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Vardarac
08-26-2008, 01:14 AM
A few weeks ago, a little idea popped into my head. The first style of building a lightsaber that I encountered was Makototsai's (using a hand-soldered string of small high-brightness LEDs to illuminate the blade). It wasn't until more recently that I'd heard of and gotten a good understanding of the flashlight-style setup (what most of you folks use). The little idea I had was to use a string of white LEDs in the center of my blade and a single colored high-power LED in the hilt, hopefully producing a blade that had a white core with a colored aura.

I ordered up a bunch of white LEDs, a royal blue Luxeon III, and several parts from Tim's store and Lumiled's distributor. I then built a run-of-the-mill blade with some polycarbonate, a standard blade tip, and some gift wrap (which turned out to be several inches too short to fit the blade properly). There was no mirror in the tip. I put it all together: a string of 60 white LEDs encased in polycarbonate ran straight up through the blade; the Luxeon was at the bottom. I then hooked up my batteries. The results from this first run were less than outstanding. For starters, my blade didn't have a properly diffused inner tube, meaning I could still see the individual white LEDs. When the royal blue was turned on, it overpowered the white LEDs for the first part of the length, then faded almost entirely after about a quarter of the blade's length, then brightened again toward the blade tip.

I never got any sort of a white coring effect, and this of course has a lot to do with the fact that I'd never diffused the white string in the first place. I've also been thinking that I should place a mirror of sorts at the bottom of my LED string to keep the blue light from interfering with the way the inner tube lights up. In any case, I've still got a lot of experimenting to do before I get anything meaningful out of all this, but I just wanted to put it out there and see if you guys might have any thoughts on whether the effect I want is possible with this basic setup and, if so, how I might be able to make it work.

I've been considering EL as a possible white core as well.

Hasid Lafre
08-26-2008, 01:20 AM
thought of and not going to work.

Vardarac
08-26-2008, 01:33 AM
thought of and not going to work.

Really? Well, it sucks to be me.

Klaatu
08-26-2008, 01:34 AM
thought of and not going to work.

that was constructive..............

Hasid Lafre
08-26-2008, 02:20 AM
The discussion has been discussed several time and it won't work.

Want constructive? try searching.

X
08-26-2008, 10:21 AM
Hey Vardarac I like the idea. I don't want to hijack your thread but I had an idea while reading it. You could try and put the white LEDs in a piece of PEX tubing if they come small enough. Heres the thread ArkaiHalon did about using it as a blade/diffuser combo, you could use it to difuse the light if the smaller LEDs, kind of like a dual core blade. Just a thought.


http://forums.thecustomsabershop.com/showthread.php?t=3102

psab keel
08-26-2008, 10:39 AM
I wonder if the light from the Luxeon would be partially blocked by the lead on the LED string. You know what you might want to try is having a dual tube system with a 3/4 inch thin wall blade is sanded or painted and secured inside a 1 inch blade. Then you could use a white luxeon and create a ring of standard LED's around it to try and get the white core.

Also you could use a white luxeon with that same dual tube system and paint the outside tube to get your color. Granted you wouldn't be able to duel with it because the paint would scratch, but it might give you a cool effect.

Experimenting is a great thing and if it weren't for it, we wouldn't be here coming up with the advanced things that we do.

Good luck with your tests, and keep us updated with your results and ideas.

Psab

Zero Unit
08-26-2008, 09:22 PM
The only way to remotely get a white core is to take an extremely bright white LED and filter it with a light version of the color you want, that way it is almost completely washed out but the very edges are tinted the filter's color. This is not very convincing though. Any other method won't work because all of the light is diffused all around the tube.

gundamaniac
08-27-2008, 12:20 AM
This is probably a dumb idea, but what about taking a Lee filter or something and cutting a ring out of it? So there's a spot of white light in the center and a ring of color around it?...I doubt it would actually give you the coring effect but it could be something to try, and it's not too difficult to do (just cut a hole in a Lee filter!)

swear000
08-27-2008, 12:50 AM
for some reason that post made me think of fiber optics. Make a circular fiber optic array originating from the unfiltered center of an LED?

