Hello there!
We've just made the world's first retractable plasma-based lightsaber
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A real retractable plasma based lightsaber
the pinnacle of sci-fi tech and probably one of the most sought after fictional technologies ever
As you know we've been developing different lightsabers or like they're called in star
wars lore proto-sabers for the past four years now
From some initial power supply tests that got the fire department called on us
to version one using nitinol wire to version two using a tungsten titanium blade hybrid version
2.1 so we could have a real-life lightsaber duel which by the way was extremely unsafe
To finally our kylo ren style lightsaber complete with a 3d printed titanium hilt
A proto-saber of course is a lightsaber with an external power pack since you know we don't
exactly have d-sized batteries capable of putting out more power than a nuclear power
plant which by the way is what you'd need for a lightsaber to function like it does in the movies
Now in my opinion what we've made so far are some of the closest representations of lightsabers
using real life technologies they look like a lightsaber they sound like a lightsaber
and at temperatures of over 3000 degrees they actually cut stuff like a lightsaber
But as you know the internet is not easily pleased
those are just red hot sticks that's just a red hot piece of metal that's not even
a real lightsaber your lightsaber sucks and you should feel bad too
Luckily I have thick skin since I've read over half a million comments on my YouTube channel
That's equivalent to like 200 full-length novels by the way
So despite the trolls best wishes we have not given up which is good since you know
you could count on one hand the amount of people in this world actually working on lightsaber tech
Anyway how the heck do you make a plasma based lightsaber well
best theories say that plasma is held in a beam by a magnetic field
which scientifically checks out you see the issue is producing a strong enough electromagnetic field
to contain a blade well the lightsaber would quite literally have to be built inside of a box
coated in an electromagnets which turns it into kind of a useless science project
I made a lightsaber
Luckily we've come up with an alternate solution to control the flow of plasma
which allows us to make a retractable blade and even change its color
We're going to be using laminar flow you know that cool thing where liquids flow smoothly
We actually teased this project months ago on our instagram which maybe we shared too soon
since it's resulted in almost all new comments being where is the lightsaber
I mean come on guys it might not be brain surgery but building a lightsaber
is basically rocket science it's taken us quite a few months to get just right
and we also had to upgrade our equipment in the shop to even be able to manufacture it
like our new Tormach 1100 mx cnc machine complete with a fourth axis
Bogdan's been pretty excited to try it out and since star wars was a long time ago in
a galaxy far far away it's only fitting that our first real plasma lightsaber is steampunk
I think it's Bogdan's turn to design that hilt
Steampunk is a subset of science fiction which incorporates
antique design aesthetics from the 19th century with modern technologies
When I was scrolling through to get some design inspirations for the lightsaber
I came across this picture and it instantly caught my attention i think steampunk would
be great for this design because we're going to be using a lot of gauges valves copper
tubing and regulators which are going to look perfect in this installation
Here's the final design of a lightsaber hilt it incorporates lots of materials
including brass copper stainless glass and even leather to give it that true
steampunk look I've even decided to add the kyber crystal heating chamber
using some EL wire and a neon bulb to make it look really cool in the dark
The copper pipes that carry our flammable gasses are nice and visible
and the adjustment knobs are easily accessible
Thanks to our new Tormach machines we are now able to manufacture
much more intricate designs such as this one let's Make It Real
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Oh my god that looks incredible yeah well put some gloves on
I'm sorry can't get any smudges on a lightsaber
That is incredible I think you've outdone yourself on this one Bogdan
Look at the detail in that if that's not steampunk I don't know what is
But the real question is, how are we going to power this?
Even with all of our new equipment and capabilities here at Hacksmith industries
we're still kind of bound by the laws of thermodynamics which means
we're still going to have to make this into a proto saber with a power pack separate from the
hilt now we've made incredibly energy dense power packs before but in order to get enough power for
a plasma based lightsaber we're gonna have to use something with more energy dense fuel in this case
lpg compressed liquid propane gas which can give us 50 times more energy per kilogram than a lipo
Now that's a pretty incredible difference and the cool thing you probably have this right at home
We're talking about normal propane that you use in your barbecue
So how do we turn propane into a superheated beam of plasma?
The answer lies with one of the most satisfying demonstrations of physics phenomena
of fluids laminar flow basically we need a large array of laminar flow nozzles to create highly
concentrated flow of gas to create a plasma beam lucky for us we aren't the only ones who
need this and highly specialized gas nozzles like this can be found at a rather high price
This nozzle right here costs over four thousand dollars and it's used in the
glass blowing industry to achieve maximum temperature we need complete combustion
which means in addition to this propane we're actually going to be using oxygen as well
That doesn't sound dangerous, right?
Anyways let's see how it works
First turn on the propane, then we turn on the oxygen, some safety glasses
and the sparker
So look at that
Is that not a lightsaber?
This beam is really cool it's actually burning at around 4 000 fahrenheit
which means is capable of cutting through a lot of stuff
Should we cut through some stuff?
Whoa so this is actually our old lightsaber blade made of titanium
and look at that it's already white hot
That is so bright, Jesus
The really cool thing about doing a flame like this is we can actually color it using salts
Let's start with some boric acid
What color do you think it's going to turn the blade?
Got your guesses?
Look at that
Next up we have calcium chloride
Look at that red orange, that almost hurts to look at
We have some strontium chloride
Whoa that is like a road flare, this actually hurts to look at
Look at that
Finally we have some sodium chloride also known as salt
And look at that we've got Rey's lightsaber right here
Is that not cool?
So we're able to produce a blue lightsaber, a green lightsaber, a red lightsaber,
an amber lightsaber and even a yellow lightsaber
How awesome is that? I should probably turn this off though
That took a lot of fine tuning to get the blade to the right length
and turning it off wasn't the most elegant
Luckily Bogdan's going to be actually making a circuit with two fancy valves
which means we'll actually be able to get a computer to control the flow of gas
to allow for this to ignite and retract with the press of a button
So I'm gonna let Bogdan handle that
After twelve weeks of anticipation we finally got our hands on proportional control valves
These will allow us to control exactly how much gas goes into the lightsaber
and therefore make it extend and retract now we just need to figure
out how to control it and to do that I'll be making a custom printed circuit board
I'm going to be using Altium designer which is the
industry standard for PCB design software and it's super powerful
This is the printed circuit board that Charles designed to use for the Crysis
arm but since both projects are using pneumatic valves
and auxiliary outputs we'll be able to use it for our lightsaber with some minor modifications
This board looks great if you want to view this PCB yourself you can use Altium viewer
One of the only machines we don't have in the shop is a PCB mill
but why would we get one of those when websites like JLCPCB will allow us to
order high quality boards in a matter of days for just two dollars for five boards
We'd need like 15 000 boards to make up the cost of one of those machines
Let's get these ordered
While we wait for that I'm gonna get st-
Well that was quick let's start soldering
Okay
To better understand how the lightsaber electronics work check out our page on maker.io
We've got to build a steampunk power pack with these pieces I'll let Chris handle that
Well this all needs to be polished before I can start building I'm gonna let Dave handle that
No
Fine I'll do it myself
We did it
The world's first retractable plasma based lightsaber
Now obviously we're going to have an amazing test video for this
We've got tons of stuff set up behind us to really put this through its paces
including cutting through a steel door
Anyways that video is actually available right now for our Patreon supporters and
YouTube members which is a great time to support the channel and get to see this video early
For everyone else it'll be out next week
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