>n00by catchy title goes here<

[Darth Wumbo]

Hey, so for my first saber I had a design kinda similar to yours with the same long choke:

saber_internal_with_speaker.jpg

Re: battery in choke, it is possible, but the fit will be tight. The resistor for the main LED is pretty big (at least the one I got was), and I actually broke the wires going to it the first time I tried to jam the blade holder on, had to re-solder everything. I ended up having to push the battery down into the threaded section a bit to make room for the resistor. I thought I would need to put some padding in there to keep the battery from bouncing around, but with the two LED wires in there it just barely fits.

I was thinking of placing the resistors before the choke and battery so I can keep it closer to the heatsink.

As for the choke making it easy to spin, I thought it would too, but after using it for several weeks it seems about the same. I think if you just had a straight section instead of a choke you will find it handles just fine, plus you'll get some more room to put things in there.

Yeah, but it still helps to fight that boring tubular design that I feel plagues so many sabers.

How are you going to get the speaker & chamber LED wires past the motorized section? If they won't thread through there somehow, seems like that might be a showstopper for you.

I was thinking I could squeeze them between the 3D printed part and the MHS part and then stealthily run them directly underneath the MHS metal, maybe holding them there with hot glue. I'll have to ask Ammnra how he did his since he surely had to find a way around this same dilemma.

I know what it's like to be totally excited about your design, but it looks like it's going to be really hard to make it work. I was so excited for my saber that I found it impossible to heed the advice of the vets on this board, and luckily my saber works, but it could easily have gone the other way, plus I can never open it up again without a lot of work (so no changing the sound font for me). If you can get excited about a slightly longer saber with more room, that'd be my advice, because the space really disappears fast! Also I really wish I had done an internal chassis in mine, so definitely check that out.

Yeah, you guys are right. After drawing out all the wiring I need to do, I can see how this'll become a huge headache. I'll try to go for a 13.5" saber. I'm not too worried about having to open my saber up. I'll be happy with picking one sound font I like and sticking with it. I'd also like a chassis. I'd also like a battery indicator and a lock-up button but I don't see any of those as being entirely useful or necessary, plus they take up extra space when my goal this whole time has been to cut back.