Novastar
08-27-2008, 05:31 AM
This is probably a dumb idea, but what about taking a Lee filter or something and cutting a ring out of it? So there's a spot of white light in the center and a ring of color around it?...I doubt it would actually give you the coring effect but it could be something to try, and it's not too difficult to do (just cut a hole in a Lee filter!)That's not all that dumb... I tried that back in the BOP I days (although with the TCSS plastic "coin" filters) to attempt a purple-ish blade from a white Lux III (2005/2006) and Corbin film.

It didn't work very well, but it certainly produced a better result than I expected. I imagine it would be better with a Lee filter, although your effect probably wouldn't last but maybe 5" down the blade before the angle of reflection really started to mess it up.

Now... I wonder if the OPTICS themselves were colored in a really unique fashion... THAT might be interested. Albeit pretty impossible at present. :)

Dandura
08-27-2008, 11:09 AM
why not just filter a high powered white LED in a dual tube blade, and make a very small hole in the center of the filter. It works well enough for some people. If the hole doesn't let in enough light make it a little bigger and so on. Trial and error my friend.

TimeRender
08-27-2008, 05:21 PM
I posted an idea a while back that most people seemed to ignore at the time.

Using a white LED and a colored filter with a hole cut out in a dual tube setup might produce a lighter core, but it will still be tinted by the color of the filter. The reason is that white light is composed of red blue and green wavelengths. If you combine white light (1 part each of R G and B wavelengths) and for example red light (3 parts R wavelength) the result will be pink (4 parts R, 1 part each G and B).

The way to get a white core is to use a dual tube setup and filter the inner tube with the opposite color of the outer one, so that when the two colors combine it will produce white. For example, if you want a red blade you could try a red filter for the outer tube, cut a hole for the inner tube and filter that with a cyan filter (1 part R from the red filter, 1 part each G and B from the cyan). If you wanted a yellow blade, try filtering the inner tube with a blue filter (1 part each R and G from the yellow filter, 1 part B from the blue).

This might seem counter intuitive, especially to people who may have played with filters as a kid. After all, when you stack a red, green, and blue filter on top of each other you will be lucky to see any light pass through it at all. Just remember that we are NOT stacking the filters, we are simply breaking the white light into its components and then allowing them to recombine where they overlap.

Edit: The main reason the idea I posted hasn't worked yet is the angle of the collimator. It makes the colors blend in a very uneven way. Perhaps as new blade building techniques and lighting technologies are developed, this idea will become practical again. What is needed is an optic that will spread the light from the LED out over the entire 1 inch diameter, but then shine it in a perfectly straight beam. Unfortunately, this is not likely. I can't think of many applications for something like this outside of our community.

DarthFender
08-27-2008, 06:53 PM
that was constructive..............


That wasn't. It was just a comment made about a comment made in answer to another post. Really. Yours is actually less constructive than Hasid's.

I think mine is even less constructive that yours, so I'll stop now.

psab keel
08-27-2008, 10:40 PM
Hey Timerender,

Perhaps using an Elliptical Optic would make some difference with your experiment?

TimeRender
08-28-2008, 10:32 AM
No, all you have to do is think about what an elliptical optic does and you would realize that this won't help at all. I need a tighter beam angle, not a different shape. Elliptical optics have no use in saber building.

Shadeslinger
08-28-2008, 01:46 PM
Eh, a double wrap of Corbin film with a few feet of poly-p is all the coring effect I need. *shrug*

Novastar
08-28-2008, 09:31 PM
Exactly. There comes a time when labor, logistics, materials, experimentation and all that jazz... can simply add up to TOO much considering what will or will not be gained.

I used to be "all about" some type of rubber/nylon tips... so that they were spongey and less prone to flying off, etc. etc. I would bug Tim about them, etc. etc.

But you know what? Although it *IS* a meritable idea... it's WAAAAAY too costly for something as banal as tips. Especially when just a little clear packing tape (or clear heatshrink) will keep the tips in place.

Finally--there is the market concern. What *I* use my sabers for and what most people use them for = COMPLETELY different. So... when considering some regal/complex setup for a blade... you have to think:

* Is this WORTH all the trouble, $$$, labor, materials, precision???

I mean really. A much better light-diffused blade COULD actually be made. It would probably improve the perceived brightness by 20 to 40%... but you know what? To make a blade of this sort... would be EXTREMELY COSTLY. Way too much to warrant it! All custom-machined, requiring rare and obscure tools, weird labor & time to put in, ending with a costly result.

