So after much lurking, reading, studying, posting, and commenting, I am finally putting together my first build. This is a saberforge Epoch that a friend of mine bought after I opened him up to the wonderful world of custom lightsabers. He spent 360 USD on this thing, and it was a big boo-boo. The moment he took it out of the box, the "ultra-bright led" barely lit up the thick-walled white ploycarb blade, and the sound he spent an extra $60 on was completely drowned out over the MR Luke ANH my wife got me. Needless to say, it was very disappointing. Now I've done my reading, and practiced soldering once or twice with my father in law, but I'm still really green in the electronics department. That being said, my friend let me gut his saber and take a look at what was inside. I've been given free reign to experiment with any electronics I put in this. It's all coming out of my pocket, but I figure it will make a nice x-mas or birthday present in the near future. In the meantime, I'll give you a tour of it's anatomy and talk about what's going to be done.
mine5.jpg
It has a windowed hilt. Not my thing but not my saber. I noticed that there's lots of sharp little corners to cut your hands on when you're dueling. I'm gonna take the dremel to those to make it a little bit more comfortable to hold.
mms_picture (3).jpg
Here's the Led. It was an Amber, but I couldn't identify the manufacturer. I am replacing this with a Fire Orange LED Module from Ultrasabers. I heard that that color was notoriously dim, and I know that they use reflectors and not lenses, etc. BUT, in my defense, the module was the only thing I could find with a heat sink that would fit the ID of the neck without some kind of modification. Unfortunately, I don't know what the forward voltage of the "Fire Orange" Led is, so I can't really calculate the kind of resistor I need to use. I suspect its one of these, but I can't be entirely sure. I'm gonna assume it is for now and if not, well, I'll just buy a luxeon amber from Tim and fit it to the LED module.
mine4.jpg
Here's the speaker. You could power this thing on in a library without so much as a shush from the faculty. I bought a TCSS premium as a replacement.
mine6.jpg
This is the original switch. Took quite a licking getting it out of the hilt. I'm gonna have to bore out the switch hole to fit the DPDT orange dot momentary switch, and eventually add a secondary hole for an aux switch once I get ahold of a PC-U.
mms_picture (2).jpg
Here's all the original parts laid out together. The Battery pack is 4 NimH AAA's running 4.8V with a recharge port. I'm gonna follow the sage advice here and keep it simple stunt for now. I'll replace the recharge port and upgrade her to a PC-U and LI-Ions once I feel comfortable and/or have my brother in law (an electrician's apprentice) to babysit me during the process. If anyone has any constructive criticism, feel free to shout out along the way. I'm just happy for the experience. Updates to to follow. Cheers.
Bookmarks