Okay, I did a write-up for my light saber mod. Itās on another forum though.
Short version: removed the obnoxious stock switch (was an āoutieā so I kept bumping it by accident), replaced it with a better one (recessed, has a light inside), and added a charge/kill port so I wonāt have to open the hilt unless something inside breaks. And I did a pretty messy job of it all, but it works and the mess is safely hidden inside.
A large part of the reason for this mod is that the āSaberCore 2ā driver board has ridiculously high power draw in standby mode, shown here after turning the blade on then off again:
Most of that 200mA seems to burn off as heat in one chip, which stays too hot to touch unless power is physically disconnected:
I hope the heat wonāt be a problem, but Iāve already heard from one person whose driver refuses to boot unless they blow on the hot chip to cool it off. Their thread got removed from the forum by an admin though, which honestly gives me the chills because itās kind of an important thing to know. I should probably get some thermal transfer cubes and stick one between the hot chip and the aluminum host.
A few pics:
Not actually the layout I followed, but close enough. All I changed was tapping the switch light off the driverās power source instead of the blade LED. Hereās the actual layout I used:
I accidentally wired this wrong and didnāt realize it until everything was assembled enough to test. Oops. Much swearing ensued, since itās a huge pain to move a wire after everything is all soldered together.
The switch had a few posts to connect tooā¦ and it had to be done with part of the hilt already in place.
On the driver, I only needed to access PWR+, PWR~~, and BAT~~.
Taking out the kill key causes power to be connected, as indicated by the lighted switch: (this switch uses 20ma ā¦ super-high current for an accent LED, considering the Kronos X6 tailcap is almost as bright at 0.5mA)
Magic trick and sanity check.
I made a fake battery so I wonāt have to remove the real one. Every time I open the hilt, it risks damaging the internals.
But in the end, it works and all is well.
I can finally turn it completely off by putting a little plastic plug in the charge port. And soon I should have some 3D-printed plugs which are low enough profile to leave in during use, and merely need to be rotated to connect or disconnect power.
It may be just a glorified green flashlight stick, but itās really fun to play with.