4000° Plasma Lightsaber Build (Retractable Blade) [video] | Hacker News Reader

4000° Plasma Lightsaber Build (Retractable Blade) [video]

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173 pointsxbmcuser93 comments

Sad but not surprised about the negativity from some comments here.

So many complaints about monetization and pointing out how it's not a perfect just-like-the-movies lightsaber.

I enjoyed the video and thought it was awesome. With just a pinch of imagination I really was amazed at how close this is to my childhood fantasies.

Why would I expect content creators to work for free? And frankly I just can't believe the comments which come across as offended that it is a gas torch and not some magical new technology that has all the properties of movie lightsabers.

Then again, putting down others to make yourself feel better is a tale as old as time.

Hacker news - come here to find out all the reasons why you should be unimpressed by cool things.

The video would get more credit if it showed the "light saber" some more (rather than pushing to pay to get more footage) and if it weren't filled with ads.

It's a great idea to use a blow torch and all that. I want to see it. It's just sad the video is more about getting eyeballs and monetization than showing anything.

You reply to the parent with exactly the sort of opinion they despair of?

Hacksmith is transparent this is how they fund builds.

I realize we've become entitled to expecting people to work for free for our entertainment, but expertise, shop equipment, parts, and build time are not free.

No they are not free. But there are other ways to approach monetization. There is a style to some videos that some of just just find annoying and a real turnoff. Literally.

What are the other, more “high brow” ways, to approach monetization?

Go watch some of the videos from “Primitive Technology” or “My Mechanics” or "Silently Cooking".

No talking, no music, goofy thumbnail pics with emoji faces or red circles. Just creating.

The content may not be your cup of tea but personally I as well as others seem to enjoy them.

Not the same style but Marques Brownlee is hugely successful while creating useful, entertaining, and valuable content.

By way of example, NileRed and AppliedScience take extremely different approaches to both presentation and acknowledging sponsorship.

Here are 5 YT channels covering technology, engineering and tools that feel much less monetization-focused, but still produce very informative content:

- Tech Ingredients

- DIY Perks

- Brainiac75

- Project Farm (not really about farming -- cut & dry tools & such review)

- AvE (Arduino vs. evil) (not really about arduino)

(sibling comment included a couple others that I would have included here also)

The first two focus on engineering and building unique things, so are probably the most similar to the creators in question. AvE is all over the map and an either love or hate kind of channel -- and the channel seems more about educating, teaching and evaluating others' engineering.

> There is a style to some videos that some of just just find annoying and a real turnoff. Literally.

Maybe because we reward this style with views, engagement and ultimately money.

>>> I realize we've become entitled to expecting people to work for free...

Do you realize that they made around $30k from youtube alone for this single video?

$30k income

$2k laminar flow gas nozzle (believe that was mentioned in the video)

~$1k misc parts? (including prototypes and testing)

So that's ~$27k for labor and shop depreciation (machinery and building)

So ~$25k left.

Let's say it took 4 people 1 week (40 hours) to build. 160 person-hours total.

$25,000 / 160 = $156 / hr

For feast-or-famine creative work, that doesn't seem unreasonable.

This video was just showing the build. They said that they'll share the lightsaber in action on Youtube next week.

This build is just another stepping stone in a long process. Their older videos on other lightsaber prototypes are here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUdLlGLSQHQ&list=PLbncXbXlaN...

They aren't shy about their process of iteration at all. And that is a great thing that I think a lot of HN could appreciate. Especially in hardware, things take their own time.[0]

More power to Hacksmith (pun intended). I think they stuff they are putting out is amazing considering the budgets, time, and manpower issues. They somehow are managing to fund, off YouTube and ads, the crazy ideas you'd get from too many beers with too many Lockheed R&D researchers. That's impressive on it's own. These guys are embodying the old MIT 'hacker' ethos very well.

[0] Good Lord, I wish they would spend more time on the safety part of the builds. The lasers they get from StryoPyro will blind them sooner than later. I remember being caviler about lasers. But then I lost some vision, and now I'm not.

I thought it was really impressive how they created it. So, at least the both of us enjoyed it. :)

Cool - I'm glad someone else here did :)

well the name, it's a gas saber :)

Its funny how they have framed the video so that you will not see the end of the flame (there are some shots with full length blade, but really short) or see how the flame behaves in horizontal position.

I think this is a cool project, but yeah of course they're stretching the definition a little bit. "Backpack powered laminar flow propane torch" doesn't get you 12mil views on youtube.

