First saber build...

[DarthZero]

Hey guys, it looks like we have a great community here. I'm trying to build a saber with about a $300 budget. I used the MHS builder to construct a saber that costs around $158, and i noticed blades are around $30.

My question is this - how the HECK to you get ahold of sound cards? I have been looking around for some time and can't find anyone that sells them. thecustomsabershop has the petit crouton, but it is out of stock. Other saber dealers don't seem to sell the individual boards, just pre-built sabers. I know i could figure out the electronics if i could just secure a sound board.

One other thing - do boards, such as the petit crouton, have the sensors on board? i know the switch will activate the power on/off sound, but the swing and the clash have to be sensed.

Any help is appreciated!SaberBuilder_render.jpgSaberBuilder_render.jpg

[TuxedoCartman]

The Petit Crouton just upgraded to version 2.0, and now has really snazzy gyroscopic sensors that give it the same motion detecting as the mother of all soundboards, the Crystal Focus. No need to purchase other sensors.

As for where or how to get one? The Petite Crouton is a commonly stocked item, and they're never out of stock for long. (This is unconfirmed, but I heard they were getting some more in this week). Some people have also been using the Ignitor soundboard, and seem to have overall positive comments. (I won't link to it's website, as it's rude to link to other retailers on a store-sponsored forum; but Google is your friend). It also seems to be a mass produced item in decent quantity. You could also try searching for Novasound on Ebay, but I haven't heard a single review, positive or negative, about those. My gut tells me you get what you pay for, to be honest. And there's always the option of breaking open a Hasbro saber and cannibalizing the soundcard in there. Do some reading on here, and you'll find there's a ton of write-ups about the various soundcards in various Hasbro/ MR sabers, as to size, sensors, capabilities, etc...

The only other board I'm familiar with is the Crystal Focus. As for how to get one, you'll need dark, dark magics, an act of God, whole lotta luck, cat-like reflexes and a willingness to do bad, terrible things that will haunt you for the rest of your life... and connections couldn't hurt either. Seriously, it's produced in extremely limited numbers because they're each made by hand by the designer himself, and they sell out in seconds. There's a notification thread over at FX-Sabers where Erv notifies the community when there's some for sale; I recommend signing up for notifications when there's updates to that thread, if you want one.

I've got a PC 1.6 in a finished saber, and I love it. Very much worth the money. I've also got a 2.0 that's yet to be installed, due to real life interruptions (stupid real life). Petit Crouton gets my recommendation.

[DarthZero]

Guess it's a good thing i'll be buying next week. You rock!

[Silver Serpent]

FYI, tomorrow there is a 10% off sale for everything in the store (excluding the Petit Crouton). I have heard that the PC is expected to be in stock by then, so if you can swing the purchase, you'll save on shipping.

Preassembled blades are nice, but they'll delay your order while Tim has to make them. You can easily assemble your own for about 1/2 the price with the blade supplies here in the store. Just pick up a good strong adhesive. Many people use Gorilla Glue or Weld-On 3 to attach the tips. I use chloroform personally, but that's just because I work in a lab and I have it on hand.

[Ty_Bomber]

You could find some MR/Hasbro boards and a glut of the previous versions of the petite crouton in the fx sabers forums, but you could probably stay within your budget if you took advantage of the sale and got the newer PC. It really is vastly improved from the original. Plus you have a well written user manual including diagrams for all your wiring needs. This is, in my opinion, the best bang for your buck.

[DarthZero]

I'm no electrician, but i'm trying to keep this build simple. Below are the "guts" i've chosen...

http://www.thecustomsabershop.com/MH...lder-P315.aspx
http://www.thecustomsabershop.com/Pe...-V20-P612.aspx
http://www.thecustomsabershop.com/Se...dule-P654.aspx

I'll assume the crouton (now in stock!) has some sort of resistor on it? is 6v going to be enough? I have a friend that can solder for me (or teach me).
Also just saw the pre-wired crouton. I'm not afraid to get my hands dirty, but that might same some.

My concern is: do i need to worry about a buck pack or a resistor? Is the sound board going to draw voltage from the brightness of the blade?

Also planning on taking advantage of the May the 4th sale

[Machinimax]

The PC regulates the voltage and current of the main blade LED without the need for a resistor or buckpuck. It will automatically regulate voltage but you need to specify in the configuration file how much current you want fed to the LED.

