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Jedi Master Taka
01-31-2008, 02:21 AM
For Christmas I and my Girlfriend decided to give the gift of Lightsabers. Well at least saber parts. She ordered a Red/Orange Lux 3 kit, and I ordered two Amber Lux 3 Kits.
These being my 1st saber projects I didn’t do anything fancy. I simply followed the tutorials as closely as possible. I started with the Red/Orange kit and with in an hour or so was rewarded with an incredibly bright Red blade. I honestly can’t make out any orange. But who cares, the blade is beautiful.
Spurred on by my initial success, the next day I started on my Amber. I wired every thing just as I had before and soon was rewarded by a soft yellow light. The problem is that it is very soft…one could say dim even. Thinking it might be a problem with the LED I tested it on the other Amber LED. It to was very pale. I went ahead and tried it in the blades I have. (One a stock MR Darth Maul, and the other an Ultra saber Darth maul.) In both cases the blade was very pale with the middle looking as if it wasn’t even turned on. Soooo… Any Ideas on what I might have done wrong? I used the exact same wiring set up, and all of the same parts. (Those provided in the basic 3W kit.) Any suggestions you could give would be greatly appreciated. The color is a beautiful yellow. It’s just not bright enough to light the blade.

Thanks,

JMT

Hasid Lafre
01-31-2008, 06:35 AM
Change your batterys

BhujangiJedi
01-31-2008, 11:31 AM
I'm in the same boat as you, and I'm new to saber building and no electronics expert, but I'll share what I've been able to discover so far.


Amber is apparently the least bright of all the colors. (See Ultrasabers' (http://www.ultrasabers.com/help_answer.asp?ID=157#157) FAQ - they call their amber sabers "Fire Orange.")
If you are using a resistor, and went by the TCSS resistor chart, you are probably giving the LED about 1000 mA.
Assuming heat isn't a problem (and I don't know when it is/isn't ... I guess if it is, you'll know!) you want to drive your LED at or close to its max - in the case of the amber Lux III's (http://www.luxeonstar.com/item.php?id=1772&link_str=196::198&partno=LXHL-LL3C), that's 1540 mA.
Even if you use the right resistor to give your LED 1500 mA, as your batteries die, the brightness will decrease.
Using a buckpuck will give you more consistent brightness over the life of the battery, but the only buckpucks I know of are the expensive Luxdrives that only run at 700mA and 1000mA. The best you could do with those is to buy two 700mA pucks to give your LED 1400mA. $30 of drivers to drive an $8 LED!
There are cheaper drivers, but I don't know much about them - I would sure like to know how the ones from KaiDomain (http://www.kaidomain.com/WEBUI/SubCategory.aspx?TranID=8249&Name=Flashlights-DIY) perform with Lux III's. The KD website has very little info, and like I said before, I know very little about electronics. I don't even know how you would wire those, or which one to choose - they have several options.
You can probably build your own driver inexpensively, but you'll need to have the right tools and knowledge - instructables.com (http://www.instructables.com/id/EAI4SP8967EWIJMLTT/).
In recent years, before powerful and bright LEDs were available, DIY saber builders went to great lengths to optimize the saber blade for brightness and diffusion. So... considering that ambers still aren't all that bright, you might be able to improve your situation by improving your blade. Xwing's nylon blades (http://www.incomsabers.com/) are reputed to be tops in terms of even lighting... I'm not sure about brightness.


My post on my amber problems.

Jedi Master Taka
01-31-2008, 12:13 PM
Change your batterys

I tried new batterys and got the same result.

Jedi Master Taka
01-31-2008, 12:20 PM
Thanks much. I had looked into a few of those options (I always try to hunt down the answere before I bother the saber gurus.) But I hadn't really found what I was looking for. I'll go through the links you have so kindly provided and see what I can come up with. Thanks again.

In the mean time, if anyone else happens to have a theory/plan I would love to listen to it.




I'm in the same boat as you, and I'm new to saber building and no electronics expert, but I'll share what I've been able to discover so far.


Amber is apparently the least bright of all the colors. (See Ultrasabers' (http://www.ultrasabers.com/help_answer.asp?ID=157#157) FAQ - they call their amber sabers "Fire Orange.")
If you are using a resistor, and went by the TCSS resistor chart, you are probably giving the LED about 1000 mA.
Assuming heat isn't a problem (and I don't know when it is/isn't ... I guess if it is, you'll know!) you want to drive your LED at or close to its max - in the case of the amber Lux III's (http://www.luxeonstar.com/item.php?id=1772&link_str=196::198&partno=LXHL-LL3C), that's 1540 mA.
Even if you use the right resistor to give your LED 1500 mA, as your batteries die, the brightness will decrease.
Using a buckpuck will give you more consistent brightness over the life of the battery, but the only buckpucks I know of are the expensive Luxdrives that only run at 700mA and 1000mA. The best you could do with those is to buy two 700mA pucks to give your LED 1400mA. $30 of drivers to drive an $8 LED!
There are cheaper drivers, but I don't know much about them - I would sure like to know how the ones from KaiDomain (http://www.kaidomain.com/WEBUI/SubCategory.aspx?TranID=8249&Name=Flashlights-DIY) perform with Lux III's. The KD website has very little info, and like I said before, I know very little about electronics. I don't even know how you would wire those, or which one to choose - they have several options.
You can probably build your own driver inexpensively, but you'll need to have the right tools and knowledge - instructables.com (http://www.instructables.com/id/EAI4SP8967EWIJMLTT/).
In recent years, before powerful and bright LEDs were available, DIY saber builders went to great lengths to optimize the saber blade for brightness and diffusion. So... considering that ambers still aren't all that bright, you might be able to improve your situation by improving your blade. Xwing's nylon blades (http://www.incomsabers.com/) are reputed to be tops in terms of even lighting... I'm not sure about brightness.


My post on my amber problems.

BhujangiJedi
01-31-2008, 10:20 PM
Well, I wired up a 1000mA buckpuck today and compared it with a 0.88 ohm resistor (which should give me closer to 1500 mA).

The results were barely noticeable. I couldn't actually find a 0.88 ohm resistor, but a 3.3 ohm in parallel with the 1.2 ohm I was already using gives 0.88. I turned the saber on (in the dark) and then I connected the 3.3 to the 1.2 - the brightness went up only very slightly. I don't think a person could reliably tell the difference between the two. It's only when you have your eyes on the illuminated blade at 1000mA and jump it up to ~1500mA that you can perceive the jump in brightness.

So... what my very limited experience tells me is that you're not really losing all that much brightness driving an amber Lux 3 at 1000 mA (vs 1500 mA). If anyone has more extensive experience with them, I've been waiting for you to chime in foreeeeeeever. ;)

Also, I noticed that the 1.2 ohm resistor gets very hot, too hot to touch, within seconds. The buckpuck hasn't heated up perceptibly, but I have yet to experiment with having it on for more than a minute.

I think I'm just going to run both my sabers on the 1000mA buckpucks.