www.3ders.org

Dec 8, 2014 | By Alec

The recent trailer for the eagerly anticipated new Star Wars movie (The Force Awakens) has had a very powerful impact on the web. While cool and exciting in many ways, it also included a controversial feature: a lightsaber with a crossguard. Regardless of where you stand on this heated issue (is the design capable of deflecting another lightsaber?), don't you think it would be cool to 3D print a lightsaber yourself? It might be the only way to make up your mind on the crossguard once and for all.

Fortunately, LeFabShop, a French start-up offering 3D printers and printing services, has shared a very cool design that will allow you to replicate it yourself. Explaining their motivation, their team was equally conflicted about the new lightsaber of the trailer. 'As Makers, we couldn't help but try to find out by ourselves if this "crossguard" design was a good configuration or not... So we decided to build one, with our army of 3D printers.'

Dedicated fans of both 3D printing and Star Wars might have already come across some designs for lightsabers, but this particular design is definitely worth checking out. Not only will it allow you to recreate this controversial weapon of the Sith, its designs are also very modular and can be adjusted to resemble any lightsaber from the franchise; even Darth Maul's!

The one seen the images above was 3D printed in PLA filament using an unnamed FDM 3D printer with a layer resolution of 0.2. 'ABS could probably be used, but this would affect the tolerance and the assembly between the parts.' And you can easily recreate it by downloading the STL files on their Instructables page here. Any FDM printer will do, but on the safe side it might be best to use one with a 'z height' of at least 15 cm.

The STL package contains the following parts:

• A long telescopic laser, printed all at once
• A short telescopic laser, exclusively for the crossguard
• 6 different sabers tip, including the T shaped crossguard
• A belt clip (very handy if you don't want to hold in in your hands all the time.)
• Grips
• Lightsaber switches
• A lightsaber's cap
• A connector to assemble many sabers bodies together

While numerous, they are very simply an intuitively assembled, so this project is accessible to just about everyone with a printer. To customize your lightsaber, you might need to print doubles of a few parts and decide on what top design to use. The thick tube with stripes is the body of your lightsaber, and you'll need to combine a number of them depending on your intentions. They used two for a regular lightsaber, though you could use three or four for Darth Maul's saber and one for Yoda's. Want a crossguard? Simply add the T-shaped top to your lightsaber, though you can obviously use one of the different tops for another model.

After assembly, it's simply a matter of painting it to achieve the right colors. Red is the color of choice for Sith lords, though green, blue and even purple might be safer options to keep the temptations of the dark side at bay.

All in all, it's a very fun, customizable and easy project that any fellow Star Wars geek would enjoy. And enjoy it while you still can, because who will know what happens when Disney's lawyers start worrying about 3D printed breaches of copyright?

 

Posted in 3D Printing Applications

 

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