New Photon Green Blade Testimony

[Silver Serpent]

If/when the paint chips off, you'll have glowing blue areas on the tip. Might be a cool effect. Not sure how to get around that, until Tim can find a source of dyed stock to make the tips out of.

[.: SparrowHawk :.]

If/when the paint chips off, you'll have glowing blue areas on the tip. Might be a cool effect. Not sure how to get around that, until Tim can find a source of dyed stock to make the tips out of.

Ah yes, chipping could give cool effect with the blue showing through. Seems like a few clear enamel spray coats would give enough durability for medium dueling purposes. It'll be interesting to see how many different ways the saber community will use this new blade material

[Miraluka]

I ordered a completed photon blade from VV the day they added them to their store (2 weeks ago) and the blade has yet to be shipped. Seems pretty likely that if you order the photon tube from TCSS, you'll get it before the VV crowd.

[Photonic Bladesmith]

The tips of the prototype acrylic tube fluorescent green blades glow green when the blade is illuminated by blue LEDs.
Apparently the scattered green light from the blade coupled into the clear translucent tip overwhelmed any blue LED light leakage shining through the tip's rear reflective mirror.
Hopefully the tips of the new fluorescent green polycarbonate blades will illuminate similarly.

The blade is being illuminated by a royal blue quad CREE XP-E2 LED star with each LED being driven at 1.5 amps (6 amp total current).






The fluorescent acrylic tubing is 1/8" wall 1" OD fluorescent green tubing ordered from K-mac Plastics.

The tip is a Custom Saber Shop product: stip1Thin-R Shouldered 1" thin walled blade tip with reflective disc
The end of the thick wall acrylic tubing was thinned on a lathe to accommodate the tip.
The tip was glued in place with Weld-On acrylic cement.

There is about four feet of clear cellophane gift wrap rolled up and inserted into the blade tube.

[Strydur]

Welcome to the forums Photonic Bladesmith.. Yes if the mirror covers all or most of the tip it would be green. On the newer tips we have smaller mirrors to help light the tip better and that is why on the test blade I did the tip was blue.

[Bry]

I have dumb question/idea, would this same effect be possible with a fluorescent cellophane wrap (if we could find such a thing), and or a thin insert? Then, if you wanted, you could have the core appearance, and the light qualities.

[.: SparrowHawk :.]

Greetings Photonic Bladesmith, we meet again! Interesting about the mirror size and tip color change. I suppose as a temporary solution, a larger reflector (like highly polished aluminum veneer) could be installed in the new tips that have the smaller mirrors to reduce the blue bleed-through.

When I get a chance, I'd like to try out the fluorescent paint, I'm curious if it can be applied in a thin enough coat on the tip to still let light through, yet thick enough to have good durability. Or...maybe the paint could be applied to the "inside" area of the tip around the mirror?


@ Bry, a fluorescent film, that would be pretty interesting indeed. More research, the future holds.

[Bry]

Yeah, cause that was the thing that struck me. If these tubes are dyed, and not made of colored material, then the colors would only go so deep into the materials surface which would limit the effectiveness. So with a film, you might be able to tune the effect of the fluorescent, based on the number of wraps to make it even brighter. and the film would also diffuse the light even further to balance the blade.

Edit: Another question that just popped into my mind is, can you increase the fluorescent effect yet again by adding another fluorescent color over the first. Example being, if there is another fluorescent color that reacts to the light put out by the "photon green" shade.

This is the problem with new tech, so many ways to play with it, and not enough answers lol.

[Photonic Bladesmith]

Yeah, cause that was the thing that struck me. If these tubes are dyed, and not made of colored material, then the colors would only go so deep into the materials surface which would limit the effectiveness. So with a film, you might be able to tune the effect of the fluorescent, based on the number of wraps to make it even brighter. and the film would also diffuse the light even further to balance the blade.

Edit: Another question that just popped into my mind is, can you increase the fluorescent effect yet again by adding another fluorescent color over the first. Example being, if there is another fluorescent color that reacts to the light put out by the "photon green" shade.

This is the problem with new tech, so many ways to play with it, and not enough answers lol.

The fluorescent acrylic and polycarbonate that I have used in the past had coloration throughout the solid material. It was definitely not just a surface coat.

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Optimal fluorescent material thickness or dye concentration is a major issue:

The fluorescent "day glow green" acrylic tubing I ordered seems to have a near perfect dye concentration for its blade thickness.

Too high a dye concentration for the tube thickness and the tube goes opaque and starts to self absorb its own fluorescence.

Too low a dye concentration or too thin a blade and the LED color driving the blade shines through.

The fluorescent red acrylic tubing that I bought exhibits this pump light "shine through" effect.

This "shine through" bug for the fluorescent red tubing can be turned into a feature if the fluorescent red blade is driven by a bright white LED. The white LED illuminates the cellophane diffuser inside the blade which shines through the center of the blade tube as a white core and the red fluorescent plastic at the edges that have no white diffuser behind it glows red. This produces the effect of a white core saber blade with a red edge visible simultaneously from all directions for anybody who may desire a blade producing this appearance.

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Cascading fluorescence, if the goal is making the brightest possible blade, is counterproductive. Fluorescence does not generate new photons. Every time you use fluorescence to transform one color photon into another you convert with an efficiency less than 100%. Fluorescein "day glow green" emits its light at a color where the eye is maximally sensitive so the same amount of optical power at any other color will appear dimmer.

Mixing different fluorescent compounds however might be a way to generate unique blade colors with higher brightness than using tri-color LEDs or filters.

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The combo of a Fluorescein "day glow green" dyed blade driven by blue LEDs has unique features that makes it generate an extremely bright blade:

- The current generation blue LEDs are extremely efficient converters of electrical input power to optical output power. I have measured the latest generation CREE XP-E2 at 36% efficient at its rated current of 1 amp. This is over three times the efficiency measured with the CREE XP-E2 green LED. The human eye however has very poor sensitivity in the deep blue so the green LED at the same current still visually appears brighter despite having less than one third the optical output power because the sensitivity of the eye in the yellow-green part of the spectrum is over twenty times greater than in the deep blue.

- Fluorescein dye emits its light in the yellow green part of the spectrum where the eye is the most sensitive. Fluorescein is also highly efficient, up to 92%, in converting photons in its excitation band of wavelengths into this yellow green light. The increase in brightness when Fluorescein dye is used to convert blue LED light into the green can be dramatic. At 450nm (royal blue), 5 watts of optical output power in a normal blade will produce a 130 lumen blue blade. The same 5 watts of blue light transformed into green light by a fluorescent blade will generate a 2,200 lumen green blade.

- Fluorescein dye has an excitation band in which absorbed light is converted into green light that is extremely wide extending from cyan to the ultraviolet. As a consequence, a large fraction of the background diffuse or direct Sunlight drives the blade to emit even more of the same color that the LED makes it emit, rather than just washing out the color as is the case with a white or translucent clear blade.

[methos2523]

this is very intriguing...

does anyone have photos of these photon blades being used in a BBW setup or similar?

definitely thinking of getting a pair