Whelp~ time to start as any!

[FenixFire]

Well I might as well babble about it here and then re-apply it elsewhere where appropriate:

I'm planning on 3d Printing my Saber hilt. Soon (eta 3 months-ish?) I'll be receiveing a multi headed 3d Printer that can print up to 6 materials on one project at the same time. ( or 4 of the same item of one material at once) with a rather large build area. As a test I figured I need to build something that can use all of these materials at once.

After looking around and researching I decided building a better motorcycle/American Football helmet would be fun. Then I realized how much material it would be to make one.
A few google attempts and seeing the latest Star Wars (TM) movie, I decided on a light saber as an all around test. Then found out how the market consisted of a few creative... people trying to make designs on the cheap due to lack of copyright in design.

So before I go into to much detail (I'm getting a patent first just to protect the internals of my idea) I need to approach the building of my sword so that I can make it incredibly expensive should someone look at what I'm building, go "I could have that made cheaper and sell it for profit" and make the production costs make the price unjustifiable due to all the custom work/extra steps that would need to go into it.

But, essentially I want to make a grip that is not a traditional round shape (thereby making mass milling a nightmare), ergonomic for comfortable use and have a physical blade that collapses into the hilt, reacts to stimuli (Flicker and clash), custom sounds (Sorry, no Sith or Jedi for this one), power gauge, shake charger (like those emergency flashlights, this part is a hit or miss) and can be extended or retracted with a push of a button.

Currently the idea is to have it meet the same physical specifications, balance and durability as a Kendo Shinai when it's complete.

You do realize that to patent an idea with any kind of real legal footing usually runs about $5K on the low end, and to be a utility patent the design and claims have to solve a functional or mechanical issue. Otherwise it is only a design patent, and basically just a piece of paper to hang on your wall. The online do it yourself patents services, or even the invention submission corporations...after many years of helping inventors and startups get off the ground I will keep my comments to myself as not to get into a slander defence. By the way I have 40+ utility patents and over 100 design patents just for your reference so I know a little bit about the process.

By the way, what printer are you getting? I am aware of several multi-head FDM machines for rapid manufacturing. But the only machine I know of that can print 6 different materials...well colors...are the z-corp machines and they print colored resin into a cornstarch material resulting in a very porous and low durability model. I do know MIT is working on a conceptual multi-material printer (multi-fab or something like that), but I have not heard or seen much on it since it was announced. For a functional prototype, especially something that will take the impact forces possible, i hope you are not considering one of the multi-material polyjets...if so you really need to do your homework on the strengths and weaknesses of each RP process, as well as the forces that "dueling" can exert. Let's say literally tons of force...just watch slow motion video of the saber dueling or better yet high speed photography of a baseball being hit off a tee.

BTW...all helmet companies do 3d printed mockups for fit testing...but the materials are not strong enough to pass DOT or NACE standards. The best FDM printers can only produce 80% shear strength in printed parts compared to the injection molded materials.