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Author Topic: Guylo Ren's first saber- part 3  (Read 208 times)

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Offline Guylo Ren

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Guylo Ren's first saber- part 3
« on: September 17, 2022, 04:11:19 PM »
Long overdue update: the install.

Starting from the front end:

KR Sabers hilt side connector;
custom ali-bronze/brass crystal chamber with real quartz crystal,lit by the single Adafruit neopixel;
custom Delrin permanent chassis insert housing wires,mounting for switch box,& Shtok 10-pole pogo pin connector with brass alignment rod;
blue illuminated momentary power switch from JQ Sabers;
6x6x4mm momentary aux switch.

Here's how it all linked up (with some difficulty & incredible amounts of cursing):



















So that was the front end; all permanantly installed into the saber.
Next up,the glowy bits & real guts of the thing...

Firstly,building my first blade.

The build process for a neopixel blade is well documented elsewhere,& I followed the YouTube tutorials by particularly our own Megtooth Sith,also Madcow & KR Sabers.

My components are:

1" thin wall trans white blade tube,
TCSS trans white parabolic tip,
TCSS nylon diffusion tube,
1" thin wall diffusion foam,
1" thin wall blade pcb adapter,
KR Sabers rotary blade pcb,
1/2" clear heat shrink,
5050 LED strips from JQ Sabers,
470 ohm resistor for the data.

The pics:




Test fire of the strips,minus diffusion,in my Verso test hilt:

Then permanantly installed the connector & tip:


...& my first full blade was complete,amazingly without any hitches (a first!):


That was the easy part... it was finally time to install the heart of the saber.So the Golden Harvest v3 phase 4,running the Smuggler's Outpost 28mm Dark Side speaker,the Switchcraft 2.1mm recharge port,the Keystone removable battery holder for 18650,all running up to the Shtok 10-pole connector:






Much as the consensus is that the GHv3 is almost the easiest board to wire up,soldering is not my natural environment,nor an enjoyable one for me,as I struggled with every connection made (probably largely due to the stress of working on the most valuable components,also the wire management space beneath the board & the battery holder barely amounted to 3mm).

So I didn't document the process that well (mostly swearing instead),but here are some board wiring pics:




As you can see in this last pic,the wire management was tight in the end.
The black strip you see at the top is in fact a short length of ribbon I hot-glued in place to sit beneath the battery to aid with removal- don't know what everyone else's experience is of them,but I've found the Keystone holder is extremely tight on the battery,so to avoid damage I decided on that particular old school solution.

Time for the last pieces: the buttons,or at least the external cosmetic ones/actuators.
It had always been my aim to cast them in resin- a shine through power button,an opaque aux.So the last addition to the list of new skill sets was this last week,which has involved my first bash at silicone mold making & resin pouring.Results have been mixed,but good enough in the end.
In keeping with the crossguard design motifs,I always wanted the buttons to echo that look.So I used the red injection-molded buttons from my Korbanth v2 kit as the basis,adding styrene stay-put baseplates & legs to form the pouring vents in the mold.Here's the short pictorial version of the whole process,minus the final button pics for now (as they're in the finished saber- spoilers,etc):

Silicone from Amazon- hit & hope,but it was the star product:





Had a few failed pours this week,but several iterations later the buttons are done.

So it's now all in,tested,& bar some board function/usage issues I asked about on our Dagobah pages,it works; so next post,believe it or not,it's time for the final reveal.😲

Yes- seriously!😅

Thanks for sticking with me this far,people- stay tuned for the end...

 

retrousse