This project was at first just an exercise in the making cylindrical objects, but evolved into a project to make a toy lightsaber that would work in real life. In this project is about how i would make the internal electronics work for a toy. My drawings from inventor 2020, and finally some renderings of how it would look in real life.
The total time spent on making this project was about 1 work-week (being ~8 hours per day) which all include: the time spend coming up with the initial design. Time spend reworking the design into a toy. Calculating the ergonomic sizes of the toy. -And finally drawing and rendering the lightsaber.
Enjoy:
The initial design was to use 3xAA batteries, but after realizing the shere power it would need to keep the bright light on, in the toy, on for more then an hour, it would need more than 3x1.6 Volts. I changed it into the a 9V battery, which also made it better in regard to its storage space. The circuit i came up with was the following:
On the Picture above: the positive direction of the current would flow clockwise around the circuit. Without any numbers being calculated, the design came down to the following:
1) the battery goes up to the switch at the hilt of the lightsaber toy.
2) From the switch it would go down again to enter a resistor and-
3) -following the resistor the power would lead out into an LED powerful enough to beam light through an opaque acrylic cylinder (the light part of the lightsaber) and finally-
4) -the current would return to the battery, completing the circuit.
For the pictures above this text: This is how i have chosen to design the circuit with space for wires and resistors to be implemented. the green in this half-view is the an opaque piece of acrylic that can be removed with a normal hexagonal screw and be replaced with a bigger 75 cm identical piece to give the feeling of wielding a lightsaber.
For the pictures below: These are pictures of all the components in the toy. Note that the LED & switch is both meant to only be placeholder items to make the assembly make sense otherwise are these parts all made with the design idea of letting the child take it apart and find out "how it works", without breaking it.
The following are two videos showcasing how the assemble and disassemble would work for the child.
Finally I would like to show you the renderings form Fusion 360, I've made of the project:
