Saber Progress

[Phiily Manyaan]

Wow, I don't know how you guys do it. This is my first time doing serious wiring in a saber, and it is DIFFICULT!!! I'm not getting anything to fit right in the hilt, breaking wires left and right, soldering horribly.....sigh. I'm guessing this is somewhat how everyone's first go around looks. Just wanted to vent my semi-frustration while I'm breaking from it for an hour or two. Anyone have general advice or want to share their first-time story?

BTW, I'm doing Arm on Fire's Joe Jedi/dual 700mA puck setup.

[Donnovan Sunrider]

If they're breaking at your solder joints, put some heat shrink over them. That will give it a little extra durability.

I'm new too, and I understand the painful learning curve. I'm betting it's way worth it when the project is complete though. :)

[ArkaiHalon]

my first saber, i ended up soldering the LED backwards. spend 2 hours putting the thing together and was highly peeeeeved when I pushed the button for the first time and instead of brilliant amber light, i got nothing.
Took me an hour to figure out what I had done.

[Darth Leximus]

Ok, if you are breaking solder joints, then either your soldering job is sub par or you are trying to cram too much into too little space. Either way heat shrink will not help that very much, but I would still recommend using heat shrink after you have a good solder joint.

Test your joints by pulling on them with a decent amount of force BEFORE you attempt to put it in a hilt. If you can easily pull the wires apart with little effort, then you need to redo the joint until it's stong.

The setup you have is one of the more complicated ones to do and it can be pretty space consuming. I would recommend laying out your components next too your empty hilt in the same order you want them inside the hilt and then cut or trim your wires to give you as little "left over" wire as possible to minimize space used. Also make sure you are using thin guage (22-28) STRANDED wire. this will give you the most possible flexibility and minimize solder joint breakage.

We've were all new to this stuff at some point. Everything is a learning experience, so take your time, don't be afraid to try something and fail, and don't give up. Trust me when you light that sucker up and it starts humming....you won't be able to stop smiling!

[Phiily Manyaan]

I have one small concern...there are 6 pins poking thru the board from the existing switch, When I soldered my switch to those pins, I inadvertently bridged two of them on the same side, is this bad? The existing switch isn't dpdt, it is just a push button toggle, spst I'm guessing, my dpdt contacts are still separate.

I'm only halfway done which is why I'm asking now rather than waiting to see what happens.

[Phiily Manyaan]

Well, got it done. Doesn't quite fit in the hilt, so I'll go back and clean up the wiring and have to cure the common problem of no power down sound by adding a diode between the batteries and buckpucks. I'll post pics once it's complete and together, probably on monday. Thank you to everyone on the forum who has lent their advice and expecially Arm on Fire for his diagram, could have done this without you guys :D. Now just gotta wait for Tim to add the promised new blade holders and it'll be complete!

[Arm on Fire]

Did you test it?

and for the record, bridging any termanals with solder is usually bad, but in this case it depends on which 2

and the on-board switch is DPDT, a latchin push on/ push off

and your welcome :)

[xl97]

are your solder points nice and shiney? if they look dull.. its what some call a 'cold joint' meaning (not so great) lol

also what guage wire are you using? it may be too thick and not giving enough 'flex' closer to the solder joints...

just some ideas/suggestions on things to look out for I have learned over time.

[gundamaniac]

Lessee, the my first experience ever was pretty tame, just wiring up an LED, switch, buckpuck, and battery holder for a 7 inch sinktube one-hander.

My first experience doing "serious" wiring though was a pain in the @ss. It was an MHS-based saber with an Anakin RotS MR soundboard. I was so doubtful that I could actually fit all those wires in the hilt, because I had never done anything like that before. All I could see was wires, wires, everywhere! And I thought that I had made sure all my components would fit, but the quick disconnect battery setup I was using didn't seem to want to go in because the extra "loose" wire leading from the board to the battery pack (so I could pull the pack out of the hilt) was always getting in the way of the pack going into the hilt. Then I unscrewed my hilt and bent the wires a bit so they wouldn't stay straight and stiff, and I finally got that battery pack in.

As for the wiring itself, I was using a Coldheat at the time, so almost every solder joint broke. So at first, out of the hilt, everything worked fine. Then I tried putting everything in the hilt, and the LED didn't light. After I fixed that issue, the whole saber didn't work (the leads to the quick-disconnect to my battery pack/speaker came loose). By the time I fixed that, the LED lead was broken off again. Pretty much every time I disasembled the MHS hilt, I was all don't move...don't sneeze...hold your breath! I'll break a lead to the LED! I mean, once in the hilt it was fine so I didn't think too much of the weak solder joints. Then I switched to a "real" plugin iron, touched up all the problematic areas and I never looked back.

And now with CF, I look back on my MR setup and realize...that the electronics there were actually not as messy and assy as I initially thought they were. They were actually pretty darned simple: one set of wires from the board to the LED, one set of wires from the board to the switch, and one set of wires from thee board to the batteries/speaker. Only 3 legs of wires! =)

Good luck Philly! You're tackling quite a bit all at once for a first time "serious" wiring project. How's your electronic setup at the moment?

[B5813]

Tin the wire ends first(cut off a bit of wire plastic housing, twist the stranded wire ends and apply heat/solder to the wire). This will help strengthen the joints when you solder a pre-tinned wire to another(or other component).

[Phiily Manyaan]

I had an extra 2" Mhs piece sitting here so I lengthened my hilt a bit to make everyhting fit. I will still try and clean it up on monday when I'm off work. Everything works minus the power down sound and the LED is dim from what I believe is from the giant ball of solder between my pucks and batteries. My solder joints all remained shiny and I started getting that tinning thing to work toward the end. The bridging of those switch terminals didn't seem to harm anything. I am gonna add a diode as suggested by Arm to fix the power down issue and try and wire the pucks right against the sound board so things fit better. If it's all still too messy (and/or I end up cutting my puck wires too short) I'm gonna go to a single 1A puck and clean it up that way. I am just happy I got it to work and fire up the first try, SWEET! Thanks for reading this ranting story of mine, the whole saber-sound-soldering experience was actually soothing and relieved my stress from work.