Hey guys, it's time to continue our lightsaber build!
Earlier this summer we released a video showing off our attempt at building a power supply for our very own Proto-Saber.
That's right a prototype lightsaber. It's a thing look it up. Now, needless to say
It didn't go so well in fact even the fire department showed up.
And if you want to see that whole video you can click on it right in there.
Anyways that video was just about the power supply, but a bunch of you guys
Had some ideas about what we're actually gonna do for the lightsaber and a few of you actually got it right, even fewer still,
looked at the description below the video and follow that link to see the complete circuit diagram and our plan for the lightsaber
You see we were actually planning on using tungsten rod for the blade of the Sabre now tungsten actually has a melting point of
3400 Celsius or over 6000 Fahrenheit
That's really really hot in fact if we could heat it up to just about 2,000 Celsius
It would be able to melt through almost anything including steel. So to test that out
We actually bought some tungsten from Torrey Hills technologies on amazon.com
Now tungsten is actually pretty pricey so they gave us a 50% discount which was awesome if you guys want to get your own,
there's a link in the description below.
Anyway, we discovered a slight issue with using tungsten for the lightsaber blade, you see when tungsten gets to around a thousand Celsius it actually
Starts oxidizing, which means it starts smoking and small bits of metal actually start flaking off, which isn't really ideal for a lightsaber
And that actually should have been pretty obvious because lightbulbs are actually filled with an inert gas
Now hypothetically to get around the oxidization problem
We could actually pipe in a noble gas like nitrogen over the entire blade while we're using it
But that would add a lot of complexity to the design, and it's just a path
We don't really want to go down. The other big issue with using tungsten is the power requirements.
To heat this up red-hot requires a few thousand amps at 24 volts. Now 24 volts it's perfectly safe,
you're not going to electrocute yourself. I mean you will burn yourself very badly
We've got a lot of work to do
*agonized yelling*
The issue here is to create a power supply that can switch high current is actually really expensive and difficult after all that's why
911 got called on us last time. So we had to come up with a new plan and
A few of our fans actually suggested some really good ideas especially one of our fans that we met in Michigan during the ArtPrize
He researched another metal
We could use called Kanthal now Kanthal is actually very similar to nitinol, which is used as a heating element.
But it's stable up to 1,400 Celsius, which is still hot enough to be able to cut through most things
The issue though is you can't actually get Kanthal in rod form like this you can actually only get it in wire form at least
That's all we were able to find. And the thickest wire we could find was only 16 gauge which is really thin.
Now the tricky part with having a thinner wire is you actually need a much higher voltage to push that power
Through the wire and to heat up the amount of wire
We're gonna be using will actually need around 300VDC and 300 Volts DC is a lethal amount of voltage.
It's only gonna be running about 20 amps so the total power draw is around 6 kilowatts
Which is still pretty impressive the nice thing is we don't have a ground loop
So it actually be quite a challenge to electrocute yourself from the saber, but keep in mind
This is a high voltage
device
And we have to be careful when we're using it. The other really nice thing about this design is it's a lot easier to switch
A power supply at 300 volts and only 20 amps compared to a 24 volt
3000 amp power supply in fact we can actually just do it with a single MOSFET
But more on that later so without further ado, the new plan: We're gonna take a stainless steel rod
Just like this we're gonna wrap it in ceramic insulation and then using our lathe
We're gonna wrap the Camco wire all the way around it
And it's actually going to connect at the end to complete the circuit feed this with 300 volts at about 20 amps
And we'll have a yellow hot rod of destruction!
