Make your own lightsaber!

Step 5 Making the LED string

Making AN LED STRING:

1) Strip both wires fully, so there's no insulation left.

2) Start with one stripped wire, and attach the positive side of the LED to the top of the wire as a base. You can identify the positive side by seeing which of the two metal legs is longer -- the longer leg is the positive side. See pictures for clarification.

3) Continue down the wire, attaching LEDs by their positive side to the stripped wire. Each subsequent LED should sit about where its neighbor's tail ends.

4) After desired length is reached, do the same thing with the negative side so it looks like the
following:

5) Use pliers as necessary to crimp the ends onto the wire.

6) If there's a single short circuits, the blade won't light! (!!!!!!!!)

Make sure there are no short circuits between the long wires. A short will happen if the positive wire touches the negative wire -- so if the two wires ever cross-over and touch, there will be a short circuit and the blade won't light.

7) If you made a crossbar/tip for the string of LEDS, attach the top of the string to it. Lower the string through the blade, and attach the bottom. Adding a reflective bottom helps the light stay inside the
blade as well.

Comments

[j4lmmfwcl]

i got some EL wire from crazypc.com for like under 30 bucks (shipping and battery adapter included) and it worked great! (if anyone wants to kno)

[lord vader]

does the lightsaber make sounds that sounds like a real one i just want to know because i have just started to build it.

[sman17]

El wire works much better than LEd's. It is a wire that emits light and it won't blow out from the force of hitting lightsabers together like LED's will. Here are soem websites that sell El wire. I have also found it at rdioshack before.

http://www.save-on-crafts.com/neon.html?gclid=CLyKvueiqpYCFQ4RnQodM15jyw

http://www.elbestbuy.com/?gclid=CIW24viiqpYCFQGbnAoda1RUxw

http://www.thatscoolwire.com/?gclid=COzfjv6iqpYCFQpknAodr0uezA

[red-king]

i think i've seen that stuff around before. i think you can get it at home hardware... or maybe it was canadian tire. not sure... one of the two though.

[jgeekw]

I've got a friend who was doing small electronics for the navy, and he said that they used to build light beacons for helicopters out of clear tubing, fiber optics, and leds. This same process could be used for the saber blade as well. The good thing is that you could have the led board inside the hilt, then all the fiber would be in the blade. Viola! I'll see if he can draw me up some schims so you can see how they are built.

[Arx]

LEDs shouldn't blow out. Assuming you don't break the leads off, I expect they're tougher than EL wire.

[lord vader]

solder them together

[sman17]

That's what I meant. I was at a comic book covention and people who make battle ready lightsabers such as these were there. The mastercrafter of the group said he worked with LED's and that after a little while they would burn out because the leads would get knocked around. EL wire iworks a lot better because there is nothing to break and the connections for the wire are in the handle. Just what he told me though.

[Arx]

most EL wire isn't all that bright though. You can get some really awesome stuff. EL paneling that could be rolled inside the tube, etc, but it's expensive, and needs an inverter circuit to power it. LEDs are cheap, and aren't necessarily a problem if you build it very solid, preferably so the leds are supported by the body, and not just by the leads.

[sman17]

I like EL wire but I found the site for the guy who makes the lightsabers for New York and PA Jedi. The group of saber battlers I was talking about earlier. It's www.advanced-light.com. Turns out he uses an extremely powerl LED called a luxor LED, and it's rather expensive I guess. El wire still sorks well in my opinion, that and putting a strong LED at the base towards the end of the blade, with some tin foil at the end to reflect back down would work too.

[MrTinkerer]

You mean Luxeon LED. They are not expensive. One Luxeon Rebel mounted on a star would set you back 6-12 dollars US depending on color(google it). The light output of that one LED would be 20 times brighter than 30 dollars worth of EL. EL is pass its prime when it comes to lightsabers.

[Arx]

You mean luxeon. Yeah, they do high wattage LEDS. Up to about 6W now I think. They're way more than most leds, but they're WAY brighter. If you compared it to the expense and work involved in stringing together a whole bunch of conventional ones, you're probably in the same ballpark, and it's much easier to build it solid so it doesn't break. I have a bunch of similar 1W aluminum core PCB mounted diodes made by Liteon. I'm building a lightsabre for my Haloween costume. If I have time to actually put a blade on it I'll use one of those diodes.

[xwingace]

I made a similar light tube with EL and ploycarbonate. For the diffuser I rolled up a long tube of parchment paper (like for baking!) and just slipped it into the tube. Cheap and way easier than sandpaper, plus it does a great job!