Myrtenaster Prototype Build Write Up Part 1: Basic Chassis

Let's get started.

Started by buying a cheap China made light saber; it glowed green.

Took  it apart and...

Yuck, no resistors. Counted 20 LEDs in parallel connected to a push switch and 3 AA batteries. For the record don't hook up LEDs without a resistor in this situation. You will severely shorten the life span of your LEDs. Bad practice. The plastic blade is now ready to be used.

Next, we need to build a chassis of sorts. A skeleton to hold all of the pneumatic and electrical parts to the prop. To start, I decided to build the barrel first. Pretty simple, a wooden dowel rod and two discs cut out of leftover foam board. Poke a hole in the middle of it and stick the dowel through.

Myrtenaster has 6 slots on where the dust cartridges lie in the barrel. To simplify, I measured and drew 6 lines all meeting at the center, like how one would cut a pizza into 6 slices. I then hot glued rectangular pieces of foam board to create space for the 6 glitter cartridges.

I bought a glitter pack from Walmart. It had all the colors I needed and was the right size for the barrel.

I lied, the shakers ended up being a bit big. However, it ended up working out as I first covered the outside of the barrel with stiff white felt and cut out the appropriate space for the shaker to fit. Worked out quite well.

Since the electronic parts haven't come in yet, I went ahead and decide to start the pivoting side support that allows this whole part to pivot off the handle. I used Tatsutetsu's free blueprints as a guide to draft the support patterns to the size of my current prop, which is bigger than what his prints show.

Way bigger than the prints. An earlier stage test arrangement of parts.

Next was to attach the blade to this barrel. This barrel is also suppose to spin so in order to do so, two circles of foam board were cut and a hole was poked through them. Because there are not suppose to spin with the barrel, they can not be attached in any way to the wooden dowel rod. Side rectangular pieces were added for support of the two circles and as a start mount for the blade. Extra room was made for the electronics later. They are attached to the foam board by 2 pairs of wooden dowels through pre-made holes in the blade.

 I then attached the side supports to the current prop by cutting a small polygon piece and poking a hole through that and the side supports. A wooden dowel was put through the holes to create the pivoting effect.

Not bad for progress. No problems yet.

Things left to do:
-solder electronics
-mount electronics
-put together pneumatics
-mount pneumatics
-create handle
-attach handle
-prettify

Part2