I was working on my lathe for a customers saber and decided to work some parts for my Ani in with it :).
I was disappointed how the metal between the grips would stick up with the sound chassis in so I wanted to rework things.
I decided to cut the chassis right behind the side groove (so it wouldn't mess up the outward appearance) and make a new piece for the rear that would allow me to glue the grips and metal strips down so they would not come up and also allow me to remove the pommel to access the SD card.
I will be using 2x17500 batteries which will give me a good run time but also room to fit the board on top of the battery.
Probably a CF5 or a CF6 without color extender.
Undecided if I should make the box LEDs light up or not. I am leaning toward not because its a movie saber BUT it would look cool to have them lit.
On with the pics. Click pics for larger images.
Here are all the components laid out on the table:
Here is more of the same but looking down the tube I machined:
Here is the tube inserted. The covertec screw holds it in:
Looking down the tube into the saber:
Outside of the saber with all the components installed and the covertec wheel screwed on to hold the tube and pommel on:
Recharge port installed (no sound holes yet)
Here is the speaker pod. It is a 7/8th blade machined out to fit the speaker. Once I glue the speaker in I will cut out one side of the blade holder to fit the recharge port wires past:
And finally here is the speaker pod in the pommel:
There are a couple of things I will be changing. I am going to redo the pommel and make the arm that attaches to the screw thicker. I machined it really thin before cutting it out because I thought I needed it to be so it would fit. It should fit between the battery and board without needing to be so thin so I will be machining a new pommel. I am also going to space the speaker a little farther away. I originally did it the way I did because I needed the room to fit the battery and board but since then I cut the slot in the chassis to give me more room by pushing the battery up. This gives me a little more room so I can give a little bit more space between the recharge port an speaker.
I will be working on it a little more after I finish a couple of commissions. I still need to cut down the side LEDs to see how flat I can get them and then machine an LED module to go in there.
I will update it as I go along. I hope this gives some others ideas on doing their own conversion and to perhaps even come up with a better design after seeing how I have it laid out.