TOPIC: Acolyte - FINISHED - Padawan Saber

I haven't had time to post much lately, but wanted to get this thread going. I've only got a little more work to do on the saber before Christmas. This saber is for my Son.

Components:

SF Acolyte hilt in Dual tone
Tri-Cree XP-E2 (LED Supply) G/G/G
LED Supply Dynamic Heat sink
TCSS 12mm AV switch with Green LED
SF 12mm Recharge Port
Sabercore 2.0 "Crimson" soundboard
Panasonic 18650 Li-Io battery
28mm "Premium" speaker
Goth Designs Speaker chassis (left over from previous build)
18650 battery holder
Thin walled Dual diffused blade with TCSS bullet tip (not sure on length yet)

Nothing too fancy on this one...

Plan is:

HILT:
1) Using metallic copper enamel to "soften" the look of the hilt by covering the black powder coating with it
2) Engraving my son's name in the top "oval" on the handle then inlaying with gold leaf
3) clear coat





Electronics:
1) LED Supply LED had to be de-soldered and rewired in parallel. FYI - a those jumpers are on there good...

2) LED supply dynamic heatsink - mated LED star to heatsink with some Arctic Silver. Also using this heatsink for it's reflective design.



3) Sort of chassis: I pulled the metal tab from the positive end of the battery holder out so the battery fits in. Then I soldered a negative lead to the negative tab and a positive lead directly to the positive cap on the battery. I then glued the sabercore board along the top of the battery holder. I plan to wrap it in two spots with Velcro so it will slide into the hilt, but still fit nice and snug and not move around.



4) speaker: speaker is glued into the Goth chassis but is "loose" behind the battery and the sound board. This should slide in right behind the "chassis" and fit snug

All the electronics are ready to go for install, everything is wired.

I Need to hit the hilt with a second round of copper enamel, then do the gold leaf inlay, and finally clear coat it. Electronics install should be pretty quick once that's done.

I need to figure out a good length for the blade still. It will be somewhere between 20-24" I think.

PART 2 - almost done....

Got the electronics in - another "sticky" recharge port from SF. Hopefully it wears in.

Couple shots of the hilt with electronics in.





You can see the "arubesh" styled engraving on the top oval. I still need to do the gold inlay and clear coat it. Very minor weathering on the hilt.

Can't wait to get the rest finished and the blade built!

Finished Pics and Video

Part 3

Some observations:

1) Acolyte hilt: This is a great hilt. Really impressed with it. It's well sized and extremely comfortable to wield. Like most SF hilts it's sharp right out of the package. Quite a bit of sanding and grinding on this one since it's for a kid. I think it lends itself to customization very well. I've got some ideas for a few more of these. Very easy hilt to work with. Plenty of room,

2) recharge port: 2 in a row now that we're "sticky" and required some pulling and bending of the internals to work right. I have a plan for a cool way to use a switch craft RP in a SF 12mm hole that I'm going to do on the next build. Assuming it works the way I think it will, I'm done with buying these from SF. They just aren't reliable.

3) Sabercore 2.0 "crimson": I had a hard time deciding between an NBv3 and this board. Ultimately the ability to have a button effect won out. My son likes them more than the FOC effects. I still think these are too expensive for what they do. The on the fly config is great but it would be better if the blade affects were better. It's a strobe and not anywhere as cool as the what you can do on the NBv3 or Spark2 for around the same price. It is a sturdy stable board though, and for a young kid who's going to beat the crap out of it, it gains a few extra points there. The font is pretty good. The ignition sound could be better, but the power down, swings, clash are all great and the force lighting button effect sounds fantastic. It's a great size, and made making a sort of chassis easy.

4) TCSS AV switch: this doesn't look much different than the ones SF sells, but there are some slight differences that make me feel like these are a little higher quality. They feel sturdier.

5) Ledsupply TRI-cree: when I bought this is didn't realize it was setup with the LEDs in series. Had to desoldered the jumpers which proved to be more difficult than I thought it would be. They are really on there and took some coaxing to get off. But, at about $10 for the star (single color) it's half the cost of of other suppliers. If you are looking for a solid color it's worth a look to save a little $$$

6) Ledsupply heatsink: nice heatsink, VERY shiny and helps to reflect some light back into the lens. It does have a thinner end that sticks out of the bottom which is threaded. This might be prohibitive on some installs, but overall I'd definitely use this again. It fits perfectly into the acolyte hilt.

7) SF blade plug: standard plug, I forget the name of it, but it's the one with the triangle and arubesh writing on it. I've gotten three or four of these now. The cap fell right off. No sign of any glue on it. Had to reglue it. It also sticks out too far for my taste on this hilt. Part of that is just the design of the hilt, and part of that is the plug is too long. I feel like SF should have some plugs that are designed for or mated to specific hilts that may not work perfectly with their standard plugs. The acolyte being one of those hilts. This saber will most likely end up with the blade in it nearly 100% of the time so it's not a huge deal. But I'll also most likely end up designing my own plug for it.



8.)parts ordering: Hilt came off Etsy, and I had it in hand in in about 5 business days. If you want empties, Etsy is the way to go. Optics came from Ledsupply, no shipping fees, and took about 5 business days too. TCSS parts, multiple parts from TCSS. Tim does a great job packaging things. Also took 5 business days. ASP parts. Some electronics ordered from asp site. No real complaints here, just took a couple days longer to ship than everything else. They do a good job on packaging too.

Sorry if there's any typos, writing this on my phone.

Saber is finished:







I put a 22" thin walled dual diffused blade with bullet tip on it.

So my son is getting this along with one of those big Electronic Darth Vader figures... lucky boy...

Sounds like a lucky little boy with a great dad.

Ha, thanks man! I don't always spoil my kid, but I do...

I was about 14 when I saw Star Wars for the first time in 1977. If I had gotten something like this for Christmas, even at that age...well let's just say I might have started believing in Santa again!

Jas-Ot, that is beautiful! Very well done, I'm only very jealous

I remember getting my first "real" saber. My MR replicas Anakin, that was amazing. And that was less than 10 years ago. As a kid, if you handed me one of these sabers we build now, I would have exploded.

As it stands he may or may not already have a couple metric tons of star wars toys... I say him cause you know, totally not for dad... Not at all....