I dunno, if Colin Furze did this with that kind of title, I suspect he wouldn't have aaaany trouble getting that much exposure without stretching the truth.

I had that thought as well, but TBH I don't know much about physics.

At 4000 degrees Fahrenheit, would the flame's fuel gasses technically be a plasma?

And if so, then what's the detail that made both of us think that what they built doesn't match our expectations? Maybe we assumed they'd say "flame" for this design, and only say "plasma" if it was a cold plasma?

If the gas is hot enough to be seen, its generally a plasma. Basically all fire is plasma.

This is absolutely false. Fire is NOT plasma. Also, CO2 doesn't start to dissociate until around 4000 F. Which means basically all the electrons are still bound to elements and the chemical bonds and not free as to a plasma.

I agree they are doing this, but you can more or less get a feel for how it looks tilted pretty close to the horizontal here:

https://youtu.be/xC6J4T_hUKg?t=702

I think the real problem is probably how it must look when you move the blade quickly. It's essentially just a hose, so the "beam" will be very loopy. As far as I can tell, they really avoid moving the beam in the video for this reason.

Yup, I’m sure they could have made a regular creme brûlée burner look like a viable lightsaber if they wanted to.

The handle and backpack looked really cool though!

The video made me curious about eye protection. For any of the flame colors he created, was there the possibility of a strong UV component that could cause eye damage?

A few years ago I considered showing my kids some pyro demonstrations using magnesium tape and thermite. I know magnesium flame has a strong UV component, and I figured I'd just keep that out of direct line of site. But I couldn't get enough info on the spectrum of thermite flame to feel comfortable going forward with the demo.

For anyone thinking UV isn’t dangerous because it’s a component of sunlight, don’t underestimate the power of the radiation from a small nearby source.

A few arc welds while wearing a t shirt is enough to give you an unwanted “tan”.

Radiation burn is what it is. Don't try to get an actual tan this way. Edit: parent knows this of course. Not every one does.

Even intense visible light (for instance from burning thermite, or perhaps a propane torch) can cause eye damage.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaophthalmology/article-a...

Wish someone told me this as a kid because I burnt many strips of Magnesium that I got my hands on from my older sister's chemistry lab when she was in high school.

TLDW: their LightSaber is a beautiful finely tuned propane and oxygen blowtorch.

What happens when two lightsaber beams collide in a lightsaber battle? Nothing good, apparently. The gas would be dispersed everywhere and the users would get burnt.

You could put a solid rod in the middle of the flame. The rod would need to be extremely durable. Making the rod retractable would be challenging.

I must be getting old because all I can see is an insanely dangerous gas welding torch.

Fictional light sabers were also insanely dangerous, so this is true to television. It's just that the movies didn't show saber mishaps.

The difference is that in fictional works these devices might harm fictional characters, but in the real world this can maim, disfigure and blind actual people causing actual and pretty nasty suffering. There are safety regulations for this kind of equipment, at least where I live there are.

I find troubling the mindset in which fictional devices, societies, persons and universes aren't perceived clearly as just narrative tropes meant for making the narrative where they're contained work.

And this attitude of absolute safety over everything would preclude many of the most interesting sports, hobbies, and possibly inventions. They're not selling it nor even producing kits. In another episode they played with 'light saber rods' but carefully wearing full heat shielding suits. And yes, only people with actual Jedi semi-prescience could probably use a real or even imitation light saber as real weapons without maiming themselves. That makes it even more fun to watch this build, IMHO. Science fiction not remaining fictional has been the cause for many actual inventions.

> I find troubling the mindset in which fictional devices, societies, persons and universes aren't perceived clearly as just narrative tropes meant for making the narrative where they're contained work.

Because that would ruin fiction for everyone. You're meant to suspend your disbelief when perusing fictional works.

Otherwise, you can just scroll through TvTropes instead of ever reading or watching anything. Or you could just read this:

  template<typename Hero, typename Sage, typename Villain, typename MacGuffin>
  void Story(Hero hero, Sage sage, Villain villain, MacGuffin macGuffin) {
    while(true) {
      auto what = hero.advance();
      if(what == sage) { sage.teach(hero); }
      else if(what == villain) { hero.fight(villain); }
      else if(what == macGuffin) { roll_credits(); return; }
    }
  }

That's literally it. The whole of fiction, if everything is just narrative tropes.

There's always going to be a tradeoff between strictly following safety protocols and presenting their product on camera.

Besides, everything's a risk. Driving, crossing the road, eating chicken wings, getting out of bed, being born. Gotta have some tolerance otherwise you'll go insane.

