Hello there! We've just made the world's first retractable plasma-based lightsaber Big thank you to our YouTube members and Patreon supporters for supporting the channel they get tons of perks including seeing our videos before anyone else like the lightsaber test video which is available on our channel right now for members A real retractable plasma based lightsaber the pinnacle of sci-fi tech and probably one of the most sought after fictional technologies ever As you know we've been developing different lightsabers or like they're called in star wars lore proto-sabers for the past four years now From some initial
power supply tests that got the fire department called on us to version one using nitinol wire to version two using a tungsten titanium blade hybrid version 2.1 so we could have a real-life lightsaber duel which by the way was extremely unsafe To finally our kylo ren style lightsaber complete with a 3d printed titanium hilt A proto-saber of course is a lightsaber with an external power pack since you know we don't exactly have d-sized batteries capable of putting out more power than a nuclear power plant which by the way is what you'd need for a lightsaber
to function like it does in the movies Now in my opinion what we've made so far are some of the closest representations of lightsabers using real life technologies they look like a lightsaber they sound like a lightsaber and at temperatures of over 3000 degrees they actually cut stuff like a lightsaber But as you know the internet is not easily pleased those are just red hot sticks that's just a red hot piece of metal that's not even a real lightsaber your lightsaber sucks and you should feel bad too Luckily I have thick skin since I've read
over half a million comments on my YouTube channel That's equivalent to like 200 full-length novels by the way So despite the trolls best wishes we have not given up which is good since you know you could count on one hand the amount of people in this world actually working on lightsaber tech Anyway how the heck do you make a plasma based lightsaber well best theories say that plasma is held in a beam by a magnetic field which scientifically checks out you see the issue is producing a strong enough electromagnetic field to contain a blade well
the lightsaber would quite literally have to be built inside of a box coated in an electromagnets which turns it into kind of a useless science project I made a lightsaber Luckily we've come up with an alternate solution to control the flow of plasma which allows us to make a retractable blade and even change its color We're going to be using laminar flow you know that cool thing where liquids flow smoothly We actually teased this project months ago on our instagram which maybe we shared too soon since it's resulted in almost all new comments being where
is the lightsaber I mean come on guys it might not be brain surgery but building a lightsaber is basically rocket science it's taken us quite a few months to get just right and we also had to upgrade our equipment in the shop to even be able to manufacture it like our new Tormach 1100 mx cnc machine complete with a fourth axis Bogdan's been pretty excited to try it out and since star wars was a long time ago in a galaxy far far away it's only fitting that our first real plasma lightsaber is steampunk I think
it's Bogdan's turn to design that hilt Steampunk is a subset of science fiction which incorporates antique design aesthetics from the 19th century with modern technologies When I was scrolling through to get some design inspirations for the lightsaber I came across this picture and it instantly caught my attention i think steampunk would be great for this design because we're going to be using a lot of gauges valves copper tubing and regulators which are going to look perfect in this installation Here's the final design of a lightsaber hilt it incorporates lots of materials including brass copper stainless
glass and even leather to give it that true steampunk look I've even decided to add the kyber crystal heating chamber using some EL wire and a neon bulb to make it look really cool in the dark The copper pipes that carry our flammable gasses are nice and visible and the adjustment knobs are easily accessible Thanks to our new Tormach machines we are now able to manufacture much more intricate designs such as this one let's Make It Real This video is sponsored by AFK Arena AFK Arena is a light rpg the best rpg for the busy
you as you know we're always crazy busy here at hacksmith industries which is why we like afk arena it's a rewarding non-grindy style rpg so it doesn't require a huge time investment it's easy to get into and can be played casually when you have time I've actually caught the team playing afk between doing work but hey that's okay How's it going? oh you're not even machining you're playing a game what are you doing man Playing AFK Arena come on it's running on its own Fight demons get epic gear collect heroes and level them up unlike
most rpgs AFK also has a cool fresco art style which makes it so much different from all the others it's refreshing Team up with seven unique factions and different hero unions to enhance your strategy and come out on top With so many different characters to choose from you feel like a collector plus if you use my link below you can get a special hero either Zafrael or Lucretia their celestial and hypogean elite heroes Seize the opportunity and download AFK arena today plus it helps support our channel Oh my god that looks incredible yeah well put
