Using el wire in crystal chamber

[Tom Tilmon]

I was merely experimenting and playing around with it. It was a stupid amount of work for a gimmick. But, it helped me hone some additional skillsets I didn't have before. For instance, now I can solder EL wire, and know how to join it, power it, etc. That may come in handy some day. I have a cool gimmick at night. It really wasn't that complex, except for fitting all that stuff in the hilt, including the recharge port and additional battery. I probably could have just powered it off the saber battery, but with the side emitters, the Kylo Saber LED's already draw a lot of juice. The EL wire, not so much. I charge that battery about once a month, and the EL wire goes, and goes, and goes. I don't know how many MaH it eats up, but its got to be pretty low.

This winter, I intend on deconstructing one of my Kylo sabers, and completely changing out how I did it. I'm changing boards to SC2, going to a quad cree on main emitter, and tri-crees on side emitters. I want it to have flash on clash, including in side emitters. I also want to blend colors with Deep Red and Red on Main Blades/Side Emitters. I'll try a 26650 battery to run it, and then see if I have room to squeeze in the Chasing EL Inverter and the Chasing EL Inverter switch, and possibly an independent battery to run all of that. Oh, and a custom chassis with maybe even a Crystal Chamber reveal.

I'm not doing that because my saber doesn't work well, I'm doing all this to learn more stuff on my own sabers. When I'm confident enough in the quality/durability of my own builds, then perhaps I can expand out to do commissions/custom builds/sales. Right now I have a Graflex 2.0 going together with a NBIV. That will all be new to me, because I've only wired NEC boards prior to this.

Good luck, I like the idea of trying EL in the crystal chamber.

Tom

[Whosle]

I should have read better. A seperate battery for the EL wire is a novel idea. All lightsaber effects are gimmicks, the more the merrier.

I never considered the Hilt sitting on the shelf (or hanging from belt) with a nice glowing EL wire that lasts and lasts.

Does anyone know if it is possible to use PWM or a 555 timer to create a slow growing pulse/glow?

[Mike1114]

So i was able to desolder the inverter from the circuit board. I tried different combos but cannot get the el wire to light up. It lights up a little when power is applied but only for a short second. Now to wait on the el wire controllers in the mail so I can dissect them and experiment more.

[Tom Tilmon]

I killed my battery driving my EL wire somehow. I've got my own work to do to fix that, and my main switch fell off another saber, I have to partially dismantle it to fix that. My charger fried my board on my MHS Hilt, and I have to send that off for repair. At least my new Graflex is killing it. Mike, I am messing around with chasing EL Inverters, and trying to slim them down to fit in the hilt. I ordered 2 of them in case I screw one up. That being said; I have ordered 2 of anything I want to dismantle. Some of the inverters are really cheap, particularly the static inverters that just power the wire.

Tom