[Darth Nater]

The prewired PC is a good idea if you are shaky about soldering to a small board, and worried about messing it up. I just did one, and I had never soldered anything in my life til I built a few sabers for my kids. It was not horribly difficult, but to me it was at least nerve wracking. I was worried the whole time about messing something up. An iron with a very small pencil tip is a must. The one I used was a 30W Weller that cost like $17 at Lowes, and I would guess its probably bottom of the barrel for what you would use for this. The board is small, the pads are tiny (at least to me they were) and very close together. I wired both accent LED's and the FOC, but did not do the RICE port.

If you did go pre-wired, you would still have to solder your own Flash on Clash and 2nd accent LED connections if you planned on using those features. There are different ways you could go around this but at a minimum, that would be two extra solder points to the board (assuming you pull ground from other pre-existing wires).

As far as the 6V battery solution goes, if you take the time to go with a PC board, I would go with a 7.4 lithium ion battery source, and likely would go with a recharge port as well. There is no sense in not doing this, at least for the lithium ion. Recharge is up to you, but I wouldn't waste the time with a 6V alkaline source on a PC. On the other hand, I built 5 econo board sabers for family members, and all of them are on 4AAA battery holders.


If you go with the PC, plan out your internal design well ahead for space and assembly/dissassembly. Remember the PC holds a micro SD card with the sound font/etc on it, and you will want this positioned to where you can have access to remove it/change it at will. My saber build that I used the PC with was a limited space mess, and I had to sacrifice that. I can change it out, but its a royal pain in the butt to do so, which I knew going in.

As far as resistors go, you will need a resistor for accent LED's if you use them. You will need a resistor for a power extender if you decided to use an LedEngin for a flash on clash. For the main LED, the PC will regulate voltage already, and as far as the current you send to the main LED, you determine this by changing the setting on the config file on the SD card. To do this, you have get a micro SD card reader for your computer (mine was like a $10 kind the size of a flash drive that plugs directly into the USB port on the computer). You open this file on your computer, change the setting to whatever current value you want (700MA, 1000MA, etc), save it on the card, and its done. Changing your sound fonts on the card are the same way, and the manual is very thorough with how this is done). I still put a very small resistor to the main LED, just because I had read where it was a good idea anyway, but I have no idea if this is truly necessary. I used a 7.4 14500 pack with my build also.

Might as well get the 2W bass speaker since its only like $2.50 difference or so. I'm pleased with its sound, though all I have to compare to is the standard speaker running off an econo board, and thats a poor comparison point.

With it being your first build, its hard not to just order quickly, because you're probably jacked up and ready to get into it, but remember if you rush in, you run a good risk of doing things twice. The biggest pain for that is getting the wrong thing, or not what you wanted at first and having to wait on a second/third order to arrive. Shipping isn't cheap when blades are involved, but not so bad if it can go in a smaller box. My shipping charges on orders that had blades with them was always around $17-19 to Arkansas, and probably about $7-8 on smaller boxed orders (no blades). Takes about a week for them to arrive to me once shipped. Thats a long wait, if you are anticipating moving along with the build. Read a lot, think ahead.

My best advice is search for topics on wiring, securing internals (building a sled for stuff to ride in inside so it doesn't bounce around in there), check measurements for what will fit and where it will go. The battery holder/speaker thing you have selected looks cool, but its not totally necessary, and you would do better with a lithium ion pack rather than a 4AAA alkaline source. Also, the speaker holders are made to where they fit up into a double female section and the end where the speaker actually goes has a lip on it that will catch at the end of the threads on the MHS section preventing it from sliding further into the section (with the exception of the standard 2W bass speaker holder which doesnt have the lip). There is a slight gap that remains when you attach a threaded male section to a female section. The end lip of the speaker holder fills up this gap and secures it. Your speaker will not go into your pommel either. the threaded end of the pommel will butt up against the speaker holder pinching it in place with the end of the threaded section on a female section. In short, a speaker holder will be securely in place once the MHS sections are screwed together.

