Hi from good ol' Germany my fellow Saber Builders!
I do admit that I am very happy to finally be able to show my little Project that I have been working on for the past few months, scrounging build time as well as I could out of my otherwise rather busy schedule. But you all can relate to that problem I guess...
Anyway here goes:
This idea was spooking around my head for a while and startet to take shape completely as a CAD design at first.
It was to be a Neopixel build using Plecters Prizm 5.1 and/or Nano Biscotte
I work for a company that laser cuts sheet metal products so I definately wanted some elements to show for that because hey, you might say we have a real 5000watt light saber
So the outer shroud elements are laser cut from stainless steel and then bent into shape
The Hilt consists of two seperate parts between which the crystal chamber is set
I then constructed the control box for the main and aux switch which is machined from aluminum so that the 12mm non latching button just barely fits
The box houses a 3d printed part that holds the aux button
I designed the control box to give me a little bit of spare room to later add an accent led
At this point I ran into the typical problem of anybody who does not have a complete machine park in his basement. None of the pro machinists like to make just "1" of anything for obvious reasons. The costs beeing just as high, I decided to do 2 lightside and 2 darkside sabers right off the start which I originally had not intended.
The next step was to start on the surfaces of the parts so I had some sandblasted to later be painted and some were anodized (and blasted).
Now I started on the chassis which is a combination of 3d print and the crystal chamber that is also made of laser cut aluminum parts.
The crystals I used are natural quartz and it did take a while to source the right sizes that I could fit into the chamber.
The chassis fits in the rear of the hilt and is wired through the crystal chamber to the front with its control box. That took a little cramfu force push but it worked out well when I had it sorted
This was the first color combination test to get a feel for how the hilts should later be combined
The crystal chamber mirrors the blade in its effects and colors as I feel that this is the way it would be when an actual kyber crystal is "powering" a saber
I completed the hilt with again bent to shape laser cut parts and 3d printed grip elements.
From here on it was just careful and mostly very tedious installation work to get everything lined
up nicely and joining the segments together.
The variations on the other hand were fun to do as I now had the parts at hand and could play somewhat with how they looked
Beeing so happy about the result I also made a stand for the saber to be displayed upright with the blade attached
some final pics:
Here are two short Demo vids of the light side version of these sabers: