Shadar's "Mr. Green" (US 2.5 Custom)

[Shadar Al'Niende]

I'm having trouble visualizing how the heck you're going to get the nut screwed onto that AV switch when the body of the switch is going into that pill bottle.

Yeah...had to do some redesigning tonight, apparently the insides were not well planned out....

Still no batteries so more pics to come later, i took a couple but most likely will post tomorrow....

[Matt Thorn]

Yeah...had to do some redesigning tonight, apparently the insides were not well planned out....

I think we've all been there, Shadar. I learned the hard way to be cautious about where I place a switch that requires a nut on the inside. And most of my clever and beautiful chassis end up being hacked apart or discarded because of some miscalculation.

Looks great, though. It would be nice if you could get an accent light in that vented choke, so that the holes don't just look like holes. (And like J-Lo says, it'll probably be your last UltraSound for a while, so you might as well take advantage of the accent LED pins.)

BTW, I immediately recognized what the toothbrush is for. After getting a couple of MHS irreversibly stuck together, I've become almost paranoid about dirty threads. I was just brushing some threads today.

[Shadar Al'Niende]

I considered using an accent Led in the choke but decided not to for two reasons, 1. the Led wire runs through the choke and would look funny. I could deal with that by securing it to the inside of the choke so it didn't hang free, but for #2... i am using L1 for my crystal chamber and L2 for my AV and i really don't want to splice wires for my accent led's

Things have been redesigned due to my reverse sound, the speaker will have to go in AFTER the guts slide in and the port and switch are secured. To do this im going to have to have a lot of extra wire, but i have been practicing my Cram-Fu

[Jay-gon Jinn]

Shadar, watch the video series on my youtube channel (specifically , part 30 and up)....you don't need to put the speaker in the center of the saber to get sound out of the front end.....just drill a few holes in the backside of an MHS speaker mount v3 to get the sound to come out of the backside. Just make sure there's nothing inside the saber to close off the middle completely. Trust me, it works. Another option is to use a piece of 1" conduit pvc to make your own speaker mount instead.

[Shadar Al'Niende]

Thanks Jay-gon! I was planning on using PVC or just the pill bottle as a speaker mount as the pill bottle allows room for my led wires to pass through without modification...


2 More pics added...

The tip on my soldering iron is starting to show copper so i'm wondering if i will need to get new one soon... Also, still waiting on my 2x 3.7v cells from overseas, for those of you that don't know we are coming up on a month and no word. "I fear something terrible has happened." heh...

Things I still have to do:

Wire up the recharge port
Wire up the Battery pack
Wire up the speaker
Get my batteries in the mail and insert in saber

Putting the recharge port and switch in are going to be interesting... Didn't fully realize how the placement i chose would affect the construction of the hilt... I still think i can get it, it will just be difficult. My Cram-Fu will need to be at its best methinks....

[Shadar Al'Niende]

***UPDATE***

Batteries came in (YES!)
Wired up the recharge port
Wired up the Battery pack
Wired up the speaker

Added a pic of the guts
Added a short "initial Bench Test" video

Thanks to everyone for the idea of charging my batteries to fix the main LED issue. You just don't think of things like that late at night

[Shadar Al'Niende]

Another Update

I noticed before rewiring my switch/accent LED that the switch led and the main led did not light up but the accent did. Unfortunately the accent led was the standby blinky and i didn't want that for my crystal chamber....

So i rewired the accent LED and the switch to switch (no pun intended ) the wires. now my led in the switch lights up (L2) but not the accent led for the crystal chamber (L1). I resoldered the accent led a couple of times, tried additional led's and tested the led's on the L2 pads to verify that it wasn't the LED. I didnt think the accent led pads mattered as far as polarity but i tried changing neg and pos as well, all to no avail. In a rush to get this completed before i left town on the 23rd i stayed up late. in desperation i soldered my accent LED to L2 and got it to light up!

However, when i went to activate it, pressing once on the switch, it acts as if i am holding it down and boots into the setup menu... it then proceeds to cycle through the options in the setup menu as if i am continually holding down the button...

De-soldering is probably one of THE hardest things for me since i do not have the proper tools and i left my board in a sloppy mess over the holiday, hanging my head in despair.

I am sure most of you know the sick feeling in your stomach when you think of a project gone wrong and just have to give it some time before coming back to it. I believe i am ready to go back to it and attempt to desolder the main and accent leds and try again. (i plan on using on one of these to de-solder since i have an extra one lying around the house.)



*Quick recap*
Things that need doing...

De-solder and Re-wire the accent pads (L1 and L2)
De-solder and Re-wire the main LED
Assemble in the hilt

As always i will keep you posted...

[Jedi-Loreen]

Um, that's not exactly a solder sucker, which I've always hated using. Isn't that for sucking mucus out of baby's noses and such?

You have to get those right down at the soldering iron tip to suck up the solder when it's liquid. That thing's just gonna melt and make a mess out of your iron tip and possibly your board.

The end of a solder sucker (desolder pump) has a sort heat resistant plastic on the end, not rubber.

I prefer using solder wick, also called desolder braid. Radio Shack has it.

Here's a page about desoldering, using both methods:
http://www.aaroncake.net/electronics/desolder.htm

[Shadar Al'Niende]

Yes that is what it is for and was all i could think of...

Thanks for the tips!

*edit*

Something like this or this?

I couldn't find the wick on RS's website.

[Jay-gon Jinn]

It sounds to me like your switch is wired backwards...you have it set to be "Normally closed" when you want it to be "Normally Open." I've done it before myself, on CS-20.