When doing measurements, remember your sections don't have as much useable space internally as you might think, because part of that length is threaded. If you were planning on drilling a hole at the end, you would be drilling through threads. Also, your heatsink for your LED will drop down into the section it is mounted in front of and take up some space there as well. Things to think of when looking at places to mount switches, accent LED's, and such. Inside diameters of pommels and ribbed sections are more narrow than standard MHS parts. Some things will not fit in them that would fit in a standard section. Switches will drop down into the tube and eat up space in their general area. Just several things to look at and plan out. Take advantage of the internal view feature on MHS builder and the measurement references that are there. They give you a good look at how much space you have between the threads.
Check out other people's build logs, especially if they have pictures. Jay Gon Jinn is a good one to look for, lots of helpful pictures in some of his posts that lets you see individual MHS pieces that you might be wanting to use, and how different parts fit in those applications.

I would not be one to say go easy on your first build, because hey, its freaking expensive to try and make one easy and then cough up the $$$ to do another. I'd just say look at all options, and read as much as you can. Somebody else has been there before, and probably found out the hard way why this or that worked one way better than another. And somewhere buried in a thousand posts, somebody has probably written about it. If you ask questions and don't get good answers, or catch flak, don't get discouraged. Eventually someone will likely help you out. People are likely here because they are interested in this, and regardless of the topic, in the end, they are getting to talk about the hobby for one reason or another and thats whats fun about it.

Good luck with your saber and keep everyone updated on your progress. They like to see people work through and complete them.

[DarthZero]

Good read, Darth Nater. I actually didn't catch the "internal view" on the MHS builder. Unfortunately, i ordered parts already! The May the 4th sale got my attention and funds became available. It became painfully obvious when adding to the card that my budget of $330 was going to be tested. I ended up sacrificing the extension for now as it with the pewter coat ran $44 and wasn't mandatory for a functional saber. I knew that li-ion batteries are better, but for simplicity sake, went ahead with the AAA 4-pack with speaker.
Before i continue, here's my parts list:
SKU Description Quantity Price
sledholder22 Screw on LED blade holder style 22 1 $0.00
COUPON maythe4th 1 -$2.85
MPS10 MPS Pommel style 10 1 $15.75
COUPON maythe4th 1 -$1.58
MBPC Main Body Powder Coating (Wet Black) (SH44) 1 $17.50
spkr4aaa MHS speaker and battery holder 1 $0.00
MWSPC2 MWS Pre-Wired Petit Crouton Sound Module V2.0 1 $0.00
PCSD-D Dark Meat (Dark Meat) 1 $7.99
RSLM Rebel Star LED & MHS Heatsink Module 1 $0.00
RSredor Luxeon Rebel Star (Red-Orange) (Red-Orange) 1 $7.50
1thickbullet Bullet shaped tip for 1" thick walled blades 1 $5.50
MD1Thick Mirrored adhesive disc for Stip1thick 1 $0.25
1PolyCThick 1" Thick walled Polycarbonate 40" long (36 inches +$0.50) 2 $22.98
COUPON maythe4th 1 -$2.29
Thickdif 40" LED blade diffuser for 1" thick walled blades 2 $7.90
Shilt4G Hilt style 4 with guarded style switch hole 1 $0.00
MWSGLS MWS Guarded Style Latching Switches 1 $0.00
switch10 Latching Guarded switch with silver button 1 $8.00
MillWork Drill & Tap Hole (8-32)
location: Blade holder - your recommendation 1 $7.50
8-32set 8-32 x 1/8" Set screw 1 $0.22

Ignore the prices - someone should probably tell tim the invoice didn't email me correctly, but rest assured 1. i got my discount and 2. i paid the correct prices.
I KNOW the one piece i missed was an insert for the MPS. Oh well, it and several others will be ordered for the upgrade purchase. I bought two blades just for the practice of gluing, going to run with clear gorilla glue unless you have a better suggestion.

Eventually, this will be come part of a double saber build with the extensions and all, convertible to a staff. At this moment, i'm not worried about accent LEDs or flash on clash.

Last question: anyone know the mA value i should use for the luxeon rebel star? i looked around and couldn't find it. Thanks for the continued support guys!

May the Fourth be with you!

[Jabbas_reluctant_slave]

Red/Orange 134lm @ 700mA 2.3v - Run at 700mA. Its in the description on the page you ordered it from. As far as overdriving it, I've heard 50% over max amperage is good and safe and is the most I've tried pushing one, but I've also heard you can double your mA and still be okay, I just have not been brave enough to try it. To be safe I'd say run it at 700 and if its not enough, bump it up little by little.