Hi guys,
I'm an engineering student who's interested in learning how electronic beyblades, turn, spin. Clearly it uses a gyrscope internally with a motor, but how do they turn? How do speed up while maintaining friction less contact? Has anyone ever opened one of these up?

Thanks,
Onix

I can't think of any Beyblade that works as you describe. The only electronic Beyblades I can think of are the light-and-sound ones and the remote controlled ones; in both cases, you need to launch them with a regular Beyblade launcher and they lose rotational speed over time just as any other Beyblade does.

Hm, the Super Control Beyblades from Metal Fight Beyblade do have a turbo feature and it sort of works. I only have two so I am not sure I want to open them up, but they should be very inexpensive now since they were never really popular, so you could probably buy one explicitly to open it.

The left versus right spin feature also really works, so I suppose that the tip is indeed part of a core that is not affected by the direction in which the rest of the Beyblade spins.

Hm, the Super Control Beyblades from Metal Fight Beyblade do have a turbo feature and it sort of works.

Yeah, but this is basically the equivalent of how Engine Gear works, yes? The tip if the Beyblade temporarily increases in speed and is rotating faster than the rest of the top. But the top itself is not gaining spin velocity. I'm not familiar with the MFB-era RC Beyblades though.

Yeah the MFB RC beys are usually pretty expensive on eBay and Amazon, but super cheap sometimes on YJA and prolly Rakuten too. Like 1k-1.5k ¥ is what I have seen them for low-end

I've opened up and gutted a couple of MFB IR Control Beyblades from Hasbro before. They work a little differently to the Japanese ones, I believe.

In any case, you must launch the blade using the included launcher. Why? Because both the launcher and the blade have internal "reset" buttons which can only be triggered by loading the blade onto this particular launcher. The prongs and ripcord trigger the buttons. Triggering the buttons basically turns the blade and the launcher "on" and resets any current values in the computer (inside the launcher), ready for a new battle.

Okay, now the spinning mechanism:

The blade has a flat spin-tip attached to the shaft of a tiny electric motor. If I remember correctly, the motor itself is actually free-spinning. So the tip spins AND the motor itself spins in the housing inside the blade. The electircal connections for the motor are thus bearing-based and not soldered to the motor itself. Cool, no?

I believe the reason the motor itself is free-spinning (and not just the tip) is because there is otherwise a 100% torque-factor on the motor when you reverse its direction using the remote controls on the launcher. Having the motor free-spin dampens the acceleration and stops the spinning blade from losing control when you suddenly change the spin direction of the tip. Without this feature, the blade's actual spin would die almost immediately and I imagine the blade would literally flip out of the stadium.

There is also a shock-absorber at the rear of the motor so that the shaft does not grind when the blade drops onto the surface of the stadium.

Apart from that, the motor can indeed be used to "boost" the blade perpetually; except that the launcher has built-in software to disengage the motor once the blade runs out of "power" which is a super-annoying game-breaking bad idea from the designers and basically consigns the whole toy to the scrap-heap rather than the annals of robot-combat glory. But yeah, using that "boost" feature does indeed make the blade itself spin faster.

The PCB is nicely designed to be "round" and distributes its weight fairly well inside the plastic housing. The IR receiver is centrally located and the batteries are distributed evenly around the perimeter to increase spin times.

A cool mechanical design all up, with unfortunate game-design choices.

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