Star Wars: Fall Order
Cal’s/Jaro Tapal’s Lightsaber
Playing Star Wars: Fallen Order gave me the itch to make a lightsaber.
Shortly after I finished building my watercooled PC, my cousin let me borrow his Origin account to play Star Wars: Fallen Order. I was instantly hooked on the game design and game play. It also didn’t help that a bunch of other Star Wars related stuff was coming out at the time like The Mandalorian and the new Star Wars movie. I had to have a lightsaber, but I didn’t know which one to make. I finally decided on Fallen Order’s iconic lightsaber wielded by Cal and Jaro Tapal.
https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/starwarsjedifallenorder/images/7/71/Star_Wars_Jedi_Fallen_Order_03.jpeg/revision/latest?cb=20190413231454
This was by far the most difficult thing I’ve 3D modeled yet.
Starting this project was pretty difficult. I didn’t even know where to start. My 3D modeling skills are rather limited since I’m self taught, but with the power of YouTube videos, anything is possible! If I can do it, you can too!
I started out with this blueprint. This is a screenshot of the game’s cover reveal.
Blueprints I used as a base.
I started off with the easiest part, the emitter. It’s just an extruded tube with some angular cut-outs. I then worked my way down from there, one piece at a time from the switch, to the handle, and finally the pommel. For this project, I used basically every tool I learned so far: sweeps, sectional analysis, angled chamfers, etc. I pulled out all the big guns for this.
The completed modeling of the lightsaber.
My biggest dilemma was figuring out how this was all going to fit together. I don’t think this is the perfect design, but I designed every part to screw together. I figured this would be an easy way to take everything apart and to put back together if there ever comes time to do maintenance.
Screw portion of the handle that goes into the switch. This is also done on for the pommel.
Fitting the electronics
Going into the electronics portion of this, I was stumped for a long time. I needed a way to take out the electronics at any point to fix things if something broke. Unlike my other projects, I can’t really split a lightsaber in half and put it together with screws. I designed a “sled” that slides into the main handle portion of the lightsaber. This sled will hold the control board, the battery management system, and the battery.
I had to go through 5 revisions of the sled in order to get it to fit. I designed it to be slightly oversized compared to the hole in the handle. This way the “wing tabs” that extend out are able to grip the sides of the handle in order to hold it in place. It’s not a perfect design, but it works. For future lightsabers, I won’t be using this design. I have to find a better way to do this.
In order to remove the sled, I have to unscrew the handle from the emitter, and then pull the sled out using the little tab that I extruded at the end. This way I have access to all the components and can easily replace them if needed.
The electronics are similar to that of the Guardian Sword++ build. I’ll be using:
Adafruit Trinket M0
Adafruit Lipo backpack
3.7V 2200 mAh Lipo Battery
2x Generic LED Strip Ws2812B 144LED’s per meter
16mm Heavy duty toggle button
Printing the lightsaber
Printing the lightsaber was pretty straightforward, although I wish I designed the print to use less supports. In hindsight, there are many places I could have designed better to avoid the use of supports. The supports were mainly placed on the inside of the print, making extraction really difficult. It doesn’t help that PETG has a really strong bonding force, so ripping out the supports was a real pain. I should have chamfered all the inside edges so that support materials wouldn’t be necessary.
After printing it and holding it in person, WOW this thing is huge. It kind of makes sense because in the game the lightsaber looks rather big hanging on Cal’s belt. It hangs at his hips and touches his knee! It’s literally the length of his thigh. It also makes sense because Jaro Tapal is a giant. I don’t know his actual height, but judging by his height from his in-game model, he looks to be at least 8 feet tall.
Priming, Sanding, Painting… My worst enemy…
My brother actually volunteered to sand and paint my lightsaber for me because I’m designing and printing him Morded’s Clarent sword from the Fate series. WHEW thank god I don’t have to sand… Sanding is the bane of my existence.
Sanding and filler primer is still in progress, but I have a feeling this will end up really freakin’ cool. I bought all my electronics already. All I need to buy now is the lightsaber tube to house the LEDs!
To be continued!