I was a tad nervous watching him wave it around right next to the propane tank!

If a flame is a true plasma I never understood why a magnet doesn’t seem to affect it.

It does, here's a great video by Ben at Applied Science showing some examples of the effects. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JV4Fk3VNZqs

The best lightsaber theory I've read is how lightsabers cut through everything but not another lightsaber. It's by magnetic repulse force of course.

Magnet does affect flame, but you need surprisingly strong magnet for the effect to be noticeable.

The pinnacle of science fiction technology is not light sabers in my opinion, it’s teleportation.

Beam me up!

The idea of teleportation stirs up something like existential dread in me every time I think about it. The idea that your matter is disassembled, and then somewhere else it is reassembled from local atoms is at once fascinating and horrifying. You die ever time you are transported, and the copy of you has no memory of that event. It really hints at a lot of interesting philosophical questions.

In case you are not aware, the first episode of Existential Comics explores this very subject: https://existentialcomics.com/comic/1

Good read, but it still doesn't address the issue of what happens when there are two of you - the copy and the original from the same pattern. Does consciousness split at the moment the patterns diverge? Is it shared?

The analogy to sleep really doesn't connect at all, at least not for me. Consciousness isn't fully interrupted by sleep. Your brain is still working and processing, even when you're not dreaming. Your physical self is continuous, it's not the same as it being disassembled and reassembled immediately out of different material.

And sure, even if the substance of your is being changed over, it happens as a gradual refactoring, not an instance decomposition and recomposition miles from the original point. The electrical patterns that make up your brain are never interrupted - not by sleep nor the gradual replacement of your body. They would be by (star trek style) teleportation. They would be ended and a (presumably) identical pattern started up at a different location.

Can you tell I've spent a lot of time thinking about this?

This was a good read, thanks!

You might also consider yourself as dying every time you sleep and waking up a different person. Any interruption of consciousness could be a mini-death.

Not the same thing. When I fall asleep and wake up, I don't wake up a new copy of myself.

As far as you know?

Or rather: if someone invented real life transportation but it required you to be sedated, what would be different?

It's only the conscious/unconscious aspect that's troubling.

Imagine all of the yous that have ever woken up are in fact copies of yourself.

Now imagine it happens every time you sneeze (again - why not?)

Makes the concept seem fairly innocuous.

I think that's an interesting line of thought, especially if you replace sleep with anesthesia.

Introducing the new "tele" feature. Tired of everything? You can now just tele. No port. Guaranteed to fix all of your problems!

*terms and conditions apply

It’s been said that you have a whole new body every seven years. Perhaps teleportation is just a matter of speeding that process up.

It does if you go by that definition of teleportation.

Since no one has actually done it, it may work in a completely different way.

Hmm. Very interesting.

Still not the sort of thing you could put together in your garage. That nozzle price is a real roadblock.

One day though... :)

Dat jlcpcb print speed...

It's a blow torch... with a ton of video effects added on the flame to make it look like a light. More shocking than this is the 10 horrific ads scattered all though the video, the video itself just being an ad to pay them to see more private videos.

I suppose there's a lesson in marketing there. That's how you raise money and viewers like theranos without having a real product.

You don't have to pay to see the "private" videos. You just have to wait a week until they release them to the public. Early access on Patreon is a very common monetization strategy right now.

Also, I hardly think the ads are "shocking" or "horrific"... maybe dial down the hyperbole a bit?

I wish it were hyperbole but it is truly horrifying to me. However we can certainly agree that the advertising is well done and integrated if that's what you mean.

The video is crafted specifically to embed an obnoxious ad every 1-2 minutes. The "content" is largely filling and setup for the next ad placement to come.

I've never seen anything like that before. I've seen youtube videos where the youtuber was paid to promote a product in a strange way, they did it once somewhere and that's it, it wasn't spread through the entire video with the video only existing to deliver ads.

Run ad blockers and skip the single 'play this game' pitch. It isn't hard.

No. it's not a cutting torch. It is a glass-blowing torch, as he said in the video.

There are not video effects added.

They are not using any serious video effects on this.

They've also created something very cool. This is certainly a real product. It's a little misleading in the sense that it needs to be connected to something. Which honestly makes sense.

But if this isn't 'cool hacker nerd' stuff I don't know what is. Stuff like this is the reason I love HN. :)

Its not just that, its the idea of building something that so many people want to be true...

yep, lets wait until somebody fits a 100KW IR laser into a saber handle.

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