saber build

Is there a heatsink on the bottom of your led?(Looks like a round solid piece of copper shaped like a T from the side, about the side of your thumbnail probably in both width and height), or looks like similar to the item on the right? And if/so did you put any heat paste between the two?, both help to remove heat from the led and into the handle, now if the handle doesn't have a vent anywhere on it, that might also be why it gets hot(sometimes just changing the pommel at the bottom to one designed for a "speaker" can give i enough vent of air to cool it down as well);

Tellahane wrote: Is there a heatsink on the bottom of your led?(Looks like a round solid piece of copper shaped like a T from the side, about the side of your thumbnail probably in both width and height), or looks like similar to the item on the right? And if/so did you put any heat paste between the two?, both help to remove heat from the led and into the handle, now if the handle doesn't have a vent anywhere on it, that might also be why it gets hot(sometimes just changing the pommel at the bottom to one designed for a "speaker" can give i enough vent of air to cool it down as well);

Well it was a stock UltraSabers Apprentice, I can't even pull the electronics out to see whats inside for crying out loud. The switch won't unscrew - I don't know if they glued the thing in, or what, it's ridiculous.

after 5 months of aggravation and lousy timing i've finally managed to procure a nanobiscotte v2 soundboard which should arrive in about a week. hopefully this solves my lighting and sound issue on silverfang....i've already got all the other parts from the original build list (during my aggravation i started over from scratch on the internals)

it's the first bit of good news for me in nearly 2 months....

CryojenX wrote: Well it was a stock UltraSabers Apprentice, I can't even pull the electronics out to see whats inside for crying out loud. The switch won't unscrew - I don't know if they glued the thing in, or what, it's ridiculous.

they're usually screwed in, but done so pretty tight....you need to tape around the switch so you don't scar up the hilt unless you want some "battle damage" then use either a vise or vise grips to grab the black guard around the switch and apply considerable effort in a counterclockwise direction...it won't come out easy, but it will come out...i should also mention you'll probably have to cut the wires leading to the switch from the led and from the battery pack/soundboard...

there's some youtube videos that show the process....

I know that for a lot of people customisation would be the go but I truly lack creativity for the most part. I was actually wondering whether the custom jobs are just for appearances or they're tougher than the other ones as I've been watching some competitive dueling on youtube. I think I have a decent chance!

http://www.saberforge.com/crystal-sabers/monarch-saber/monarch-hero

This particular model appeals to me, but the warranty doesn't cover duels as the exposed crystal chamber is seen as a 'weakness'. Is there a way I could build this from scratch whilst reinforcing it? Can I alter my style to protect that particular weak point? Or do I just run the gauntlet and keep replacing it when I shag it?

Just as - provided the right materials and tools - anything can be built, so can anything be broken, too, provided the given force. If the manufacturer tells you this saber is not duel worthy, it means that by their own estimates the materials they used and the joints they employed would not for long endure your average illuminated saber combat scenario. That doesn't mean you run at breaking it with just about any staged choreographed fight you plan, nor does it mean that a saber of this kind could not withstand some serious and vicious larping either. It all depends on what you build yours from and how you secure the parts. It would just mean that this particular one they don't think is their best dueling model.
Keep in mind that this one in particular is an approximation, albeit one of the cruder ones, of a licensed design, namely the TFU Starkiller. There have been other saber smiths replicating this model, some more pretty and less durable, others maybe more combat-worthy but perhaps less faithful to the original design.
An exposed crystal chamber is almost always seen as a weak spot, because natural crystals don't come in convenient shapes and sizes to be secured. Of course, in an exposed chamber you usually cut a good part of the outer casing away, and that takes away stability.
You will notice on the monarch there are two rods in front of the crystal. Now picture them being just a bit further in the front, welded into the parts they extend out of and made of, say, solid bronze or brass. On the other hand, imagine if they are instead copper tubes where wires run through and merely screwed into threads inside the aluminium surroundings.
I do not know which of those is closer to how the Saberforge Monarch is built; my point is that while an exposed crystal chamber is generally less durable than an internal one, and while a saber with a chassis that runs through the entire hilt is generally more durable than any where the chassis is interrupted by an illuminated rock, those are really but rules of thumb and may not apply in every one given comparison. There is also no metric to quantify how much of a weak spot a particular design element is or how much it matters in any given combat scenario.
The reason I recommend to build your saber yourself, if you have to, is that this way you will know everything that went wrong and that can still go wrong yourself. You will also know how to fix it, if you can fix it and how to treat your saber right to avoid stressing its weaknesses in the first place.