Let’s Build A Lightsaber

let's build an obi-wan lightsaber i'm gonna be showing you pretty much everything i did to make this the first step is to prepare the chassis it's got three separate parts to it the main chassis and the two holders that hold the neopixel connectors in the neck and the emitter so we gotta free them by cutting off the support pillars and then we sand it just for good measure now let's have a look at what we're working with the chassis is going to need to fit inside of the hilt here and one of the neopixel holders is going to hold the blade side connector to the bottom of the neck as you can see it's not actually on the blade but it allows us to separate the neck from the rest of the chassis and this is the hilt side neopixel connector holder that goes in the emitter i'm just making sure it fits to see if i have to sand it here i was putting the light zipper back together so i can work on the rest of the chassis when i heard this yeah that's bad we can't have that [Music] let's grease it up so it doesn't damage itself or the sanity of its new owner [Music] honestly i don't know the best way to apply this but this is what i did and i wiped off all the excess with a paper towel and now let's see if it worked that's so much better than it was before you can barely hear anything and now to prepare the first electronics in this lightsaber the neopixel connectors as with pretty much all neopixel connectors and holders you have to make sure they fit most of the time they won't immediately fit so you'll have to sand down the little tabs that stick out on the side so you'll want to sand them down a little bit test the fit and do that over and over again until it works and since this build requires two sets of neopixel connectors we have to make sure it also fits in the chassis part so here are the diagrams i'm going to be using to set up the connectors the v3 is going in the emitter and the v4 is going on the chassis you can read the descriptions to know what they do i like using this little hobby vise to secure the connectors and that allows me easy access to put the pins in place which is one of the most satisfying parts of the build even though it's a bit tedious now for both of the neopixel setups we have to remove the second resistor the v3 setup requires the two pads in the back to be bridged which essentially means the solder connects them both and lastly we just solder all the pins in place second neopixel connector is going to be in the v4 setup which requires us to remove the resistor again but not bridge the pads in the back and then we do the same process of putting all the pins in the holes and soldering them in place [Music] it's now time to put the electronics inside the hilt i like to start with the emitter so let's take off the emitter and the next section [Music] here's a close-up of the neopixel connector that's going in the emitter it's in the v3 setup as you can tell there and it'll sit right in the holder that'll keep it in place in the emitter [Music] you're going to want to cut the wires to size in advance i basically just roll the spool out and then cut it to the length i think i need and then you're going to want to strip them with these wire strippers to go all the way from 22 gauge to 30 gauge [Music] for most of the project this is about how much exposed wire you need once you have all the wires stripped i like to pre-tin them by putting solder on the exposed end which from experience and what i've learned it allows soldering to be a little bit easier because you heat up both the pad and the wire at the same time and it just sort of melts in place once we have all the wires connected we're just going to want to feed it through the emitter and the neck hole i've done this a lot but don't forget to include the neopixel connector holder when you put it in and now for a little e6000 to make everything secure [Music] i like to find something to put pressure on the pins in the holder to make sure it doesn't move while the glue dries in this case it's a neopixel blade plug i'm going to secure with the set screw to finish off the emitter and next section we put the blade side connector holder in place and then wire up the blade side connector to clarify my process of soldering wires to the connectors you want to pre-tin the pads as well as the wires in order to make it easy [Music] with all the wires in place all that's left to do is put on some e6000 and leave it overnight to cure once again you're going to want to make sure nothing moves while the e6000 cares and that when it does cure everything's in the spot it's supposed to be so to make this happen i put everything together like it would be when the lightsaber's done and left it there while everything cured right [Music] everything should be good now but let's take it apart to be sure the emitter connector and holder are locked in place they don't move at all when i try to turn it and the blade side connector and holder are also securely in place so now it's time to set up all the things that go in the chassis [Music] the positive battery tab has two wires going to it one will go straight to the neopixel connector and the other one goes to the kill switch and once we feed all the wires through and put the battery tab in place we then move on to soldering the wire to the kill switch the second positive wire on the kill switch is going to go straight to the board the negative tab is pretty easy you just solder one wire to it and then push it in place up next we have one of my favorite features the bluetooth module which i'm planning to fit in this section [Music] the four wires have been soldered in place now we have to figure out how to put it in the chassis and now that we have it in place we use the more e6000 while we wait on that to cure let's work on the speaker [Music] since it's a pretty loose fit we're gonna have to use even more e6000 but now pretty much all the bottom half is set up this is looking pretty good so far not much left to go next up is the oled display and the neopixel connector [Music] [Music] with the oled in its place we can now move on to the neopixel connector [Music] we're almost at the end now let's connect everything to the sound board for the saber we're going to be using the crystal focus 10. always be sure to remove the sd card when you solder onto the board the trickiest part of this process is splitting the two negative wires from the neopixel connector into four since the board has four points for the neopixel negatives and since i don't have a heat gun i shrink the heat shrink using my soldering iron [Music] this little pad is annoying it's so tiny it's hard to get the wire through and solder but it's necessary to have another data pad for our second neopixel connector [Music] here i'm going to be connecting the negatives of the bluetooth and the oled display good soldiers good soldiers so for the oled display in bluetooth i have this cool wiring diagram on this mat i bought a long time ago what's not on the mat is blade detection wiring you'll find that diagram in the manual it's a bit confusing but the way i have it set up only uses one 10 000 ohm resistor and with that the lightsaber is pretty much complete except for the buttons but first let's set up the sd card and config because honestly i forgot about the buttons so i'm going to reformat the sd card that came with the soundboard because i already have an sd card package that i made before since this is a commission for a customer i'm going to have about 30 free sound fonts on there but he's going to send me about 10 that he's bought and i set up each sound font with a blade profile and color i thought fit it best and then i fine-tuned it to make it all work better i did all of that set up for the previous obi-wan lightsaber i made so i didn't have to do it again so here i'm finishing up the sd card setup by copying and pasting the sd card package from the previous obi-wan lightsaber into the current sd card and when it's all copied over we just eject it and then put it into the lightsaber and this is about the time i realized i forgot the buttons so let's set that up real quick [Music] once again i use e6000 but this time i use rubber bands to hold the buttons in place for good measure i put some more e6000 on the neopixel connector so now we wait for everything to cure the next day i got to take off the rubber bands and now everything in this lightsaber is completely secured by e6000 and ready to go i'm pretty proud of how this came out i think it looks great but what matters most is if it actually works so let's try it that's a very promising sign and the oled display works let's see if it ignites [Music] and the auxiliary [Music] [Applause] looks like i did everything correctly first try but before we celebrate we still have a few things left to test force activation bluetooth if the emitter and neck section are wired up correctly and of course if the blade works spoiler alert they all work so here's force activation and from here on out please enjoy the fully functional lightsaber [Music] so [Music] the lightsaber has come together beautifully let's test it a little bit more and this time with the blade [Music] so [Applause] [Music] so [Music] thank you all so much for watching i hope you enjoyed it and learned a lot about building lightsabers so let me know if you liked the video and subscribe for more

Channel: Avery Castillo

Views: 46,731

Keywords: Lightsaber Build Tutorial, Obi-Wan Lightsaber Build, Custom Lightsaber

Id: uHTwu5zdXFk

Length: 12min 36sec (756 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 18 2022