First Saber Build & First Forum Post
Hey guys I've been getting back into lightsabers with the new film coming out as well as my interest in battlefront and swtor. I had purchased some ultrasabers' dominix v2s about 5 years ago or so that just weren't nearly as bright as I had wanted. Especially after seeing the amazing builds people have come up with on here it was hard to want to even look or play with my sabers at that point(they have seoul p4s stock). Also the 4 AAA battery setup makes no sense to me for power delivery.
So I started doing some more research over the past week on how you wire these sabers up and what all you can wire up in a hilt. After a week on these forums and youtube I figured I'd attempt to upgrade one of my dominix v2s first in order to save a little bit of money in not buying a whole MHS kit right off the bat. Eventually I plan on doing that for my brothers build however for my own it didn't matter to me near as much. So I ordered these parts: 18650 Single Cell Holder, Star thermal tape pad, 18deg Tri-Rebel/Cree Star Lens, Cree/Rebel Lens Holder, .47ohm .5w resistor(Requires 1ohm 2w), Luxeon Tri-Rebel Star (RBlue/RBlue/White), 26 gauge wire (sold by the foot) (Black) & (Red) 4 Ft of Each, and a MHS "new style" Short Heat Sink. So I now have to speak on the excellent shipping provided by TCSS. They literally got all the parts to my front door on Thursday(today) and I ordered them on Monday. That's 3 days during the holiday season. Needless to say I'm very very impressed by that alone. Also I'd like to say Rob helped me a good bit on youtube letting me know that the resistors work like coils in an ecig in that you can run them in parallel to halve the resistance.
I opened the packaging and started the sort the parts out. I started to solder the 2 royal blue leds on the tri rebel together in parallel and then proceeded to run the positive and negative from that. Afterwards I adhered the tri rebel to the short new style mhs heatsink with the star thermal tape pad. I put on the 18deg Tri-Rebel lens with some super glue branded by Gorilla Glue. After that I soldered the positive from the tri rebel to my existing dominix v2 switch which I'm not quite sure the styling on it as TCSS doesn't carry the identical part to my knowledge. I then ran my negative through the hilt and then soldered two 2 ohm 3w resistors I had laying around together in parallel and ran them in line with the negative. As Rob had notified my earlier that the .47ohm .5w resistors I ordered wouldn't offer near enough resistance. Then I wired the positive coming from the switch to the 18650 Single Cell Holder as well as the negative coming from the resistors and led to it. Then I did a test fire to see if I had done good work on all my joints and so I threw in a samsung 25r(what I use for vaping) I had charged up and ready to go.
I then figured out that the battery sled only supports button top batteries officially since they expect you to use protected cells and most of them are button tops. So I ran a small bit of wire on each side of it with insulation in the middle and some electrical tape on the outside of it so it doesn't short out at all. Then I could get the positive to work as intended on my flat top samsung 25r. Put it back in and did a test fire only to be immediately blinded by the glory of 2 Tri-Rebels(I heard the Cree are even better so I can't imagine). Now I know why the quad rebels and such are so intensely bright. Anyway now to finish the build I had to use a bench grinder on the MHS "new style" Short Heak Sink in order to get it to fit down into the hilt exactly how I wanted. I should have done that first but it looked like it was going to slide on in from the get go so I never even thought to do it until it was too late.
My soldering iron is a little pos one from walmart that cost me literally $7. So it doesn't get near hot enough to do work like this. Next time when upgrading the other ultrasabers I have laying around I'll be sure to grind down the heatsink in the beginning of the build as well as having a better set of helping hands(mine aren't brand new anymore and have seen some use) as well as a soldering station that is ESD safe. This way I can do more elaborate things next time safely such as doing a NBv2 build. With the tools I have now I am going to wait until Christmas in order to be able to buy an ESD safe soldering station and the helping hands before doing another saber build. Eventually I'll also get a metal lathe and start making my own hilt designs in order to just have to buy electronics for my sabers. Anyway I learned quite a bit about soldering during this build as I never had soldered much in my life before. I'm good with building computers and firearms however neither of those have required me to solder so far hahaha. Hope you guys enjoy this post about me talking like a total noob when it comes to this stuff. Hell I don't even know what the leds are being driven at but from what I remember it should be 1a each. This build opened my eyes a lot as to how complex and difficult some of the builds people are pulling off on this site are. I plan on sticking around these forums for a long while though as I continue to learn through my years. I'll include some pics captured off my samsung s6 but forewarning I'm no photographer. Side note I used a 36" heavy dueling blade from ultrasabers in the pic so it's not as bright as it could be blade wise.
Another side note. The royal blue in the tri rebel gives off an ultraviolet hue to the point where you can light up neon colored objects as if it were a blacklight. Very cool feature to the royal blue in my opinion.
Also what blade do you guys recommend I buy in order to show off the tri rebel more? I honestly think this ultrasabers 36" heavy dueling blade is butchering the potential brightness of this saber.
Here's another image of it in pure darkness in my bathroom http://imgur.com/a/RTUYB. I also have this image of me using the front facing camera on the s6. http://imgur.com/NwV0Fhi This truly shows how ultraviolet royal blue is.
Reply With Quote
. 
Bookmarks