How do I go about reducing the diameter of a section of my lightsaber?

ShaqinOff

New Member
Hey guys!

I am pretty new to building lightsabers and I ran into an issue. I have this ROTJ saber that lacks a switch box, so I decided to grab a graflex clamp for it. The problem is, the section where the clamp would go is too big, and would need the diameter reduced. I don't have access to a CNC or anything like that, so I don't know what to do about this.

Is there anyway I could go about this without a CNC or is it a lost cause to try and get the clamp into the saber? Thanks!
 
I think it's pretty safe to say you would need a lathe for that kind of work. Is it pretty far off? If it's only a little bit you would try sanding but that would take forever.
 
Andrew is right, a lathe would be best. You could try sanding but it will take forever and put the piece out of round? How much needs to come off? There's alot of people on the boards with a lathe, if it's just taking a few thousandths off I'm sure someone will turn it for you.

Where you located?
 
How much does it need reduced by? A good quality ******* file will take metal off pretty quickly, especially if it's just aluminium. It won't be perfectly round, but if you're putting a clamp over it that won't matter as much. If you can't find someone with a lathe to do it, I'd say that's your best option.
 
If you could clamp the entire thing between two wooden "washers" with a threaded rod through the center and some nuts, then chuck up the rod and spin it with a drill, a good file or wet sandpaper would take off 5-10 thou in fairly short order, and you could polish it back up again. Just a case of maintaining good contact all the way around even if it's not turning concentrically. If you use sandpaper/emery cloth you could just clamp it in your hand and hold the drill with the other. You're basically doing piston lapping but much more aggressively.

Otherwise, yeah, sending it to a machinist to shave down would probably be the order of the day. But CNC is definitely not required just to thin down a tube.
 
Andrew is right, a lathe would be best. You could try sanding but it will take forever and put the piece out of round? How much needs to come off? There's alot of people on the boards with a lathe, if it's just taking a few thousandths off I'm sure someone will turn it for you.

Where you located?

Not much needs to come off, give or take the thickness of the clamp really. I'm in Pittsburgh right now, around the Pitt campus. I was hoping that we might have a lathe on campus but I doubt we do

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How tight is it? Did you loosen the clamp all the way?
I can get it onto the saber, its just too large to actually close the clamp
 
File/Dremel off the clamp tabs inside the clamp first, then you'll know if you need to do anything to the hilt.
 
Oh man. If we only knew you still had the clamp tabs on it... yea start there. Get those tabs off and most likely you will be just fine.


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Yeah looking at it now it looks like the design of that saber included the thickness of the clamp instead of removing that material to fit a clamp over it. Probably needs to be reduced a little more than the thickness of the clamp band.
 
Yeah looking at it now it looks like the design of that saber included the thickness of the clamp instead of removing that material to fit a clamp over it. Probably needs to be reduced a little more than the thickness of the clamp band.

Yeah, that's exactly what it is. and I overlooked that when buying a clamp
 
Could you cut the clamp into 2 halves and attach a strip of metal in between as an extender? Or use metal tape to bridge the gap and clamp it together at the other end? The cut would be down the middle on the back, opposite side from where the activation circuit goes.
 
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I talked with the director of the machine shop here at Pitt and he told me to just bring it over tomorrow and he'll decide whether they'll thin the section for me.
 
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