Pretty serious case of lightsaber envy (dim blade)

So I managed to go to star wars celebration this last weekend on Saturday and while it was a blast I did come to the realization that my sabers blade is quite dim compared to just about everyone else at the event.... kind of a bummer.
I was hoping someone here might be able to point me in the right direction with how to get a brighter, more evenly lit blade like what I was seeing at celebration.

My current set-up is using a single cree- white led
Nano biscotte sound board
3.7v 3600ma single cell li-ion battery
TCSS yellow day blade with diffuser

I just received and wired up a tri-cree amber that I received yesterday but have had no difference in brightness. It's also worth saying that the draw from the white led is 1000ma so I should've run out of juice around 3-3.5 hours but it was still running strong almost 8 hours later with fairly steady use, makes me think it might not be putting out what it should... anyone have any ideas?
Sorry it's upside-down, do the know why this forum does this to me :/

Here's a picture of myself (white robes, yellow saber) compared to some others I spent some time talking to. Pretty big difference in brightness

I was confused by the footage I sAw there. A lot of custom sabers looked like expensive toy flashlight versions with a bright base and super dark end/tip. How were the force fx sabers compared to others?

Are you wanting to stay with yellow? I know zip about lightsabers, but I just took the blade and housing out of my Hasbro Darth Vader Black Series lightsaber and I'm not going to use it (I just wanted a hilt to hang on my Vader costume). I'd be willing to give you mine for the cost of shipping, but it's red.

If you are using the TCSS diffuser tube in your blade, that could be why it's dimmer. I used to think they were awesome until I compared it to a blade using only several feet of clear gift wrap (also known as polypropylene wrap) on the inside of the tube for diffusion. The blade with the clear gift wrap is much brighter.

Another popular thing nowadays is to use a Tri-Cree LED in the saber. You could go with three whites dies and wired them up in parallel, though you may want to only use two so the battery can last longer and so the PCB on it can handle the amount of current drain/draw. I hope that helps.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pKYeFxqENU&feature=youtu.be
Might help a little. Tri Cree is currently the brightest in hilt LED available , especially the Blues and Greens. Makoto style string blades are the brightest so far.
https://www.youtube.com/user/makototsai
Don Mac.

Hey soul products ! Like what ARKM and Sixth Element were eluding to, the Tri-CREE you just picked up will be brighter than the single CREE you had previously, depending on how you have your internal blade wrap set up.

And make sure you have the correct resistor values too! It may differ greatly from what was in place with your single CREE LED!!!

Some of the sabers at Celebration were undoubtably LED string blades (wasn't there myself, but was watching the live feed via YouTube and I could definitely see some very, very bright sabers walking around in the background). I could also tell they were LED Strings of some sort by the way they powered on and off.

If you're using the Tri-CREE in the yellow tube, that may account for some of the "lack of brightness" you're experiencing. If you had gone White/White/White with a yellow tube, you would have substaintialy more light going up the tube.

Is your Tri-CREE Amber/Amber/Amber? Do you have a Flash On Clash setup or are all 3 LEDs on at the same time?

Do try what ARKM suggested, getcha a 40% OFF Coupon for Michael's in your local paper, or sign up for their emails, or get their app for your phone (to get the coupon if you don't want to buy a paper), then head over there and pick up a roll of Michael's "Celebrate It - Transparent Wrap - Clear - 40in x 100ft"...

https://www.michaels.com/celebrate-it-transparent-packaging-wrap-clear/10302775.html

Choose your roll carefully, most of the rolls at my local Michael's were dented either in the center or crushed at the ends due to poor handling by customers/employees. We want the roll to be devoid of flaws so that they don't show up in our blades!

You'll have plenty to experiment with. I'd suggest making several wraps, one at 4', one at 5', one at 6', one at 7'. Maybe try even more, everyone's experience seems to differ a little due to differences in LEDs, Tube thickness, Tube width, Mirrored Tip/No Mirrored Tip, etc. and they'll recommend what works for THEIR SETUP! So, it's a great place to start as you experiment with all the different variables to find out what works best for YOUR SETUP.

