Adding exposed crystal chamber to MR FX saber? Advice? Thoughts?

[ghost_a*]

I'm sure it's been done before or at least brought up before...

I have a Master Replicas Anakin ROTS FX lightsaber. (original, not removable blade version)
I would love to modify this hilt to to include an exposed crystal chamber between the emitter and the power switch as shown (see attachment)
The exposed crystal chamber style is obviously modeled after Galen Marek "StarKiller"'s lightsaber.

What do you guys think?
Is this something a novice could do with basic tools such as a dremel, etc.
And some low level knowledge of LEDs?

I'd like to leverage any and all existing power sources/parts/etc. from my hilt and leave the rest of it as untouched or visibly untouched as possible.
Could I basically follow this tutorial, but instead of using the LED for the blade, use the LED for the crystal itself?

http://forums.thecustomsabershop.com/showthread.php?3-05-MR-Anakin-Done-amp-kits-available

I would like to remove the blade completely, and the switch would instead power the LED to the crystal. This would be on display next to my MR LE anakin ROTS hilt.

*Forgive the crudeness of the photoshop. it's actually done in paint.NET which i'm not too familiar with.
**And the chamber itself would be exposed to the underside of the saber, as it is in the Galen Marek saber.

4751

[Rafalema]

The stock bladeholder goes deep, nearly to the forwardmost edge of the clamp.

And also, that kinda cutout would REALLY weaken the hilt, it could snap in a half even if you'd swing it little harder than normal.

You might have the impression that it really has a lot of room inside it. I've made this mistake with all of my sabers. Always I think that I'll have a plenty of room, and then I end up screwing something.

[ghost_a*]

i wouldn't be dueling with this, so i wouldn't worry about it snapping in half.
i'm thinking of the galen marek style and it's done in his, so i would think it could work in the same or similar style here on the anakin ROTS hilt. no?

4752

[Skottsaber]

It would be relatively easy to do.
If you were to completely redesign the internal electronics.

First you remove everything, battery pack, soundboard, blade.
Then you make your cuts, build the chamber and secure it in the hilt.
You will obviously keep the stock switch, so just cut the wires for it off from the soundboard. Add an LED underneath the crystal and wire it to say a 4 AAA battery pack with appropriate resistor.
You now have a saber with a crystal chamber that lights with the switch. That is what I gather from your post you are trying to do, not keep the sound and illuminated blade. Correct me if I'm wrong.

[Silver Serpent]

If you're planning on removing the blade and just having the hilt as a display piece, then this shouldn't be terribly difficult with a little basic electronics knowledge. A typical LED for a crystal chamber has very low power requirements compared to what we normally use for illuminating blades. I'd also consider having a second accent LED to light up the emitter where the blade used to be. The existing battery pack in that saber should run low power LEDs and the sound for quite a long time.

Edit: Skott beat me to the punch. Listen to his advice :)

[ghost_a*]

It would be relatively easy to do.
If you were to completely redesign the internal electronics.

First you remove everything, battery pack, soundboard, blade.
Then you make your cuts, build the chamber and secure it in the hilt.
You will obviously keep the stock switch, so just cut the wires for it off from the soundboard. Add an LED underneath the crystal and wire it to say a 4 AAA battery pack with appropriate resistor.
You now have a saber with a crystal chamber that lights with the switch. That is what I gather from your post you are trying to do, not keep the sound and illuminated blade. Correct me if I'm wrong.

this is almost EXACTLY what i'm talking about.
i'd love to still have the sound FX though, or would that take up way too much internal space?

i'll have to disassemble it this weekend when i have some time and see what i'm working with.
then i can draw up a design for a crystal chamber, the recess in the hilt, get some parts and get to work.

these are ideally what i'd love to have it still do:

1. light the crystal LED
2. make ignite woosh sound when switch turned on
3. make power down woosh sound when switch turned off

what would i have to do to get the crystal LED light to pulse?

