Hi Folks

[skyler]

Hi guys, nice to meet you all.

My names Skyler, I've jumped around all sorts of forums related to DIY sabers before and always enjoyed the idea of making one. I'm a college student who likes making things with my own hands, with machine shop and electrical experience, and I was already making plans on possibly a large group saber crafting project. Yesterday ago I got a message from the president of my schools Machine Shop Club, and he said when I pitched the idea of us all making Sabers he liked it so he wants to see about running that as our club project and we are starting to make them in the next week. So now I took the plunge and joined, and looking at this forum structure I was wondering if someone could help me start figuring out where and how I can ask all the right questions since I'm going to all of a sudden become the go to guy for people if they have questions. Sorry if some of the questions here seem a bit like I'm being lazy, I'm just trying to quickly absorb as much details as possible before I need to give a rough outline to the group tomorrow so I may have overlooked a few obvious things here. I figure I'll give you a rundown of what I'm wondering so hopefully you guys can help me figure out what forums I should be looking and/or expanding on my questions. For people who wanted to just stop bye and say hi you can skip the rest, its great to meet you all!

Us
As our club is a machine shop club with a lot of mechanical engineering students, most with 2-3 years of experience with hands on projects under their belt, and we have access to a full featured machine shop (but a small funding pool) available to us, I highly suspect we are going to start with far more basic building blocks for our sabers than most other project. I am almost definitely sure we are all going to want to machine our own hilts and handles, and luckily we have a nice line up of stock and small hardware to work from.

Goals
We are going to do the bulk of the manufacturing ourselves. Anything we reasonably can we probably will make ourselves.
We want to make the blades as sturdy and bright as possible. I'm pretty sure we're leaning towards going for true colors with white tubing, but if I can find full specifications on dimensions and tolerances for making parts MHS compatible we might adopt their dimensioning.
Hilts/pommel/blade holder are self made or at least almost completely self made.
Our goal is stunt lightsabers, basically we'd like to design each system with a battery that can support sound but only would do sound if we get extra funding or individuals purchase for themselves.

General
Is there anywhere where someone has listed dimensioning on all these parts so that any custom made parts are easy to design to be compatible?
With sturdiness and brightness as main goals, what are the bare essentials we need to purchase from a specialized saber vendor like TCSS that we cant build ourselves? Looking at

Blades
I've been researching into blade types, lurking a bit and reading threads like :

http://forums.thecustomsabershop.com...-list-of-parts
http://forums.thecustomsabershop.com...how-I-do-it%29
http://forums.thecustomsabershop.com...de-Pain-in-the

So far I know we're going to want to go VERY sturdy, something comparable in durability to Heavy Grade Ultrasaber, so polycarbonate is preferred, and with the transparent white style. I was wondering if anybody had advice on where the transparent white can be found in bulk (we live in the US), since well need like 45-60 ft of tubing? And for the white style would you still add cellophane on the inside? And one thing from all the videos I've watched I still can't tell is if you are suppose to put a thick transparent tubing on top of a white diffuser tube or are you suppose to just get a thick white diffuser tube?

Electronics/Optical
So far this is the part I'm the least knowledgeable on

I've been reading:
http://forums.thecustomsabershop.com...ke-a-LED-saber
http://forums.thecustomsabershop.com...d=1#post108682

The bare minimum we need is an LED, a regulator and battery + wiring and tools, right? What else goes into getting the lights working other than that?
We havent compeltely ruled out LED strips, favoring single LED, but we are genuinely curious how sturdy they are, some of us might really go to town with these.
Since thick polycarbonate is the goal going for as bright an lightsource as possible is the goal, as long as it doesn't really break the bank. Any recommendations?

Thanks for reading that, and I hope we to make some good friends here and I bet I'll be having lots of fun talking with you guys.

[Forgetful Jedi Knight]

Welcome to the Forums.

To answer one of your "big" questions - most parts have just the lengths, ID, and OD's listed. The threading that is used is proprietary.

