Actually, it's a lie.. it's not my first build but this is the first one that will probably go to completion.
Aim:- Graflex ESB based.
- Presentation hilt essentially based on showing the inner functioning of a lightsaber.
- Rigid enough to "play a bit" with it.
- All metal (ok.. mostly metal) in order to have some weight in hand.
- 18650 3400mah Li Re-chargeable battery.
- Veco 28mm 2w 8ohm Bass Speaker.
- CFX driven.
- RGB High Power Led.
- Stay on a budget.... Wait.. Did I really meant it at first?.. Ok, Stay on an acceptable budget.. Hmm.. well.. forget about that point.
Providers: (I hope it's ok to list them without a direct link to their site.)
- TGS for the Graflex. (Version 1.9)
- Shapeways for most of the chassis parts.
- MBSaber for the blade plug + some details. (see remarks about design)
- JQSabers UK for connectors, speaker and other small stuff.
- Amazon (nuts, bolds, rods, and so on).
- Different parts recovery or taken appart from.. nearly everything. (Have you noticed that when looking for lightsaber parts, EVERYTHING looks like a lightsaber?)
Design: Let's face it, I'm not an artist. I searched all over the net to find ideas.. And god,
some ppl have wonderful ideas.
Unfortunately, I'm not of that kind. So I had to base my design on some other guys' work.
..
In this case, I can't hide it, Martin Beyer has been my muse.
But since I had already design some parts of my saber, I wanted to adapt his work to mine..
First mistake.
Moreover, MBSabers metal parts on Shapeways are quite expensive (
at least I thought so initially) and I wanted to stay on a budget..
Second mistake.
Since I'm pretty good at CAO/CAD drawing, I redesigned parts to connect to my initial work
But let's face it.. Designing parts where tolerances are around 0,05mm is quite more challenging than what I was used to.
It's a long and fastidious iterative process where you draw, let it print, wait for delivery, correct it.. and do it again..
After a while, you understand that, after all,
designers are NOT asking that much for their designed parts.
At that point I had 3 options left:
- Stop everything... Again.
- Drop my processes, accept my losses and go to Martin parts on Shapeways.
- Forget about the budget and continue the iterations while gaining knowledge about designing metal parts.
I took option 3.
Well in that process, I actually dropped
nearly all my initial design and let Martin's work guide my project.
His chassis was mature, he had already answer all problems I encountered in a clever and elegant manner.
So yes, my saber will definitely look like his.
Xtal
Xtal Chamber
Xtal Chamber detail
Plasma Gate after some weathering
Plasma Gate first led test