O.C, CA Lightsaber class: Progress Report

that sounds great...looking forward to it...ken ordered polycarbonite blade. i will see if he can find it in aluminum. will let you know

 

Cool Lori ! Dude Zhi-Don, are you planning on making a adapter or blade holder like Lightech's ? In case you need help, I own that adapter with my Lightech kit.

 

we are going to have a adapter to hold the blade, im assuming that you are talking about the mount rather than the plug at the end of the blade. sure id light to have a look at it unless lori already has one.

thanks

 

Ok, lemme go and get some pics first.

 

No, I don't have the adapter, Don, or I would have shown it to you. I didn't want to spend an extra $40, or whatever it was, for a machined piece of aluminum when I was just going to use a piece of PVC to hold my blade, which I did. It's a little sloppy as far as extra room around the blade is concerned, but my retaining screw takes a care of that.

I've decided it's going to be too much work to sand down the 5/8" polycarbonate tubing to fit into the 3/4". And it diffuses too much for the dimmer wire to be seen as well. I suppose I could try polishing it, but again, too much work. So I'll continue making them as I have been.

And the diffuser tubing I ordered from USPlastics is the wrong darn size! I should have written it down, but looked at the web page and told the CSR (customer service representative) on the phone the wrong part number, so it's going back and I've ordered the original stuff I'd used before.

The original way I've been doing it still looks pretty good.

 

[image=http://www.massassi.net/ec/images/10191.jpg]
You mean these ?

 

What's the next day that's good for everyone? I am good for Wednesday night, Friday night, or Saturday night before next Sunday. Any nights that are good for you Don is cool. I'd like to finish before next week.

Everybody who didn't participate in this class which is everyone except for me and tracy missed out.

I really appreciate Don for helping me and giving up his time. This whole experience is what brings people together with a common love for Star Wars.

 

lori; sorry, if forgot you didnt have it because we are trying to get tubing that will hold the blade. more on that later.

zeno: see above. how much do these thing cost anyway?

aaron; i will see you wednesday night, so we can finish. anyone else who wants can join us then or next saturday.

 

Don, that adapter costs $40. It's made more for people that have a Graflex or Heiland flash unit for a saber hilt, but will work in other saber hilts. It's diameter is 1 1/4" so there would be some slop to take up inside a 1 1/2" hilt. And it's also 4" long, which would be too long for your saber hilt, I would think.

When you buy it with the kit (I don't know if he sells just that by itself, you'd have to ask him) it comes with the female connector installed in the bottom. It also has a blade retaining thumb screw and a crappy little switch in it.

I wanted to do my own thing and didn't want to buy that over-priced piece of machined aluminum.

Aaron, I hope you can get your saber done so that you can bring it to the next meeting and show it to us!

 

thanks lori;

i wasnt aware of the drawbacks of that adapter. so i agree that we have to custom make the emiter housing blade mount. we should be done wednesday night with aarons saber. i will ask tracy to bring hers as well to the meeting even if its not complete.

 

I cannot make it to the class, since I am in Oregon, but I have a question for you lightsaber builders out there. What is the purpose of difusion? I have read about it on a few different boards, but I haven't seen what it means or what the purpose is. I was planning on buying a length of colored EL wire and running it through a polycarbonate tube. Do I need to do something more with it to make it look good, or will that be enough?

 

Actually, that's not a lightsaber builder question, but specifically a blade maker question, and since I'm the only one doing that on this board, that would be for me to answer.

You want a diffuser for two purposes. 1) to hide the EL wire; and 2) to make a nice even glow throughout the entire blade, with, hopefully, no bright spots where the wire is closer to the side of the blade.

If you just put the wire in a clear tube, that's what it's going to look like, EL wire inside a tube , that's not the look you're going for, if you've seen other EL blades. You want a nice, glowing blade that doesn't have any obvious light source inside it.

 

Thanks Loreen! You have been a great help with all of your information. I really appreciate it!

One more thing: What is the best material to use for a defuser?

 

lightsaber class update:

we finished aarons lightsaber last night. we had a few challenges which required a trip to lowes, but overall we think it came out rather well. aaron and i will bring our lightsabers to the meeting on sunday. i hope tracy will bring hers as well. i im look for someone who can chrome plate plastic. if anyone knows someone who can do this please contact me.

next up: i start on my new EL with sound lightsaber.

 

Well, Blackthorne, that's still up for debate about what's the best diffuser, if you read my thread over at ASAP.