some gloves on I'm sorry can't get any smudges on a lightsaber That is incredible I think you've outdone yourself on this one Bogdan Look at the detail in that if that's not steampunk I don't know what is But the real question is, how are we going to power this? Even with all of our new equipment and capabilities here at Hacksmith industries we're still kind of bound by the laws of thermodynamics which means we're still going to have to make this into a proto saber with a power pack separate from the hilt now we've made incredibly
energy dense power packs before but in order to get enough power for a plasma based lightsaber we're gonna have to use something with more energy dense fuel in this case lpg compressed liquid propane gas which can give us 50 times more energy per kilogram than a lipo Now that's a pretty incredible difference and the cool thing you probably have this right at home We're talking about normal propane that you use in your barbecue So how do we turn propane into a superheated beam of plasma? The answer lies with one of the most satisfying demonstrations of
physics phenomena of fluids laminar flow basically we need a large array of laminar flow nozzles to create highly concentrated flow of gas to create a plasma beam lucky for us we aren't the only ones who need this and highly specialized gas nozzles like this can be found at a rather high price This nozzle right here costs over four thousand dollars and it's used in the glass blowing industry to achieve maximum temperature we need complete combustion which means in addition to this propane we're actually going to be using oxygen as well That doesn't sound dangerous, right?
Anyways let's see how it works First turn on the propane, then we turn on the oxygen, some safety glasses and the sparker So look at that Is that not a lightsaber? This beam is really cool it's actually burning at around 4 000 fahrenheit which means is capable of cutting through a lot of stuff Should we cut through some stuff? Whoa so this is actually our old lightsaber blade made of titanium and look at that it's already white hot That is so bright, Jesus The really cool thing about doing a flame like this is we can
actually color it using salts Let's start with some boric acid What color do you think it's going to turn the blade? Got your guesses? Look at that Next up we have calcium chloride Look at that red orange, that almost hurts to look at We have some strontium chloride Whoa that is like a road flare, this actually hurts to look at Look at that Finally we have some sodium chloride also known as salt And look at that we've got Rey's lightsaber right here Is that not cool? So we're able to produce a blue lightsaber, a green
lightsaber, a red lightsaber, an amber lightsaber and even a yellow lightsaber How awesome is that? I should probably turn this off though That took a lot of fine tuning to get the blade to the right length and turning it off wasn't the most elegant Luckily Bogdan's going to be actually making a circuit with two fancy valves which means we'll actually be able to get a computer to control the flow of gas to allow for this to ignite and retract with the press of a button So I'm gonna let Bogdan handle that After twelve weeks of
anticipation we finally got our hands on proportional control valves These will allow us to control exactly how much gas goes into the lightsaber and therefore make it extend and retract now we just need to figure out how to control it and to do that I'll be making a custom printed circuit board I'm going to be using Altium designer which is the industry standard for PCB design software and it's super powerful This is the printed circuit board that Charles designed to use for the Crysis arm but since both projects are using pneumatic valves and auxiliary outputs
we'll be able to use it for our lightsaber with some minor modifications This board looks great if you want to view this PCB yourself you can use Altium viewer One of the only machines we don't have in the shop is a PCB mill but why would we get one of those when websites like JLCPCB will allow us to order high quality boards in a matter of days for just two dollars for five boards We'd need like 15 000 boards to make up the cost of one of those machines Let's get these ordered While we wait
for that I'm gonna get st- Well that was quick let's start soldering Okay To better understand how the lightsaber electronics work check out our page on maker.io We've got to build a steampunk power pack with these pieces I'll let Chris handle that Well this all needs to be polished before I can start building I'm gonna let Dave handle that No Fine I'll do it myself We did it The world's first retractable plasma based lightsaber Now obviously we're going to have an amazing test video for this We've got tons of stuff set up behind us to
really put this through its paces including cutting through a steel door Anyways that video is actually available right now for our Patreon supporters and YouTube members which is a great time to support the channel and get to see this video early For everyone else it'll be out next week Thanks for watching and make sure you subscribe
