My lightsabers

[Davey]

I'm proud to present my lightsabers.

When I was little I would buy cheap flashlights and tape them to golf tubes or plastic roll and throw on blanket cloaks; I think I've come a ways since then. These models were created in UGS NX4.0 under my school's license, and I imported the .prt files into a trial version of Autodesk Inventor 2009 to get photorealistic renderings. So, here they are. I have high-resolution versions of these images, but I decided to put them all together for easier viewing.

Davey's Lightsaber:
http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b278/ ... ysaber.png
And double bladed, too!
http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b278/ ... esaber.png

Venator's Lightsaber:
http://i21.photobucket.com/albums/b278/ ... rsaber.png

All of these sabers are designed so they can be made with standard sized tooling. Because my metal dealership stocks metal in Imperial sizes, I used Imperial measurements. I've made them so it should be possible to make them with the use of an engine lathe, a vertical knee mill and reciprocating-table surface grinder, although I wanted to have some parts of my saber chrome-plated, so I will probably need to hand-finish them with fine lapping and send them to a chrome-plating company to have them do it. Venator's saber is aluminium and brass, mine is stainless steel and aluminium. His will also have black rubber O-rings on the grips to help with the gripping, but I decided not to show them on the model. Mine will have thick black rubber in the grooves and paracord wrap, although I figure I might just leave it the way it is, I like the look of chrome.

Once the sabers are done, I'm going to install lights and batteries, wiring them up using Plecter Labs' saber core. A polycarbonate tube with the insides wrapped in plastic film will make the glowing blade, and of course I'll install speakers so they'll hum and clash. Venator's lightsaber will use a five-watt native cyan Luxeon LED, and mine will use a five-watt blue Luxeon LED bulb with a purple colour filter.

This is going to be a fun project, I hope. After it's done, I think I might do a duel or something and use Aftereffects to rotoscope the sabers, although I am hoping the natural light of the blades will help a bit.

[salm]

I´d chamfer the sharp edges a bit on the double bladed one.

[Davey]

The ones around the emitter? I'll be using a fine lathe file and emery cloth to finish the edges there, so they should be alright. I just didn't bother to represent them on the model because they're so small. I'll add them later then.