Finally kicking some sabers out of the backlog. This I got this hilt from LDM too, same as the Korbanth run. Made of stainless steel just like the Sidious. I got it polished and chromed thanks to JQ Sabers, awesome work based on how hard it is to work with stainless.

The "JQ treatment" didn't just include the chrome, I got extra retrofit parts to both make the saber install much easier and prettier ! Those include a delrin speaker mount (time saver), proper switches and polished brass caps to fit the angled joint of the saber, providing invisible activation and aux triggering.
I also got a very nice brass kill key that hides the pommel recharge port. JQ went the whole 9 yards on those hilts, as the original holes in the emitter were filled by welding, then the fix got polished and the hilt was chromed. The blade retention screw was hidden in a tiny hole on the claw.

For me, the work was "just an install", which I totally enjoyed. Still, loads of work to fit it all, not much space in there !
I quickly designed a simple sleeve chassis that I 3D printed. The sleeve has 5 groves to let the wires pass around the cell (tight fit). The chassis is sort of bearing fit, slightly tapered at the end to spouse the beginning of hilt curve, and further locked with the screw that joins the main body with the rear.

The emitter decorative part had a tiny seam (initially supposed to be a on/off switch in the original hilt design) that I decided to leave when gluing the part with clear epoxy, makes a nice emitter shine-thru.

 

I'd like to stress how important the choice of the parts is. In my previous saber (sidious) I happened to use regular / low cost left over cell I wanted to study. It ended in the final chassis and left it there. It gave me a hard time to get proper results as I would easily cross the border for voltage ripple due to excessive current in the LED dice. I ended up with a "okay" sensitivity, nothing crazy, enough to play with it and didn't bother more.

For this saber, I've used a AW branded cell. Nothing compared. I knew it, it's not the first time at all I use those but I wanted to underline how cheap cells will actually ruin your builds.
I was able to crank up the current and the cell wouldn't ploy. Once the desired current and drive were set, I started increasing the sensitivity and lowering the swing low threshold. I went to ls=50 and i=63 which provides extremely realistic swings, including low speed ones, but always in reaction to a realistic movement. In the video, you'll see a few down swings only activating the sounds, to demonstrate this.

I've also moved the blade super close to the camera microphone, you'll hear both the swing sound from the sound board and the "woosh" of the blade moving air at the very same time, just to demonstrate the low latency aspect of motion sensing, which I care a lot about in my sound boards, and which provides terrific results when properly done.

This not specific to the Crystal Shard used there (I remind you that the CS3 is now more or less a Prizm board). The above applies to the NB, Pico, Petit Crouton and Prizm, which share the same motion sensing HW & techniques.

Some customers complain about getting auto / self generated swings and I also made this post and video with a pedagogical goal : measure your LEDs, you simply CANNOT USE the die specs from the datasheet as it's an AVERAGE. You *MUST* resistor your LEDs most of the time (my setup uses for instance 1ohm on the white FoC die). You *MUST* use a cell that provides enough current without bending or the voltage will simply DROP to the point it's not enough to power the sound board, or generate enough ripple to not allow a stable motion sensing.

 

Glams