Forums > Technical Discussion > lightsaber

Posted: 29th Feb 2004
come on, no replies yet? this is really neat. i built it for like $50, including the parts to make the theoretical second blade for maul style fun. with the as yet incomplete second blade, it is a 7 foot glow-staff that looks awesome. of course, it could be made shorter by a great extent. this is the cheap, labor intensive way to get an awesome glo-staff that is basically unbreakable. UNBREAKABLE!!!!!!!


slainte

Q:What's the difference between the Great Highland Bagpipes and the Northumbrian Pipes?
A:The Great Highland Pipes burn longer.

Posted: 29th Feb 2004
Does it do the sound effects or d'you add them yourself?

It does look pretty cool, and I've got a couple of questions:

How much does the tubing flex? What I mean is if you made it longer, could you make it into a staff that didn't bend loads?

If you put more than one strand of wire down the middle, d'you think that'd make it significantly brighter, or not be worth the effort?

Could you make the bit on the end of the glowing bit smaller?

More importantly, is there any way of making it turn on like a lightsaber, with the glow starting at one end and moving down to the other?

But there's no sense crying over every mistake. You just keep on trying till you run out of cake.

Posted: 1st Mar 2004
it emits a quiet high pitched whine, like a camera flash, but louder. that is just the capacitors charging and discharging. no other effects

the tubing wiouldn't really bend for any usable length
the center is a double strand of high intensity-long life EL wire inside a 1/4" central tube of polycarb. its already double, and although it helped, the longer your wire is, the dimmer the whole thing is. if you know electronics, EL wire is basically a capacitor with the plates seperated by phosphorescent stuff. so, assuming the same frequency of charging and discharging, the greater the plate size at a given voltage, the lower the charge stored i.e. less light. to make it as bright as it is, i added a heat sink to the EL driver and ran it at 18 v rather than the listed max of 12 v it made a big difference.

as it is a prototype the end bit (a pvc female threaded plug) could surely be cut down, half length might look better. or i could maybe find something better to put on the end

for the moving up the staff bit, i would have to use real neon, and currently that's not available in a non-fragile tubing. I could make one of the sort, but you wouldn't want to drop it.

slainte mhath

Q:What's the difference between the Great Highland Bagpipes and the Northumbrian Pipes?
A:The Great Highland Pipes burn longer.