First Saber Build: New EPOCH

[Ty_Bomber]

Thanks. Credit goes to LDM. Almost all the wiring you see on the board was done by him. All I did was Desolder/resolder the main led after attaching the aluminum reflector/heatsink.

Successfully hooked up the switch.... Sort of. Kept reminding myself to remember the resistor (which goes onto the positive lead, I discovered) and the heatshrink (remember heatshrink!) that I forgot to remove the nut and bezel on the switch. Whoops. Chalk it up to experience, I guess. Also wired the switch to be normally closed (meaning the button is down when it's off) so I might fix that when I put everything into the hilt. At least it lights up, which is better than I thought I would get. I'm pretty satisfied so far for my first venture.



Up next is sizing and expanding the hole for the switch and taking the old dremel too it, which can probably wait until tomorrow.

[TuxedoCartman]

Man, getting to work on somebody else's saber with minimal experience? That's like learning how to cook without having to eat the results! Lucky!

[Ty_Bomber]

In my experience, there is no such thing as luck.

It is kind of bittersweet. I'm happy for the experience, but I'm still the one sinking money into it, and I won't be able to keep it on my shelf to show off my new-found skills to all my friends.


On the other hand... I won't have to cringe at the mistakes made the first time round either...

Regardless, I'll be sad to see her go. You never forget your first, you know...

[brett]

A great project to see! And what would you rather have, a saber some one else chose in the first place, or your enthusiasm to want to work on sabers and take on first time experiences! (a quality that may see you with a whole host of great, custom sabers of your own!)

[Ty_Bomber]

Today was an eventful day! Spent about 2 hours with my Dremel opening up the hole for the switch and got everything re-wired and fired up! The difficult part was getting it all to fit inside the hilt. I had to trim the wires to the speaker/batt pack and when I did, one of the leads (looks like to the speaker) came loose, so I soldered it back to the board and tried it again.

Looks to me like the lights on, but nobody's home. Either I wired the speaker lead back to the wrong terminal (not gonna lie, I guessed based on what I remembered and what looked like the most obvious connection) OR the speaker blew after snagging up my wire cutters off the table (I forgot those things have lil magnets in em!)

I desoldered everything on the board for now, and replaced some of the nice thick copper wore LDM used with some 26 I had on hand. The stuff he had was STURDY, but a bit difficult to work with when I was trying to cram-fu my first time around. I'll be goin over diagrams what not Friday. It's been quite an adventure so far. Until next time folks!

[Ty_Bomber]

And she's done. That board was a bit bigger than I thought, so it was a ight squeeze. Thanks to the wirin diagrams on these forums, I was able to get everything I needed working again. She purrs like a kitten now. I was really happy with the resonance in the hilt, and it is MUCH brighter and MUCH louder than before. I skipped the recharge port for now because well, with the long AV and the larger board, I can still fit the port in the pommel as before, but I'm afraid of pinching wires. So for now he will have to change the batteries. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. I think I clocked a total of 18 hours into this thing, but I learned a ton. I know it's nothing fancy, but I'm extremely happy it worked out. Special thanks to LDM for the kit (which I ended up ruining in the end, though it did serve as a nice tutorial for how to make my own) Tim as a matter of course, and anyone else who watched this or encouraged me along the way. Cheers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrCzV...e_gdata_player

[YoRn Mangers]

I likes.

[Ty_Bomber]

Thanks man. It was a lot of fun to make.

[DarthZairr]

Hey do you think you can do it to another saberforge fail?

[Ty_Bomber]

Probably not again, no. I am starting a new job soon and then I will stick to MHS builds for awhile. It wasn't as hard as I thought however. I think it would be more valuable to get the parts you need here and upgrade it in your off time. What saber do you have?