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[pplgrande]

So im wondering if I can get some help
I have a few different bearing trompos, and for some reason some of them shake, its very strange, how some are very smooth, and therefore spin forever, and some are shaky and the spin sucks
Im wondering if there is anything i can do?, i been thinking about it for a while and i cant figure out why they do that, or how to fix it
Im talking about, you can compare the same brand, exact same model and for some reason, one smooth and one shaky, and this happends with almost all my bearing trompos, now the ones that are smooth, are always smooth
And the shaky ones stay shaky
On some of them i can feel it shakeing while its rolling down the string, when im doing a boomerang for example
Im hopeing there is something i can do, any suggestions will defenetly be appretiated
thanks

[Neff]

Probably out of balance.  Try this: http://topspinning.com/tricks/balancing.ghtml

[pplgrande]

Thanks Neff, but here is my problem now, eventhough that probably is the problem im having, some of my bearing's Im not sure i can open the cap
Like the 1st and 2nd gen turbo's, can I open those?

[ta0]

I have not tried to open them yet. I have one 1st gen with a broken tip I may try to open later today.

Perhaps you could try to balance the top by first adding a piece of electrical tape. After you find the position where it balances the top you could drill a little hole on the inertial ring at the opposite side of the top axis.

[Dizzy]

I don't know about the 1st Gen turbos, but the caps for the 2nd Gen turbos are held in place either with glue or they have been melted and pressed.  Mine broke open from a fairly light accidental crash on a hard floor.  I have not re-glued it shut because I am able to press it back together by hand and it holds well enough to play vigorously.  The cap pops off every time it crashes now but it always holds during play.  And since mine was extremely well balanced out-of-the-box, I'm afraid to add any weight to it by re-gluing that might disturb it's near-perfect balance.

That said, if yours is very imbalanced, consider this:

The amount of glue (or the melt area) holding the cap on is very small, so if you want your top opened for tuning I think a crash and pray method (or a simple pry-method) may be a good option with minimal risk, but please use your own discretion there.  Yours may break badly, and you may have to glue it back together to be able to play with it.

I can't speak for the 1st-gen turbos. I broke or lost all the tips for both of mine before I had the chance to break one open from crashing.  However, since the 2nd-gen is glued or melted, I'll bet the 1st gen is the same.  If I were you I would try to determine if the risk is worth the payoff.  If your tops are so badly out of balance as to be unplayable then what do you have to lose?

On the other hand, I have found my turbos (both gens) to be somewhere between adequately to very well balanced.  Have you had any other players try out your tops or are you like me with no other spinners around?

[Neff]

Thank you very much for posting Dizzy, My 2nd Gen Ultra is unbearably wobbly, and I've been hoping somebody would post when they found out how the cap is attached, sweet!  I'm off to crack open a top...

[pplgrande]

Yeah, no spinner around me, unfortunaly
As for the balanced part, i really appretiate the feedback, now all i have to do is find a way to pop open my 2nd gen's, I can see that they are 2 pieces i just didnt know how the where attached, thanks dizzy
As for the 1st gen, im still affraid it might be one piece, or it might be glued with some mexican glue, I cant remember what this glue is called but i do remember that is so strong that if you use it and then try to take the pieces apart, they would break (specially plastic) before the glue would come apart
Now honestly my 2nd gen's are not that unbalanced, but i would like to balance them better
My 1st gen's, one is useless, unfortunetly, its just way to shaky, that's the one i really want to balance
My BK, (thanks agentsac) was very unbalanced but after a little ez-tac, it's very smooth
The spintastics blizzard was very unbalanced, but i think thats due to the point, its a very nice trompo I just cant seem to glue the point right, therefore its very unbalanced, actually i should say was very unbalanced, i just lost my point, and I cant find it
Anyway, if anybody figures out how to open a 1st gen, let us know please

[Dizzy]

I'm going to take my own advice.  Since both my 1st-gens are now worthless, I'll go ahead and open one up.  They're boxed up right now and I'm not sure just where they are, but as soon as I have them unpacked I'll, ahem, get cracking.

Pardon the pun.

[pplgrande]

Well after some tape, im very happy to say that my "useless" 1st gen trompo as i called it earlier, is now as smooth as the other one it's amazing what some tape can do
ta0, you said to drill a little hole, but then what, put some ez-tac in there?, i understand that tape is not a solution but it defenetly helped me find where to put the counter balance
For any of you that dont really pay attention on balancing your trompos, you should try it, it makes and incredible difference
I think that before you can try a trick, you should balance your trompo, I now understand that, taking it a step further than just flipping the cap defenetly makes a big difference
thanks you all

[pplgrande]

Tape is not a solution but wow.....what a difference

[ta0]

ta0, you said to drill a little hole, but then what, put some ez-tac in there?

My idea was to drill a little hole on the metal ring on the opposite side of the top. If  you take the same amount of metal weight as you had added with the tape it should be pretty well balanced after you take out the tape. If you leave the hole empty it wil just add very little drag (much less than the tape).  I am glad you now have a working top.

Yesterday I tried to open a 1st generation with compressed air. There is no hole to access the interior where the tip goes, so I had to drill a hole on the crown. I injected air at 75 PSI from a small compressor. The inside diameter of the top is about 2" or a cross section of about 3 in² what gives an axial force of 75 x 3 = 225lb. However, I had no luck. The glue is pretty tough!

I had once used the compressed air trick to dislodge a vintage Duncan twin spin in which the upper top was stuck backwards inside the lower one (injecting through the tip hole): it worked like charm!

[pplgrande]

Thanks ta0, after reading your idea 10 times i now get it, taking weight off the opposite side would be the counter balance
Well with the tape, i had to put 7 layers to get it as smooth as i liked, so im thinking the hole (in the opposite side) is gonna end up being alot bigger, in order to take the weight off, therefore making the air drag alot more noticible
So now, im not sure if drilling a hole is the way to go

[ta0]

I did a back-of-the-envelope calculation, considering that 7 pieces of electrical tape, 1.5" long each, weigh about 0.8 gr according to my scale and the brass ring is 2.2 mm thick. You would need a hole 3.8 mm in diameter: big but feasible (the ring is 6 mm tall).

How do I know the thickness of the ring? Well, I tried the crash and pray method and it opened the top on the first try!  But I cannot report the results because I haven't yet found the lower body  I did crash it very hard on the carpet and the parts flew away at high speed 

UPDATE:

I finally found the lower part of the top (actually, my wife did). The good news is that the top can be put back together as the body and cap did not crack. The bad news is that the glue can indeed be stronger of the plastic and around the rim the cap took slivers from the body and vice versa. So I cannot rotate them, they can only fit in one position. By the way, the cap and body do not fit one inside the other: their rims are the same size and they just butt the cross sections. My guess is that the crash and pray method will work most of the time.

[Daveid]

you make me wonder if there are any solvents that would melt the glue but not the top.
i wonder what would happen if you played with heat and cold (i mean i wonder if the properties of the glue and the plastic are so similar that they expand and contract with temperature change at the same rate).

[pplgrande]

I appretiate all the calculations, 3.8mm dosent sound that bad, i might have to try that
As for the heat and cold method, im thinking cold would shatter the plastic, and heat, I think i'll probably melt the plastic before i cant get the glue to come apart
Overall the "drill a hole on the opposite side" idea is sounding really good
Thanks you all