Let me show you on a smaller scale. Since this is a shorter length of wire
We actually need about 24 volts to get it going
Okay, so we plug this into the battery then you connect the other one like this wah, and then we take these woo
And we attach it like so give it a few seconds to heat up
And obviously with a higher voltage we can get heat up even faster, and as you can see it's getting r- ****
Getting red-****
Safety first, thank you gentlemen safety first all right, let's try this again. And as you can see it gets red hot super fast and
The heat is coming off of this is crazy
Anyways something like this is all well and good
But how are we gonna actually make it look like a real lightsaber and sound like one too
Well our friends at Sabre experts hooked us up
This is actually an antique flash handle, the same kind used for lightsabers in the original Star Wars movies
So we're going to be using this as the hilt now remember
This is going to be a proto saber, which means we're gonna
Have a cable going from this to the battery pack because we can't get enough power
Into the hilt of this at least not with today's technology now to make it sound like a lightsaber
We actually have a sound module from the lightsabers that saber experts make and basically it's actually got a small
IMU on it, so when you swing it around
It will actually make the saber sounds of you swinging it around so not only will our saber actually work and cut through things
It'll sound like one too. Anyway enough talking about it
Let's put it together
But before that I want to tell you about this videos sponsor: Storyblocks, now obviously building prototypes of fictional things isn't cheap and
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Now, back to the build
Alright so the team has been hard at work, and we have the first proto saber prototype finished.
And we're about to turn it on for the very first time now as I mentioned earlier
We are working with a bit of a higher voltage, which does mean there's a few safety concerns.
So we have a few safety precautions here, got a CO2 fire extinguisher here right now
We've got a ripcord which Dave is manning and basically if he pulls this it unplugs the battery and kills all the power
if Ian starts to get electrocuted Bogdan has a wooden pokey stick that he can poke Ian's dead body with and
then we can get on with our day, so
This is just a temporary battery box. It's actually off of our Batman Baja project
It's basically just holding all the batteries together. Later on we will actually be building the Proto Sabre
Power pack which will actually be like a backpack
Holding all the batteries
For you to use the Proto Sabre. So, I think we're ready to turn on all I have to do...
It's not on yet
All I have to do is plug in this red wire and we'll be live. And one note,
We're actually running this a hundred and fifty volts DC at the moment, which is technically still kind of safe
But if it goes well, we're gonna up it to three hundred volts which will get it even hotter so
Ian: And if we need to, we can take it to 400.
James: Up to four hundred volts so that'll be extra hot also
I don't know if you guys can see this, but it's powered by AMD inside
All right, so that's just a sound effect module which is pretty cool
Yeah, and we also have the blaster sound effect
Alright, so when Ian presses the big button,
It's gonna turn on the actual saber, I'm just gonna back up don't mind me
Ian is wearing highly insulated gloves, so uh... should be fine, and yep, we're getting some heat.
Getting a bit smoky now 150 volts DC might not be actually enough to get the metal
Red or even yellow hot so we'll give it another 30 seconds or so, and if it's not getting much hotter
We're gonna have to crank up the voltage
smells good.
We got some red. It's getting orange right there, and I can feel the heat wave from over here
We might need to wear those silver volcano suits when we actually test this thing otherwise we might be getting a tan
alright as you can see the tip is getting orange hot and
It's actually gonna move along and the whole thing should become orange hot and then if there's enough power you might even become yellow hot.
Ian just wait.
Ian: I think we should crank it up.
James: Yeah, all right we're gonna we're gonna give it more power.Ian: There is six batteries in here now. We're going to add another six
James: And each of these batteries can put out like almost 300 amps
All right, so we doubled the batteries in the battery pack and now we're talking about 300 volts DC
which should turn this red hot pretty quick and
Subsequently yellow hot and it'll be ready to burn through some things all right
Yeah there we go
Ian: I'm not pressing the button, but it seems like its still on.
There appears to be a slight issue with the MOSFET and it's not turning itself off
So we're gonna pull that wire nice big spark there, and that's cooling down.
So as you can see we have a few issues to sort out, but in the next video
we're gonna finish the battery pack and
Actually test this by cutting through a door
So stay tuned for that and make sure you subscribe
And make sure you have notifications turned on because you are not gonna want to miss this all.
Alright, just gonna take an epic thumbnail shot for this, and I'm gonna. Hopefully look cool while holding it trying not to burn myself
I can feel the heat in my face already.
*cameraman instructions*
Cameraman: Just move only the sword yes like that and put your hands up a bit higher like this
But look forward kind of like you know how they stand like this in the game stuff. James: I'm getting a tan
Holy **** this is hot.
Well that's all for now make sure you subscribe notifications turned on you're not going to miss the next test if you guys haven't checked
out our Make It Real series yet check it out. We have over 40 projects. Just like this one
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