Thank you to EA for sponsoring this video.
Holy crap! That is so hot like my face is starting to burn.
Alright someone bring me a head!
You can hone your lightsaber skills by playing Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order,
Star Wars Battlefront 2 and other great Star Wars titles on Origin Access premier.
Ah yes the lightsaber. This is Cal Kestis' lightsaber from Jedi Fallen Order.
The lightsabers the holy grail of sci-fi tech.
The iconic symbol from
pop-culture recognized around the world. The first time you saw one you wanted one.
You used broomsticks, twigs from the backyard, anything you can get your hands on
to reenact those lightsaber battles with your friends.
Dreaming of the day scientists will crack the code and you could wield your very own.
Don't tell your seven-year-old selfless but there is one little problem.
Lightsabers are scientifically impossible to create in real life.
The main roadblock is the power source these things would take an astronomical amount
of energy to operate. Some estimate upwards of one point six nine Giga joules of thermal energy.
How am I gonna generate that kind of power? it can't be done.
Just to put that into perspective we're talking about slightly more energy
than a bolt of lightning, a constant bolt of lightning. All packed into the handle
of the lightsaber. What'd you say? A bolt of lightning.
Not to worry though. If lightning is on short supply
just substitute a hundred and twenty thousand three hundred and eighty AA batteries,
Six hundred fifty car batteries, one nuclear reactor or zero
point zero zero zero zero zero zero zero four seven five percent of Earth's total power!
I think that's currently on sale at Walmart
So yeah not happening anytime soon but before your seven-year-old self
cries himself to sleep there is hope. Let's take a look at the history of this
weapon of choice for the Jedi. The predecessor the lightsaber in his
current form was a lesser known weapon commonly called a proto saber
essentially the only difference from a lightsaber was that the protosaber was
tethered by cable to a power supply pack worn by the user.
And it is this ladies and gentlemen.
This portable battery pack that gives us at Hacksmith Industries A New Hope.
See what I did there?
For the past year Hacksmith Industries have been working tirelessly to make a
portable battery pack capable of powering a lightsaber. Let's take a look at the build.
All right we're gonna need a lot of batteries.
Then we need to build a box around the batteries that is wearable just like a protosaber powerpack.
We want to go with the steampunk vibes we're going to be doing a full
metal construction with some analog meters and aesthetic switches.
In case you didn't know, the majority of our CAD models are available to our patrons
on patreon and our YouTube members, including our design for the next
lightsaber Kylo Ren's. In case you can't build your own lightsaber like us, hone
your lightsaber skills by playing it out Custis and Jedi fallen order by joining
origin access premiere today which lets you play new EA titles days before
launch and with a huge library of games you can play as much as you want
including Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order, Star Wars Battlefront 2 which features
new content from the new movie Rise of Skywalker and more plus there's over 200
games an origin access basic and even more an Origin access premiere making it
one of the cheapest ways to game on PC. Click on the link below to learn more
plus you'll be sporting our channel which will allow us to continue
experimenting with our lightsabers and other futuristic technology from fiction.
It's fun right up until anything you're wearing ignites
Now that we've plasma-cut, welded together and ground down the big ol battery box
it's time to actually put the cells in it.These are the energist lithium-ion
cells that we've previously used to power the lightsaber. We've also found
uses for them in the big leaf blower. Each one of these battery packs consists
of 16 18 650 lithium-ion cells they're all in parallel giving us a total of 40
amp hours at a maximum voltage of 4.2 volts each.
We're putting two of them in parallel so we should be able to pull 1,600 amps for
a sustained period. Let's see how much it weighs.
So it's gonna be a very heavy backpack.
Probably not the heaviest thing James is worn on his back for a video...
This is also probably the most frightening battery pack we've ever
assembled in terms of ability to output a crap ton of current.
So we have this little piece of ill-fated aluminum here.
We have the table tied off to
ground through a pair of jumpers and current clamp.
So if you strike this against the welding table we should be able to make it and get it a little smaller.
That's a little shorter than it was before we started!
Reading 549 amps of inrush current!
I think this is the first time we tested out a battery pack for the lightsaber and it didn't burst into flames.
Don't worry the time will come!
The time has come.
Okay so we're seeing if the new lightsaber MOSFET switch works.
And it won't catch fire in the process and Dave where's the fire extinguisher?
I'm certain it will turn on! The question is whether it will turn off?
Well, let's see what happens!
Mhmm disappointment what a wonderful smell. I know the MOSFET failed and I'm going to
need to review the tape to see how much current we pulled for how long, and then
look at the datasheet for about half an hour while pulling my hair out and with
that we should be able to figure out what exactly just happened.
Because right now I have no idea.
So with our hopes for controlling the lightsaber
with transistors haven't gone up in smoke along with the transistors themselves.
