Introduction: 3D Printed Flashlight Lightsabers

We are three high school juniors (Jack Liu, Martin Nguyen, and Jihoon Choi) in Ms. Berbawy's Principles of Engineering class. The Star Wars universe has many Jedi and Sith who all have their own unique lightsabers. For our project, we chose to create Anakin Skywalker's, Mace Windu's, and Rey's lightsaber hilts using Autodesk Fusion 360. All of our measurements in Fusion 360 are in millimeters, but we will include both inches and millimeters in this Instructable.

We took a lot of inspiration and help from CommanderFox50.

The lightsaber includes 2 main body parts and a cap to make putting our circuit together easier. A flip switch turns on the power which is a lithium battery. The battery can be charged with a USB C cable when connected to a charger. Once the power is on, when you press a button, it turns on a flashlight, creating the light in the lightsaber.

Supplies

Materials List:

Tool List:

Step 1: 3D Designing Body Parts and Cap

Create a hollow cylinder modeling the shape of our hilt. Separate the cylinder into 2 pieces and create another small solid cylinder for our base cap. We do not want the 2 body parts to spin against each other and get out of line, so implement a way to prevent them together like a nut and bolt or an extrude on the bodies to connect them together. Make sure the hilt is the desired length. Our lightsabers were around 11 in - 12 in (280 mm - 305 mm) long and with a radius of around 0.75 in - 1 in (19 mm - 25.4 mm), and this size is able to fit all of our circuits.

Add details and designs onto the lightsaber (this can be based off the lightsabers characters actually use or you can make your own unique design). You can search up Google images of a character's lightsaber hilt or existing 3D models of lightsabers you can use as a reference when designing the hilt.

Step 2: Measurements and Scaling

Measure the lengths of the material that will be inside the lightsaber. If you are using our linked flashlight, you are able to twist and remove the flashlight, so you are just left with the tip and the source of light. In the middle of the top body part of the hilt, create a hole that fits the flashlight tip perfectly. Ours has a radius of 0.53 in (13.5 mm) and a length of 1.06 in (27 mm). Then, leave around 2.17 in (55 mm) of space between the opening at the top and the flashlight to put the blade in later. This space should be able to perfectly fit our polycarbonate tube. We made ours with a radius of 0.45 in (11.5 mm). In addition, add a hole that fits the push button under the flashlight (our hole is a hexagon with a radius of 0.33 in (8.3 mm).

The base cap is where our slide switch and USB Type C Micro-Lipo charger will go. Leave the cap mostly solid, but with 2 holes to fit the slide switch and charger. The hole for the charger is a box with a height of 0.29 in (7.4 mm), a length of 0.79 in (20.07 mm), and a depth of 0.94 in (23.79 mm). Directly in the middle of this box is another smaller hole for the tip of the charger that sticks out a little bit. This hole has a height of 0.13 in (3.3 mm), a length of 0.39 in (10 mm), and a depth of 0.04 in (1 mm). The hole for the slide switch goes through the entire cap and has a height of 0.16 in (4.04 mm), a length of 0.37 in (9.3 mm), and a depth of 0.16 in (4 mm). Then create a larger box shaped hole however big you'd like, so the wires are not all crammed in one spot.

Step 3: 3D Designing Hilt

Now, you should be finished with the 3D designing of the lightsaber hilt. Repeat these steps for however many lightsabers you want to do. The images above are the 3 hilts we designed (Silver - Anakin Skywalker, Gold - Mace Windu, Black - Rey). We also included our stl files below.

Attachments

Step 4: Printing Hilt

For our project, we printed out Anakin Skywalker and Mace Windu's lightsaber, but not Rey's lightsaber. We only designed Rey's lightsaber in CAD.

Remember to do multiple test prints to ensure your measurements work and the design is practical. We suggest printing the lightsaber one part at a time. If anything does not fit, try using sandpaper to sand parts first before completely reprinting.

