Spinning Tops (Beyblades)

Summary

These four symmetrical, 7 × 7 × 4cm Beyblade-style spinning tops are very entertaining and are useful for a variety of reasons, including reducing stress, improving concentration, and battling with other tops. They can be spun by hand or set in motion by several different types of launchers, which makes them great as fidget toys and effective as battle tops!

Objective

In Solidworks, create several effective spinning battle tops with launching pegs, demonstrating efficient use of the Revolved Boss/Base feature to ensure the device is perfectly round, the Circular Sketch Pattern tool to quickly repeat identical patterns, and the Cut Extrude feature to shape the outer edge and properly distribute mass. The diameter of the top must not exceed 7cm, and the height, excluding what is added by the launching peg, must not exceed 3.5cm.

Original Ideas

These were some of my original ideas for the contour sketch and top view of my tops.

Construction Instructions

Launching Peg

In Solidworks, begin a sketch on the Front Plane. Create a sketch centered on the origin of the base of a gear-like launching peg like the one shown below. Use the Boss Extrude feature to raise it up by 1cm.

Main Body of Top

In a new sketch on the Right Plane, create a 3.5 × 3.5cm construction box below the launching peg with one of the top corners on the origin. Use the Arc and Line tools to create your top’s contour sketch. Make sure a line connects the top and bottom sections of your sketch to close it.

Use the Revolved Boss/Base feature set to 360° to form the main body of your top’s contour sketch.

Cutting Out Designs

Create a plane parallel to the Front Plane about one or two centimeters above it.

In a sketch on this newly created plane, use the Arc and Line tools to sketch a shape along the outer edge of your top. Use the Circular Sketch Pattern to repeat this shape several times along the circumference.

Use the Cut Extrude feature with “Through All” selected so that the shapes you sketched are cut out of the top’s outer edge.

Repeat the previous two steps, sketching the shapes nearer to the center.

Select the launching peg and use the Move/Copy Bodies feature to move the peg down until its base is fully connected to the main body of the top. If necessary, edit the Boss Extrude feature that was used for the launching peg before and increase its height.

Design Choices

Since a pointed tip would have been unlikely to print well, I decided to use a curved one instead. At the bottom of my contour sketch, I added a tangent arc and made sure it was perpendicular to the axis of revolution by sketching a horizontal construction line that was both tangent to the arc and coincident with its intersection with the axis.

I cut vertical triangular holes through my tops near their centers to increase the ratio of mass on the outside to mass in the center. This increases the tops’ stability and stamina while spinning.

I cut out eight triangles along the outer section of my tops to give them attacking spikes, which increase the impact force when they collide with opponents’ tops. This can help them destabilize opponents and knock them farther away.

When I printed my first three tops, I noticed that their small diameter meant their mass was much smaller than that of many of their opponents. According to Newton’s second law of motion, the net force acting on an object is equal to its mass times its acceleration, and because of my tops’ low mass, their acceleration upon colliding with opponents would have to be much greater, meaning they could easily be knocked out of the arena by larger tops. In my fourth design, I maximized the top’s diameter, which made it significantly more effective in battles, allowing it to win the majority of the battles it competed in.