything. At that moment, Luftverk grew exponentially, with the support of retailers around the world. At that moment, I developed so many behind the scenes processes for management that it became much more of a corporate job then a creative one. Huge projects like Cheatcode, and the CLYW collaboration definitely had its creative sides dont get me wrong, but the addition of moving to a foreign city, learning a new language, pursuing motorsports and delegating tasks behind the scenes with razor sharp margins meant for a lot of it I was on the brink of burnout. I questioned if I even still liked doing yoyo stuff at all, or if it was just to keep food on the table.
Crazy to think it has been 2 years since the original release of the Plastic Fulvia and Plastic 000. Both models as of now are pretty much sold out everywhere, and I knew it was about time to update both with a small batch of new colors as well as fix a few small issues with the first designs. I appreciate everyone who has reached out anticipating a restock of these - as the manufacturing process is very timely for sure so restocks can't happen as quick as I'd like.
In January, I released the AKURA MG, a yoyo made from Magnesium. This material has a very low density and I talked about how it performs more like a plastic than anything else. But what made that yoyo really special is the aesthetic. I loved the lines on that yoyo. The proportions with the chunky rims were just perfect. One of the biggest aesthetic challenges though were that after the ceramic coating the lines were quite subtle which hid the design.
Jeffrey Pang
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