You might even try getting a clear tube and try sanding it a bit. There's lots of tricks out there that you can try to improve your in-hilt LED lightsaber.

The next step is to upgrade to a Crystal Focus LS v6.5 and build a LED string for it. Or go to what many are saying is the next great blade setup with a Neopixel LED String. There are a few guys over at the FX-Sabers Forum building some wildly bright blades with those and they're even making their own sound boards with Adafruit DIY boards.

Good Luck finding your perfect setup!

Which Nano Board do you have? It might not be driving the led to full capacity, I know the NB V3 only puts out 2 amps to the LED which isn't enough to fully drive 3 cree Dies.

If it is the V3, I think he's O.K. depending on how he wires it...


Diagram from the Plecter Labs Nano Biscotte V3 Manual.

Two in PARALLEL and the third for Flash On Clash should work just fine.
soul products You might ask erv if you could wire a satellite Power Extender somehow to drive the third LED if you want all 3 LEDs on at the same time.

Chicagovader said:

Which Nano Board do you have? It might not be driving the led to full capacity, I know the NB V3 only puts out 2 amps to the LED which isn't enough to fully drive 3 cree Dies.

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a NB uses direct drive and does not "put out" anything. The 2A ratings (per *channel*, as quoted by Ridire Firean) from the manual is common sense consideration, the driver part itself is rated for 6.5A and can easily drive 4A if your battery / led accept it. A single output should be able to drive 3 dice (again, if the battery accept the draw and if the resistor or drive are properly adjusted).

To address the OP's question : The TCSS diffuser performs extremely poorly compared to a transwhite blade + PP wrap. Then if you want a daylight blade with colored polycarbonate it's fine but I'd suggest to rather use a amber-amber-white tri-cree instead of filtered white.

As for the juice you are actually putting into the LED, I'm stressing (again) that you need to measure your LED Vf before you can decide on the resistor (or drive adjustment) to use. Once you have set your resistor accurately you'll be sure your LED is getting the expected current.
The diffusion method is indeed very important too, with just a diffuser and no wave guide in the blade, it will be not even at all.

I appreciate all the replies everyone. To answer a few of the the responses:
Eric richardson: thanks for the offer but the tube isn't my problem, I've got a few different kinds, yellow, photon, clear etc.

ARKM: I've got difussor tubes as well as the film both gave about the same result, though the film gave it a weird 'brushed' texture that I really didn't like.



Redire firean: my tri-cree is a triple amber, came as a recommendation from some people from celebration with some great blades, no FoC.


My biggest concern is mainly to do with the top of my blades, I watch videos other people are putting out ant they are all very evenly lit like in the video Sixth Element posted, when I light my blade on camera, regardless of exposure or ambient light, it just doesn't come even close. I think I'm going to be looking at putting together a Led string, just have to decide where I want to source leds

The tube itself can make a difference (photon lit with blue for instance) but for evenness, that's mainly linked to what you have in the tube. So do you have any wrap there ? Do you have a mirrored tip ?
The blade film (brushed) that you're talking about is known as the corbin film. Alone it will produce a sparkling / final diffuser effect but I don't think a lot of people use it anymore. Along with Geluckandar (long ago) I designed the dual film blade at a time transwhite wasn't there. Final diffusion was made with the corbin film in the inside and a sanded blade on the outside to get an optic system similar to sideglow. Vader's Vault still uses the clear + sanded tubes.

However, without wraps of PP you will never get the optic fiber wave guide and your blade will remain non even.

soul products said:

ARKM: I've got difussor tubes as well as the film both gave about the same result, though the film gave it a weird 'brushed' texture that I really didn't like.

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I only mentioned the clear gift wrap, not the blade film. They are completely different things. I have used both (it was Corbin blade film from TCSS) as well as the TCSS diffuser tubes. In the past I only experimented with a blade that contained both the clear gift wrap AND the blade film combined and compared that to blades with just diffuser tubes in them. At that time, I found the blade with just the diffuser tube in it to be superior. However recently I acquired several blades that have only the clear gift wrap in them (no blade film) and found them to MUCH brighter and more evenly lit than blades using just a diffuser tube. I was shocked as I was certain the blade with the diffuser tube would always win out, no matter what. I couldn't have been more wrong. In other words, in my personal experience (and I certainly don't expect everyone to agree with me/your mileage may vary), it went like this...