[ghost_a*]

oh another quick question/thought.
it was mentioned that i should use another battery pack, but also that the existing MR battery pack would be enough to run lower power LEDs and sound for a long time.
can i use the existing batter pack?

i'm trying to do as little modification electronically as possible.
so can i simply follow the tutorial that i linked to, but instead of putting the new LED at the emitter, place it beneath the crystal?

[ghost_a*]

is there something inside here other than the blade?
this would be the real estate i'd be using for the crystal chamber.
i was hoping the soundboard and majority of the electronics were inside that piece on the right of the picture.

4753

[Rafalema]

I would DEFINITELY not go with a P4 on a crystal chamber, yes, it'd be VERY bright, but it's kinda overkill, just get a bright 5mm LED, maybe 3 of 5mm LEDs if you really want it bright?

To do this you'd just splice the wires going to the main blade, connect all the negatives together, add a resistor between the board and the LEDs.

[Skottsaber]

And to do with the sound, without a pretty decent workaround and a new battery pack you will have trouble fitting it in.
And you can't use the original pack because it is not designed to be soldered to.

[ghost_a*]

I would DEFINITELY not go with a P4 on a crystal chamber, yes, it'd be VERY bright, but it's kinda overkill, just get a bright 5mm LED, maybe 3 of 5mm LEDs if you really want it bright?

To do this you'd just splice the wires going to the main blade, connect all the negatives together, add a resistor between the board and the LEDs.

there we go, that's exactly what i needed to know.
now to simply get it all to fit into the hilt, lol.


And to do with the sound, without a pretty decent workaround and a new battery pack you will have trouble fitting it in.
And you can't use the original pack because it is not designed to be soldered to.

ah ok. so worst case scenario, sound goes away.

[Skottsaber]

I'm not saying don't TRY to add sound, just that it will require a bit of internal reworking.

[ghost_a*]

I'm not saying don't TRY to add sound, just that it will require a bit of internal reworking.

yeah, i'm still going to give it a whirl.
but i was just saying that the worst case scenario is that i lose the sound FX.

it's weird because on fx-sabers.com, they were all VERY apprehensive about me trying this. saying that it's NOT very straight forward and simple at all.
yet looking at that tutorial i initially linked to and according to you guys, it's not brain surgery...?

[Skottsaber]

Well if you believe you can do it then go for it.
The FX guys aren't as hardcore as us, they fear the challenge ;)

[ghost_a*]

Well if you believe you can do it then go for it.
The FX guys aren't as hardcore as us, they fear the challenge ;)

good to hear ;) :) thx for all your guys' help.

[ghost_a*]

well thanks to your guys' comments and advice giving me confidence, I'M ON MY WAY! :)

so just an update.
i'm taking it one step at a time.

as i might've mentioned, i'm a 100% noob at 'saber smithing' as well as LED work.
i've never once used a soldering iron.

so i checked out a bunch of tutorials on instructables as well as FX-sabers and TCSS and here's what i've done so far.

1. went to radio shack.
got a 25 watt noob beginner soldering iron for like $8
got a blue 5mm 3.7v 20mA LED
the soldering iron came with solder, so i didn't need that
5-pack of 150 Ohm transistors for about $.99 or something?

i also got a 2 AA battery holder.

2. i went to walmart and got me a 6 pack of flickering LED votive candles for like $2.50

http://img152.imageshack.us/img152/5531/img20110108133639.th.jpg (http://img152.imageshack.us/i/img20110108133639.jpg/)

3. gutted the LED candle, removed the chip that the LED was mounted to

http://img153.imageshack.us/img153/2816/img20110108133731.th.jpg (http://img153.imageshack.us/i/img20110108133731.jpg/)

4. plugged in soldering iron and started my first ever soldering attempts.