Who would want to pay (let's say) $100 for a "super-diffused" blade? I sure wouldn't. Not unless it magically tripled the perceived brightness (which it couldn't). And even then... how many of those are you going to buy? One. MAYBE.

//end rant, lol

gundamaniac
08-28-2008, 10:43 PM
Hehe, this reminds me of computers. You know, how people used to say, "Oh, noone is EVER going to need a processor with clock speeds in the ghz range!" or things like "Psh, we'll never need more than, say, 16mb of RAM!"

That said, I agree with Nova's rant about the widespread use of experimental lightsaber technologies (...i sound like the king of deluded nerds right now..."experimental lightsaber technologies!!!!!" haha).

But...(and there's always a but)...technology does change, so...who knows what may happpen? And experimental lightsabers are always fun to see and mess around with.

I don't think that the hybrid flashlight-Luxeon/LED-string blade is really going to work, because the LED string will physically block most of the light from the Luxeon from going up into the blade. It's an interesting concept..but maybe if the LED wasn't a bulb but rather a light ring that you could put around the string at the base. Even then, the diffusion would be uneven because the fact of the matter is that Luxeon-style blades are always a little uneven (cellophane/Ultra/Erv style blades really have helped cut out most of the unevenness...but some people can tell it's still there), and if you're using a LED-string as the core (which will have relatively even brightness throughout the blde) and a Lux at the base...the Lux will be brighter at the base and in the middle of the blade, where the Lux is weaker, the LED-string will dominate. So it's a somewhat interesting idea, but I think it's got alot of flaws that need to be ironed out.

That said...anyone else trying any interesting new blade stuff? =P

Novastar
08-29-2008, 12:06 AM
It's not really comparable to computers and the "no one will ever need X or Y" as it is a cost to ROI ratio.

Not to mention, when all is said and done: these are JUST toys--nothing more. They don't really solve any serious issues/problems... unless we count live saber battles! Then it solves a lot. :) I guess I ought to know. :cool:

Darth Lars
08-29-2008, 03:35 AM
A variation of the EL-string idea:

I once had this idea of a Luxeon Rebel Endor setup, with three Rebels in a ring and a hole in the middle of the circuit board for a fourth Luxeon LED behind the Rebels. When I had brought it up, I was told that there was an electric circuit going across the middle of the circuit board so that you couldn't make a hole.

But say that we got around that problem by soldering an extra wire somewhere, or making a custom circuit board. Say also that we are able to cast our own optics in clear resin.
Then instead of putting only a fourth LED in the middle, put a single strand of sideglow fiber there. Attach it firmly to the top of the blade and in the hilt below the Rebels' board, stretching it so that no supports are required inside the blade.
Put also a strong white LED behind it. A good thing is that this LED can be further down inside the hilt, with its cooling system independent from the Rebel setup.

Eandori
08-29-2008, 11:33 AM
It's a neat idea, but I think it's one of those ideas that has to come down to reality. The more junk you cram into a saber tube, the less light you conduct up that tube. Which is a huge restriction on base LED + blade LED's.

Something that might actually work would be a string of LED's like a hyperblade or master replica... but made out of luxeon rebels on each side. Like 200-300 luxeon rebels each being run at like 100mA or more. It would require a very high voltage input though, and VERY high overall power requirements... but DAMN it would be bright.

gundamaniac
08-29-2008, 12:30 PM
While brightness is definitely nice, I think pushing the brightness envelope right now isn't what this particular thread's blade experiments are about. It's more along the lines of simulating that white core effect from the movies. I personally doubt that we'll ever achieve a practical well-defined thick white core like in the movies, because we're trying to use real light sources, and in the movies they're just rotoscoped, so they can make the blades look like whatever they want. The closest thing to a core right now is a Corbin-style blade, but I do find those wanting in brightness.

Novastar
08-29-2008, 03:53 PM
Actually, when you look at videos OF the LED sabers in general... you *DO* tend to get that white core with the aura of color... due to the way cameras work.

Just look at these videos... or any others for that matter:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Os7TxBQfEZs
http://youtube.com/watch?v=2iaDEhfd4yo

As near as I can tell... that is essentially what my green sabers appear like in "real life" too. Same for that Luxeon V. It's true that some OTHER colors (such as red) don't really have a "white core"... but... I guess try doing that weird white LED + hole in the filter thing...

swear000
08-29-2008, 04:12 PM
cool vids. Lightsabers look so real.....