Mr board current

[Hasid Lafre]

Well that was an old setup, I was using a 3w cyan(still am lol).

But you dont ahve to add a jumper wire. my brothers ani board driven saber does just fine with all 4 batterys.

[gundamaniac]

I'm using a 3-watt green. I was using a jumper in place of the 4th battery back when I had a Hasbro board in the thing, so I was powering it off of 3 AAA alkalines. But after upgrading to Master Replicas, I decided to use 4 batteries instead of 3 because I wanted to switch to NiMHs to help reduce battery cost and NiMHs have lower volt ratings per cell than their alkaline counterparts.

I'm thinking it should be fine, based on what I've been reading and what you just said, Hasid. The warmth isn't what I would call uncomfortable. It's probably just that I usually turn on my saber for a max of 3 minutes or so at a time and don't usually leave it on for sustained usage, so I'm not accustomed to the heatsinks doing their job.

[Hasid Lafre]

YEah after a while you will get used to it, I dont remember if my saber heated up like that when I first got it.

Just keep in in your head that if it gets to uncomfertable cause of the heat check things like wiring and the condition of the batteries.

[Jay-gon Jinn]

My brass saber runs almost the exact same set-up, an MR Luke board, a green lux III and 4 AAA battery pack, and it doesn't get hot or really noticeably warm either, and runs for a couple of hours before the batteries start to die. I'd double-check your wiring to make sure nothing is wrong, that all connections are shrink-wrapped and that the board itself isn't touching the sidewall of the saber's interior.

[gundamaniac]

My brass saber runs almost the exact same set-up, an MR Luke board, a green lux III and 4 AAA battery pack, and it doesn't get hot or really noticeably warm either, and runs for a couple of hours before the batteries start to die. I'd double-check your wiring to make sure nothing is wrong, that all connections are shrink-wrapped and that the board itself isn't touching the sidewall of the saber's interior.

I've got my board contacts electrical-taped, and the board itself is encased in a cut-up segment of a generic "laser sword" toy blade which happened to be a near perfect fit for the MHS. All my connections are electrical taped.

Here's a question. I wired up every single LED lead on the board to my LED...is that what you guys did? Am I perhaps hooking up too much power (and wasting it) to the LED by wiring up all those contacts? Speaking with Corbin at C4, it sounded at the time like that wiring up every single lead to the LED was not a normal thing to do...

[Hasid Lafre]

you would wire it up like the tutoreals say and it should be fine. but I would strongly suggest soldering and heatshrinking the connections.

[Jay-gon Jinn]

I always hook up all the led leads, if you don't, the activation sound may not be in sequence to the led coming on...the same can be said for the retraction sound effect.

I'd also have to agree with Hasid that soldering and heatshrinking is the best way to go. Electrical tape has a tendency to come of the wire after a while, and allow for shorts to happen. It sounds like your board is pretty well insulated from the interior of the hilt so that can't be the problem. Without seeing it in person it's hard to help you diagnose the problem. Are you using one of Tim's rechargeable packs or store bought nimh batteries in a plastic holder?

[gundamaniac]

Hm. I may try heatshrinking the wires...I didn't mean that I had only taped the wires together. I did solder them but I was using electrical tape to cover up the exposed strands as opposed to heatshrink tubing.

As for batteries, I use 4 store-bought NiMHs rated at 1000mAh and 1.2V per batter in the AAA plastic holder that comes with Tim's basic LED kit.

[Hasid Lafre]

Yeah thats what I had, I had better luck with regular alkalines than them rechargables.

But yes pleast use heatshrink on all solder joints.

[Jay-gon Jinn]

I would try it using some energizer e2 lithium batteries and see what you get, That's what I use in most of my sabers. My son's saber runs an Ani board on 4 AAA nimh rayovac rechargeables, and it runs for a couple of hours before it starts acting up....blade and sound effects stutters when they run too low.