5. at first i just soldered a straight up series circuit with my battery pack, the transistor, the LED

http://img801.imageshack.us/img801/1081/img20110108140331.th.jpg (http://img801.imageshack.us/i/img20110108140331.jpg/)

6. then i added the flickering chip from the candle
i just held the blue LED to the chip board at this point. i'll end up soldering it to the chip board eventually.

http://img146.imageshack.us/img146/6065/img20110108141301.th.jpg (http://img146.imageshack.us/i/img20110108141301.jpg/)
http://img585.imageshack.us/img585/8391/img20110108141312.th.jpg (http://img585.imageshack.us/i/img20110108141312.jpg/)

so the electronics are done save for a switch, but that should be cake.

next step is to get some hardware together to start building me a crystal chamber.
i already have a quartz crystal but i want a 2nd one and make a 2 crystal chamber where one meets the other. maybe have a white LED for the top focusing crystal and the blue LED for the power crystal.

i'm going to go the standard route
get some brass pins for structure pillars around the edge
maybe some washers as a base for the crystal to mount on.
this won't be anything fancy at all as it's my first time doing ALLL of this.
i've literally only used a dremel maybe 2-3 times in my life for small household things.

i'm REALLY enjoying this so far. i had no idea how easy it was to work with LEDs and a soldering iron. granted the technique and skill as far as how the soldered joint looks and holds up will get better with more exp but i was surprised at how well it came out for my first time.

i'll continue to update with pics when i start on the actual chamber. probably next weekend.

[Sunrider]

Uh oh.... you said it was easy...... :) Keep an eye out for the magic smoke monster. ;)

[ghost_a*]

HAHAHAHA

i did do some basic calculations though.

the 150ohm resistor should keep the 3.7v 20mA LED from overdoing it, right?
with a 3V (2AA battery) power source?

and i wired it:

2AA pos -> transistor -> pos lead of chip
2AA neg -> neg lead of chip

then i'll simply solder LED to chip exactly how the stock LED was soldered.
neg -> neg, pos -> pos.

[Sunrider]

Normally a 20ma led blue or green has a vf of 3.2v So with a 2aa 3v supply you only need a small 1 ohm res.

[cardcollector]

Well if you believe you can do it then go for it.
The FX guys aren't as hardcore as us, they fear the challenge ;)

QFT! Thanks for the laugh skott!

Seriously, it is possible to have sound... Just don't plan on dueling with it or you will have a brand new "battle damaged" hilt very quickly

[ghost_a*]

Normally a 20ma led blue or green has a vf of 3.2v So with a 2aa 3v supply you only need a small 1 ohm res.

so the 150 ohm is WAY overkill then? hahahhahaha
but it won't hurt it right?
meaning i don't have to go out and get a 1 ohm instead and replace it. i'm fine using the 150?


QFT! Thanks for the laugh skott!

Seriously, it is possible to have sound... Just don't plan on dueling with it or you will have a brand new "battle damaged" hilt very quickly

i'm NOT dueling with it. it's for display purposes ONLY.
so that's not an issue at all.

[cardcollector]

Sounds good then. :)

Oh btw, there is a multi quote button you can use so you don't have to double post

[Jedi-Loreen]

Yes, please use the Multi-Quote button, it's to the right of the Reply With Quote button. Just click that for every post you want to quote, then click the Reply to Thread button. It puts all your quotes into a single post.


Then we Moderators won't have to keep merging your posts. ;)

[dgdve]

Well if you believe you can do it then go for it.
The FX guys aren't as hardcore as us, they fear the challenge ;)

Agree 100%, but you must remember although the fx forums and the tcss forums appear very similar and share the lightsaber theme... the difference is here you are restricted from sales talk... over the years gradually a (friendly)divide appeared.. Here at tcss forums you cant just "pay" to have it done nice and shiney for you (lol real jedi build there own)... tcss is DIY and thats the sheer beauty of it and why here at tcss you will rarely if ever hear that something "cant be done".. it may not be cheap.. it may not be easy.. it may actually not be possible( sry lol) but here we always "Do...or Do not".. there is no "try" at tcss