I hit the drawing board again. I remembered the YYR Fragment, with its little circle-shaped disc in the cup area that was similar to what I had on the Cappuccino. I modified the bimetal, taking inspiration from the Fragment and making its measurements more fitting for the modern yoyo market. 55-56mm keeps it reasonable, and I pushed the width out to 44mm to get as much rim weight as possible. I hadn’t played a Fragment and had no idea how its weight is distributed. It’s just a really pretty yoyo, and I wanted to do something like that.

Then for physics. As a sanity check, I analyzed the moment of inertia of each design. Because the new design’s bigger and I really pushed the 7075 to its safe limits, it actually has MORE rotational inertia, despite being lighter than the bimetal. That surprised me as well, but the numbers don’t lie. Still, I didn’t know how much of an improvement that would be until the prototypes arrived.

The prototypes arrived. Let nobody else tell you otherwise: It’s a screaming shade of pink. Not cherry blossom or champagne or rose gold. This uses what I suspect is the brightest dye possible, because I’ve got a skein of similar-hue pink yarn that hurts to look at. There’s a bit of purple fade for a splash of variety, just to make it interesting.

I’m happy – beyond happy – with how it plays. Moderately thick rims contribute to a stable, effortless feel. Binds are snappy, and the blast… oh my. The first time I brought it out to test, it was a cold spring evening. Tried to fingerspin, flubbed the catch. The yoyo landed on my hand, smallest portion of edge touching, for a good few seconds before falling over. That was a magical moment. Here’s a recent shot, done on the most humid day this summer. Got about a second of spin time on it despite everything feeling sticky.

As of last week, I now have a Fragment now courtesy of a friend. It’s a D bearing, which is one design feature I wanted to experiment with on the Cappuccino. It plays lighter and faster than the Cappuccino, which isn’t bad. The Cappuccino’s got a few more tricks though.

The inner grind rim on the Cappuccino is set up for 221 size O-rings. These aren’t too big, so what you’ll feel is an increase in overall weight and a slight increase in rim weight. With standard Buna-N rings, that brings the weight up from just under 62 to a little bit more than 64 grams. Other options such as silicone, fluorosilicone, and PTFE add more weight, with the PTFE inner ring pair weighing almost 6g and making the Cappuccino with that setup a crazy powerful yoyo.

You might notice a little vibe, but nothing like a ring-shifted bimetal. The rubber rings pop in and out easily, though the hard PTFE rings take a little work to remove. These add another level of depth to playing with the Cappuccino, and I’ll be including a set of basic O-rings with each order.