Once you are ready, you can do the final print for your lightsaber hilt! We used the Original Prusa MINI+ 3D printer. The settings we recommend are

  • Print Settings: 0.15mm QUALITY
  • Filament: Silver colored Prusament PLA
  • Supports: wherever supports are needed (the supports everywhere option is the most reliable)
  • Infill: 15%
  • Leave other settings as default

Step 5: Soldering

Now with the 3D print ready, you can start soldering the circuits and wires together. The Instructable by CommanderFox50 had a great video on their process of what to solder.

  1. Detach the wires connected to the original circuit of the flashlight using soldering tool (0:30)
  2. Attach two wires to the button switch with the indication of + & - (2:11)
  3. Extend the wires from the flashlight by attaching additional wires using heat shrink tool (2:37)
  4. Connect one of each wires from the flashlight and the button switch using heat shrink tool (3:43)
  5. Extend the rest of each wire from the flashlight and the button switch by connecting to the 16-gauge wire using heat shrink tool (4:16)
  6. Attach this 16-gauge wire to the output side of the power supply voltage step-down using the soldering tool (4:36)
  7. Attach two wires to the input side of the micro-lipo charger for Lipoly battery using the soldering tool (6:09)
  8. Connect the wires from the micro-lipo chargers with the wires from the Lipoly battery using the heat shrink tool (6:22)
  9. Attach a wire to the middle pin of the 3-pin slide switch using the soldering tool or the heat shrink tool (6:40)
  10. Connect the wire from the middle pin of the 3-pin slide switch to the positive input of the micro-lipo charger using the soldering tool (6:55)
  11. Attach a wire to the negative input of the micro-lipo charger using the soldering tool (7:02)
  12. Attach a wire to the right pin of the 3-pin slide switch using the soldering tool or the heat shrink tool (7:30)
  13. Attach the wire from the negative input of the micro-lipo charger to the positive input of the power supply voltage step-down using the soldering tool. Then, attach the wire on the right pin of the 3-pin slide switch to the negative input of the power supply voltage step-down using the soldering tool (7:56)

Step 6: Assembly

Once all the circuits are soldered together, it is time to assemble everything.

In the hilt, glue the flashlight into the designated compartment we made earlier. Then glue the push button to the space for that as well. Heat shrink the wires soldered to the flashlight and glue together as seen in the video. Then, heat shrink the voltage step down to the wires from the flashlight and the push button.

For the bottom cap, glue the soldered Micro-Lipo charger and the slide switch into their designated spots. Then, heat shrink the wires from the charger to the lithium battery and heat shrink the wires from the switch to the voltage step down, officially completing the circuit.

The polycarbonate tube we bought was 40 in long. We cut it down to 31 in, but the size can be however long you prefer. To cut it, we used a table saw with the help and supervision from Ms. Berbawy. After that, carefully roll up the blade film to make inserting it into the tube easier. Cut off the excess blade film sticking out through the top and put the blade cap on.

At this point, you should have the tube, a top half of the hilt, a bottom half of the hilt, and a bottom cap, with the circuits and wires connecting everything together. First glue the tube into our top half of the hilt. Then connect the body parts using glue, nuts and bolts, extrudes on the connecting cylinder, or any other way you'd prefer. Finally, insert the bottom cap. This should be able to be removed just in case we need to access something in the circuits. Make sure you do not vigorously twist any parts or else the wires and circuits inside may be damaged. With everything connected together, you have now successfully assembled your lightsaber!

Step 7: Conclusion

You are now done with building a functional lightsaber! All that's left is to make it look better. One great option is to paint the lightsaber with different colors. If the print is in silver, you can buy black, gold, or metallic-looking paint to give your lightsaber that finishing shine. Other hilts like Rey's lightsaber have some leather straps and cloth wrapped around it, so you can also use those for decoration. Feel free to decorate it however you like, as it is your personal lightsaber!

Here is a video of our lightsaber working