Hi all -
Just thought I'd post a couple of pics of my lightsaber that I just completed this morning. It uses a green Luxeon Rebel Star LED powered by a 1000 mA buckpuck and the sound board from a 2010 Hasbro Obi-Wan Kenobi lightsaber. The saber runs on four AAA rechargeables (tried AA's, but there was no way to get them to fit in the hilt), and I've installed a recharge port in the base of the hilt (I had to drill bigger holes in the speaker mount for the additional wires). The colored parts that you see are powder coated in "copper vein".
You can't really tell from the pictures, but the blade is an emerald green in lowered lighting. I'm actually a bit disappointed in the brightness, though maybe it's normal for these types of LEDs. I measured the current before zipping it up and was getting 850 mA (not the 1000 mA I expected from the buckpuck) at 3.10V between the buckpuck and the LED. According to the technical specs on the green Rebel (found at http://www.philipslumileds.com/uploads/36/DS65-pdf, look at the graph on page 15), there's really not a lot of brightness difference between 850 and 1000 mA, so I don't know if it matters.
The overall length of the hilt is 12.25"; the blade is 36" long. I had to do some serious "cram fu" to get everything inside a hilt this small, but the results were worth it!
Here is a close up of the lit blade in a darkened room (not dark, but curtains are closed). Again, the blade is actually more emerald green than it appears here.
Here is the full blade in the same conditions:
...and in full daylight. As you can see, it's less than impressive in full daylight. I don't know how that stacks up to other LEDs.
Originally, I had ordered the "copper vein" powder coating in "jollypop copper orange". Let me tell you, there's not much "copper" about it -- it's University of Tennessee orange! I managed to get most (but not all) of the powder coat off of the main body, but decided it wasn't worth even trying on the choke. To my surprise, however, the blade from the Hasbro Obi-Wan lightsaber fit perfectly in the choke -- an extrememly snug, well-mounted fit! I may eventually add light (but not sound) to this one as well.
Thanks for all the very informative posts here -- I was pretty much able to find everything I needed to know, thanks to you folks!
Best regards,
Kilo
Bookmarks