The "original" ruby-tipped spin tops: crafted without compromise Why the high price and limited availability? Tungsten tops are well known for being wobbly, because the material is extremely difficult to machine precisely. It doesn't like to be cut, and destroys expensive carbide tooling very quickly. Unlike other makers, I personally hand spin 100% of tungsten tops to make sure there aren't any "bad" ones. This QC leads to a reject rate of about 30% of finished tops. Tungsten is $600 per foot of material, and there is a lot of time and effort to get all the way to a finished top. Kickstarter Original : This is the original design from my Kickstarter project. I still think it's the best. For me good design is all about balance and simplicity. Making a good two-piece top is also exceedingly difficult. I retired the design for over a year and spent hundreds of hours prototyping to maximize consistency and performance. The tolerance level on both the spindle diameter and bore of the ring are necessarily held to +/- 0.0001 inches...basically the minimum tolerance the lathe is capable of. Holding this tolerance requires inspecting every 5 parts to make sure the machine is on size. Over the course of the day, the machine will drift up to .002 inches as air, machine and coolant temperature changes. You'll note this is 20x the allowable deviation. Making parts this precise comes at a cost. If you'd like to geek out you can refer to this article on "The High Cost of Tight Tolerances" on the CNC Cookbook blog. Even with all this effort, the simple act of mating two separate parts together always introduces some amount of error and imperfection. What most makers won't tell you, is you might get a "perfect" top...but you might not. It's become clear that performance falls within a statistical distribution and making every top absolutely perfect simply isn't a realistic expectation. That said, the new two piece top should (on average) spin even better than the original, and that's why I'm bringing back. This is as close to perfection as my current skills, knowledge, and equipment allow. Materials: Tungsten is 30x more expensive than brass and ridiculously dense (heavy). It has almost the same density as gold at 19.3 g/cm3. Just for reference: Brass is 8.5, Copper is 8.96, and Lead is 11.3. You want to get more dense than tungsten? You'll have to look into making a top from Iridium, Neptunium, Osmium, Platinum, or Plutonium. I can't particularly recommend the latter. Seriously, it's heavy. My personal best Lambda Brass spin is 12:37. This time represents how my finger strength and technique translates into spin speed or RPM. More RPM + good technique = longer spin. The tungsten is SO much heavier it is quite a bit harder to get spinning at maximum velocity. On my first tungsten spin I got about 14:30, but I think powerful spinners could get a lot more. If you are not a powerful spinner, you won't be able to take full advantage of the physics of this top...but if you don't care about that then just have fun with it :) The 6061 aluminum spindle is strong, light weight, and raw machined aluminum. I normally nickel plate all of my aluminum parts, but it's just not necessary here. I also really like the contrast of the "cool-colored" aluminum next to the warm brass. Contact Point Options: For complete information, please see the "contact points" tab on this page. Of course the ruby is the ultimate in performance and awesome...can't beat that combination. It's a little bit fragile if you compare it to a Mac truck, but a little bit of knowledge and care will keep it spinning for a lifetime. I mean, it's nearly as hard as diamond and those are "forever." >>> Broken contact balls are not covered under warranty. NEVER drop the Lambda top onto a tile or granite surface or the ball may shatter. Contact points can be replaced in tops that have hollow spindles (all current models)...assuming there isn't other significant damage to the top.
