4 Lessons from Building a Hundred Lightsabers from Scratch.

3 years ago, my team was given the daunting task of building 100 lightsabers for SMU's Convocation 2014. They had to be robust, affordable, strong, bright enough, durable, and did I mention robust? Every lightsaber had to survive rigorous sparring in the hands of a crew of Hip Hop Dancers. Here are 4 lessons I learnt from that madness. Or, to put it more accurately...

From that madness, 4 lessons I learnt...

1- Often the best and cheapest, the simple idea is!

There were a few simple requirements for the lightsabers - they should controllable and light up only when necessary, they had to be bright enough and come in an array of colours, they had to be strong enough for some light sparring (see what I did there), be powered from an internal battery while remaining lightweight, and they had to cost less than $20 apiece.

We tested out a wide range of ideas when it came to building a lightsaber that did all of that. These included doing things the way IndustrialLight&Magic did it back in '77 with coatings that reflected stage lighting, UV reactive paints, Electroluminescent Wire, custom Arduino-controlled-DMX-compatible WirelessSabers...

We eventually settled on the rather "boring" idea of a simple battery powered LED strip, controlled by a tiny rocking switch, and suspended within a Polycarbonate tube so that it'd bounce around and "flash" on impact. But this simple solution met all the requirements - the performers could switch their sabers on at the precise moments. We searched for and eventually found a supplier who gave us wholesale prices on ridiculously tiny 23AE 12v remote control batteries. A trip into the depths of Changi Industrial Park gave us a low-cost source of Polycarbonate tubing - way stronger than commonly-used lightsaber acrylic which would've shattered on impact. And the best part? Each lightsaber only cost $13 in parts - saving the team over $700 in total.

Here's the thing - the simple idea wouldn't have been possible if we hadn't failed fast and failed often with the complex ones. It taught me that simple, elegant solutions often hide the immense amount of thought and engineering that went into prior iterations of their current forms.

2 - In-house, it pays to do things!

We tend to like outsourcing the tedious stuff. Or the things we think we don't have a background in. After designing the Lightsabers, our original plan was to mobilise our entire production team and spend the weekend building a mini Ford Factory and getting all 100 Lightsabers done on a student production line. I was trying to figure out how I'd teach a team of Management Students to handle soldering irons safely.

Our school manager came to the rescue, suggesting that we pay an external contractor to assemble the lightsabers for us. I was incredibly relieved, and I quickly compiled a build guide for the lightsabers, talking the contractor through the process. [The guide is Creative Commons by the way - ping me if you'd like to build your own!]

Worst. Mistake. Ever.

Imagine my horror when we took delivery of the lightsabers. Instead of drilling two neat 5mm holes to mount the switches, he'd drilled halfway and chiselled his way through the piping, creating a spiderweb of fractures in the pipe. Instead of mounting the LED strip as a "suspended" system that'd flash on impact, he filled the pipes up with glue (that was still goopy when we took delivery). Instead of soldering the wires to the LED strip, he merely twisted them together and left them bare - a major short-circuit risk.

It taught me a very important lesson - Don't hire an interior contractor to build props. That's the thing about contracting work outside - you'd need to find a specialist who takes pride in the job, and not just pick the cheapest or fastest option. And always ask them for a first sample before a full production run. Teaching my team how to solder safely, and building the Lightsabers in-house on a Saturday would've saved all of us much heartache later on, as the cracks in the switch mounts grew...

3- Easy to maintain, you shall design things to be!

...which brings me to lesson #3.

My MacBook Pro is almost 7 years old. It's the last of the MacBooks that has non-soldered on RAM, a user replaceable hard drive, and I love it to bits. At least, what's left of it that I haven't already replaced before.

Working in the energy industry has made me really conscious of the sheer amount of power that goes into making the products and devices we take for granted, and planned obsolescence is really making things exponentially worse. That's what made me build my first PC from scratch earlier this year - there's a certain joy that comes from knowing you can upgrade a graphics card or RAM chip as your video production needs change.

A fortunate side-effect of designing our own lightsabers was knowing exactly how they were put together. This allowed us to conduct rapid repairs when they inevitably cracked at their switches or when they short-circuited thanks to the lack-of-soldering - we even set up a "lightsaber hospital" with all our tools onsite during the event.

If you're interested in finding out how to repair or upgrade the products you currently own, do check out iFixit. It saves money, but more importantly, greatly reduces your energy impact on the world. :)

4 - In your team, you must trust!

It might sound trite to say this, but my Convocation experience taught me to trust my team. There's no point going all Rule of Two here - it pays to recognise your fellow Masters and tap on their strengths when you need them most.

I'd bitten off more than I could chew for the project. Apart from designing the lightsabers, I'd taught myself electronics and learnt to program Arduino control boards for our Droid Costumes, was singlehandedly soldering everything, and had to manage costs and bills of materials for all aspects of the project. It reached a point when I wasn't delivering at all.

It'd have ended [prequel-level] badly if not for my team.

We stayed up together till midnight in SMU building the props, we went on shopping expeditions to IKEA, and they took charge of planning the wardrobe and designing makeup for the cast. They jumped in wholeheartedly and came up with creative ideas and solutions to the countless problems we ran into along the road. I regret not trusting them and getting them involved from the very beginning - imagine how much more amazing Convocation 2014 would've looked if I'd gotten everyone involved at the outset.

Today, I'm still learning to work alongside the people around me and to trust that they have my back. It's a bad habit I still fall into every now and then, but if you work with me and catch me trying to go solo again, please pull me back from the dark side ;). And, of course, live long and pros--

Just kidding. May the Force be with you.