Blade with only clear gift wrap > blade with diffuser tube > blade with clear gift wrap and blade film.

to go with Arkm, the internal diffuser (and I hope I refer to the right thing, which is the MR-like thin tube inserted in a blade and sold by TCSS) has always performed sub-par in the (few) blades I've tested with it.
In terms of brightness and evenness and though there's room for aesthetic discussions, the blade tech / system breaks down in the following (cross referenced) points :
- wave guide this is the key to evenness. As it's transparent, it doesn't reduce the brightness but has little diffusion
- corbin film : meant to make a better "ramp up" effect and produces inner sparkling when the light leave the wave guide. Produces diffusion too
- final diffuser, either inner diffuser tube, transwhite blade or clear + sanded tube

bottom line :
- PP film (wrap) : wave guide = ensure lights goes everywhere
- "blade film", polycarb density, sanding : diffusion = ensure the light comes out of the tube (side glow).

While the diffuser style leads to taste and preferences (corbin film leading a textured, silk like blade, transwhite = white when off etc) and don't perform exactly the same but quite close (aside photon which has a clearly better diffusion due to inner sparkling under certain wavelength), the wave guide is mandatory to have unless you won't get light everywhere.

If the OP is using a pre-V3 Nano Biscotti it needs a separate power extender. Without it the blade will be dim.

H0llyw00d said:

If the OP is using a pre-V3 Nano Biscotti it needs a separate power extender. Without it the blade will be dim.

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Short answer to this statement is "no". Older NB use the exact same 6.5 A rated driver part. Suggestions have been made to either double the driver or to use an external PEx to split the load and allow better thermal management just in case. Same applies to the current NB (v3). Those safety measures have been proposed on forums as I can hardly control the lack of common sense when it comes to high current, fried driver or fried led and I prefer beginners to walk on eggshells.

Also, the NB isn't the thing that limits the current in the LED (unless when adjusting the drive), the external resistor is (and the battery of course).

erv said:

Short answer to this statement is "no". Older NB use the exact same 6.5 A rated driver part. Suggestions have been made to either double the driver or to use an external PEx to split the load and allow better thermal management just in case. Same applies to the current NB (v3). Those safety measures have been proposed on forums as I can hardly control the lack of common sense when it comes to high current, fried driver or fried led and I prefer beginners to walk on eggshells.

Also, the NB isn't the thing that limits the current in the LED (unless when adjusting the drive), the external resistor is (and the battery of course).

Click to expand...

I stand corrected. Thanks, Erv.

erv said:

to go with Arkm, the internal diffuser (and I hope I refer to the right thing, which is the MR-like thin tube inserted in a blade...

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Yep. That's what I meant.

H0llyw00d said:

I stand corrected. Thanks, Erv.

Click to expand...

NP ! I wrote the post in the train yesterday and got to realize I might have been a little harsh in the tone which was not intended. I see and read a lot of misinformation regarding direct drive or simply many rapes of the Ohm's Law, and I'm really trying to help beginners. The main "issue" with direct drive (if it can be called an issue) is that you really need to measure your led before you can set the resistor, and this requires a bench power supply. A lot of people go with "I red the you don't need any resistors for blue and green" or that "the datasheet give Vf = 3.1V" which isn't the correct way to adjust the current for the LED.
Not digressing here, but for our OP here, there's probably a blade upgrade to do with film wraps (if I understood correctly how the current blade is made) and maybe a current adjustment. I think the blade rework will change it all instantly

I wanted to thank all of you for being so helpful! I went out and bought myself some clear wrap and it really does make a difference, noticeable brightness and color even when right next to a light source!! Still getting a similar brightness out of my tri-cree compared to the old one but I think that's more to do with the amber v. white leds. I'll try and post pictures or video later but for now, Thanks!!!