My Lightech blade uses some special piece of paper. Some people are trying sanding the inside and outside of the polycarbonate tubing, which is what I think I'm going to do to the 5/8" tubing I'm going to use when I make a "light dagger".

In my lightsaber blades, I'm using a piece of 1/2" rigid polyethylene tubing that I bought at McMaster.com. It comes on a roll and I can't get it perfectly straight, but you can't really tell unless you look down the blade. ?

Do not, I repeat, do not pour any kind of solvent on the tubing hoping to make it cloudy. This will partially dissolve the plastic and weaken it.

You'll just have to figure out for yourself which is the best method for you.

That's great, Don, I'll look forward to seeing Aaron's saber.

I found a great inverter that's as bright as my Lightech one, unfortunately it's too big to fit inside a 1 1/2" sink tube! . I took the cover off to look inside, but there's just no way I can cut it down to make it fit, like I hoped I could, the large transformer inside takes up the whole case. I'll have to figure out somewhere else to use it.

I've got a smaller inverter coming from this same company that will fit, and if it's as bright as the other one, then my inverter problem is solved. *keeps fingers crossed*
If not, then I'll have to break down and call Mike at Lightech and see if he'll sell me any of his inverters. ?

Either way, I hope to have your kit made up soon, so you have at least the last weekend before GrandSlam to put it into your new saber. If you get most of it constructed and figure out how you're going to mount the kit, it shouldn't take too long to do that, once you have it. I'd really like to have you also have an EL bladed saber at the Con.!

 

Well, I don't know if it will work out, but next sunday, March 16th, would be ideal for me to work on my saber some more. I thought I'd psot that here so maybe we could schedule another class to get more people to come. Their Help/Experience is invaluable, and making one is not quite as hard as it seems!

Plus, after everyone sees the sabers this meeting, hopefully we'll have more interest

 

thanks lori;

im hoping to get it done also. there is also the matter of switches and so forth. but i will start working on it this weekend.

tracy;

the 16th sounds good for a couple of hours after church. 1pm or so. i have a meeting of the jedi knights to go to in the evening.

we can tell this to everyone at the meeting.

 

woohoo, yay. Sounds good.

 

Yo Lori, I thought you said that if you ask mike for 10 inverters and 1 would cost you 20 bucks, wouldn't that cost alot ? Well, If you get the right inverter, inform me ASAP. I want to get your kit ASAP as well.

 

Xeno, I don't know how much inverters from Mike would cost, that was just a guess. ? I'm still trying to find another one that will work before I ask him. Oh, and I'll get some pics of my blades taken this Sunday. Britt, our photograper agreed to take some for me with his digital camera. So you should be able to see them soon.

Don, I thought you already had a pretty good idea of how much room you'd need for the kit inside your hilt after we played around with parts after that first class, and we were looking at things on the large end of the scale. With any luck, you won't need that much room. Why don't you bring your switch with you Sunday and when I get the inverter I need, I'll already have it to wire up for you into your kit.

 

hi lori;

youre right i do have an idea of how much room i have, but i need the entire mechanism before i can decide how much room i need. i also need to decide if i want to use my sound card or order the kit you have. that also determines my room. i think i will make a generic ep1 ep2 saber. more room that way.

 

I will be getting the Sound kit from Mike soon, YAY ! Lori, bargain from Mike !

 

ok...its offical...sunday the 16th at 130pm at the shop. for directions to the shop PM me.

 

hi guys progress report update: the class on the march 16 was only attended by jedi loreen and myself. we worked on completeing the electronics on my new lightsaber. this is working in reverse. we have to see how big the electronics package is before i can build the hilt to house it. after burning out the cheap sound card that i removed from a darth maul saber, we removed another from and obiwan saber. this one worked fine and had an even bigger speaker that the previous one. lori finished the EL blade for my saber [orange] and it looks great. power for the blade is 9volt and for the sound 4 AA's. the inverter for the EL blade is about 2 inches square. i have to use 2 different push buttons also because of the different power supplies. also as it turns out they take 2 different kinds of switches as well. this is ok as i will be able to have sound with my El blade as well as my orange acrylic blade that doesnt light up for daytime use. so this weekend i will start construction on my saber hilt. i am patterning it after mace windu's first saber from EP1. if i get any other requests i will have more classes. feel free to PM me times that are good for you.

 

so Obi Wan's "speaker" is bigger than Darth Maul's speaker? I would have guessed that, but...hmmm...good to know lol