To get a basic stunt saber going, you essentially need a main LED, switch battery and a resistor. It only gets "fancier" from there. You and your friends might want to start out with just a main LED (no LED strings). Even with a mid grade blade, you can do some serious dueling with them. One of the keys is to have blades of equal composition when fighting. Heavy Grade blades aren't quite as bright and are good if you plan to attack a lot of large trees.

You (and your friends) have a lot of reading ahead of you, there is a fair amount to learn. Good luck.

[Thalan the Exiled]

You may want to contact Tim(TCSS owner) and see if he would give you the specs for making your custom parts MHS compatible. Really for that you would just nee the thread specs so the parts would screw together correctly. Most of the MHS parts have their basic dimensions listed in their info in the store. There also MHS parts that have thick walls designed to be machined down for custom designs. You may want to look into them. There are pommels, blade holders and extensions that are made to be custom machined. This may help speed uo your process a bit and limit issues that may arise trying to get your threads to match up with MHS parts. Also would alow you to use the LED heatsink/lens holders sold in store. Again a huge time saver. Stunt(no sound) sabers electronics are very simple. Battery, switch(latching), resistor/buck puck, and led are really all you need. And sound upgrades are easy as well. Really the only change would be the switch to a momentary but that would depend on which sound board you choose. There are plenty of others on here with more knowledge and hopefuly they chime in as well. But inthought ibwould help out as much as I could.

[skyler]

Thanks for the warm welcome Forgetful. I definitely think the 1 LED is the best way to dabble into this. One thing that I really want to make sure happens is that we see what we are hoping to see with the blade. Having seen these exclusively on camera and stuff like the fx line in person, what pictures would you say you've seen online that capture really how bright these guys get?

[skyler]

Stunt(no sound) sabers electronics are very simple. Battery, switch(latching), resistor/buck puck, and led are really all you need. And sound upgrades are easy as well. Really the only change would be the switch to a momentary but that would depend on which sound board you choose.

Thanks for the advice Thalan, I'm not sure I'm familiar with momentary though, is that a driver for sound cards?

[Silver Serpent]

http://forums.thecustomsabershop.com...System-aka-MHS will tell you the sizing of most of the MHS parts. As FJK mentioned, the threading is proprietary, so you won't find that information here.

My advice: once you've read up on how to assemble a basic saber, pick up the blade stock and electronics from TCSS. For the quantities you're going to be purchasing, you're unlikely to find a better deal elsewhere. You've got the machine shop, so feel free to build whatever mad creations you like. Typical blades are 1" OD, though there are smaller ones that are less commonly used.

[skyler]

http://forums.thecustomsabershop.com...System-aka-MHS will tell you the sizing of most of the MHS parts. As FJK mentioned, the threading is proprietary, so you won't find that information here.

My advice: once you've read up on how to assemble a basic saber, pick up the blade stock and electronics from TCSS. For the quantities you're going to be purchasing, you're unlikely to find a better deal elsewhere. You've got the machine shop, so feel free to build whatever mad creations you like. Typical blades are 1" OD, though there are smaller ones that are less commonly used.

Hi Silver, For TCSS it's easy get the basic dimensions but good idea about contacting Tim for the details. And it is easy here to get the OD and ID, its just tough for me to get an idea of what thatll translate to since I kinda only can compare that to FX and Ultrasaber but dont know their dimensions, you know what I mean. If I could make a comparison of the ID and OD of those guys to TCSS the intuition comes way more easily. Thanks for the great advice though.

[darth_chasm]

Thanks for the advice Thalan, I'm not sure I'm familiar with momentary though, is that a driver for sound cards?

Momentary switch as opposed to a latching switch.

EDIT: And welcome aboard

[skyler]

Thanks for the clarification.

Btw guys, any advice on how I should split this thread in the forums? It doesnt look like any of the forums are really suited to asking all of them in one thread.

[Forgetful Jedi Knight]

Thanks for the clarification.

Btw guys, any advice on how I should split this thread in the forums? It doesnt look like any of the forums are really suited to asking all of them in one thread.

It's probably easier for you to keep all your questions (and answers in one thread. Once this turns into a Q&A type of thread, I'll move it to the Q&A section.