The electrical design has to go out the window and we are back to the drawing board.
It's just not that easy!
So why is this so hard? We just need a way of turning on and off the lightsaber
The problem is it draws about a thousand
amps at around 20 volts, which is over 20 kilowatts of power.
That's almost half the tickel power supply to an average North American home.
Which means you can't just use a regular switch for this.
Now Charles tried using a MOSFET which is kind of like a digital switch with no
moving parts but, as you saw that didn't work out and wasn't the first time either.
So instead we're gonna go old school and use a tried-and-true
contactor which is basically like a giant electromagnetic switch.
To better understand what we're doing we drew up a circuit diagram for our page on maker IO
and sourced our components from Digi-Key which features next day delivery for the
majority their parts. Which is super useful for prototyping our projects.
BIG THANK YOU to Digi-Key for supporting our projects over the past few years
Do you need my tiny hands? Honestly yes.
At long last I have all of the power
electronics assembled and now comes the moment of truth.
We should be able to press the big silver shiny button and we should get some confirmation that we
have power, and a nice blue glowing light.
What happens if there's no blue glowing light?
Ah then I cry.
I don't see it light.
Ah then I cry.
I truly have no idea what this is doing.
It's only 95 percent.
The current is going back into the battery pack, it is no longer in a fault state. Charging! Yaay!
There we go!
How's it Charles? Great! It looks pretty heavy.
41 1/2 pounds, but the real question is is it comfortable to carry?
That's actually not too bad. I mean it's like almost 50 pounds.
Just jam that in the hole.
Worlds first protosaber. We still need to paint it!
So we've got a solution in here of copper acetate.
We use electricity we've got little copper pot scrubbers here.
That are connected to the positive side of our power supply.
And then we connect our negative to the piece that we want to plate, submerge it, and let the
electricity transfer the copper from the solution to our piece.
We've been working at it all day I've probably done this piece 20 times.
Patience is the key when doing this.
This why they invented alcohol
Dave! 95% percent huh.
Excuse me for a minute.
Alright let's start building this thing!
So this is the connector that goes from here to the giant relay that we need to install.
We're gonna leave it out for now because if that touches that, and that at
the same time. Cut to explosion.
Okay we got six cells. They all have a voltage. It's in a fault state.
That's okay. I don't remember how to reset it, but we're good.
We're gonna keep connecting wires until we run out of wires or something catches fire.
If we had the lightsaber working we could demonstrate that it works, but we don't.
So I'm just gonna use a surrogate lightsaber switch and you should be able to hear relay fire.
So without the power switch on nothing happens.
Power switching on, power switch on.
Helps if you actually turn it on.
Probably best that no one ever sees the inside of this thing.
Alright so we have our Protosaber battery pack ready to rock.
We've got a big power button. We have our ammeter.
We have our volt meter, we have our power setting lights.
We have a giant power connector coming off the side.
We have our contactor, our current shunt, we have 12 battery packs from Energis.
Giving us a total of 24 volts and 80 amp hours.
Alright so our Protosaber power pack is complete
BUT! Since last lightsaber video we unfortunately damaged the blade which
means we're going to upgrade the whole thing including a thicker piece of
tungsten and a large of titanium pipe. Let's make it!
Right now the blades assembled we got to get it into the handle.
wooooh
Darryl! One completed lightsaber blade, not very light.
And now it's time to test our new and improved lightsaber let's just turn it on.
Flip these switches, adjust the power dial slightly, safety first.
Lets see what happens.
Wooo. That's a lot of smoke! It's on fire but it's also lighting up!
There we go, just give it a bit longer and she's going to be glowing. Hoooly crap.
Tha- this is is so hot, like my face is starting to burn. Alright someone bring me a head.
It's really warm.
This is so dangerous. If it accidentally hit my faceI would be in trouble.
This is way better than last blade. It actually feels solid.
Alright that was awesome! Make sure you subscribe and turn the notification bell on
because we're gonna be building a second protosaber so we can have a real
life lightsaber duel. But in the meantime if you guys haven't seen our previous lightsaber videos.
I highly recommend you check them out it's shown our entire
progress on getting to this point here today and you don't want to miss it it.
It works! Guys, guys! It actually works! So not only will our saber actually work and
cut through things it'll sound like one too.
Ho hooo!
Oh you can feel the heat! Oh I can feel the heat!
I am dripping molten lead right now.
We'll just let's power up.
And there you have it the world's most inefficient vaporizer. Die Stormtrooper!
In fact it's so hot it ignites things just by touching ah ho!
It's drawing a ton of power right now. It's getting super red-hot but look it's
also smoking like crazy. 280, you can feel the heat!
Yeah this is warm, red hot!