Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens: 3D print your own custom crossguard lightsaber

There isn’t a single movie series as popular as that of Star Wars. Dating back to 1977, when George Lucas created the original Star Wars movie, the film series has expanded and continues to do so, with the latest trailer for Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens being release late last month.

When it comes to 3D printing, Star Wars fans have become quite keen on creating 3D printed lightsabers. A simple search on 3D design file repositories such as Thingiverse for “lightsaber” brings up several dozen different 3D printable lightsabers. There is the Obi-Wan Kenobi version, the Luke Skywalker model, a lightsaber pencil topper, and more.

Now, one lightsaber designer looks to take on them all with the introduction of the Customizable Crossguard Lightsaber, which was designed with a focus on the latest upcoming Star Wars film, The Force Awakens.

Created by a French company called Le FabShop, this lightsaber allows for the complete customization on the end of the person 3D printing it. They can create virtually any lightsaber that they wish, whether it be that of Yoda, Luke Skywalker, a Darth Maul, or others. Le FabShop has made all of the files for their customizable lightsaber available on Thingiverse, and there are plenty of files to choose from.

“A dozen of 3D printable lightsabers being already available for download on internet, we decided to make one that would be completely customizable,” explains Le FabShop. “The modular system we invented makes hundreds of configurations possible. 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.”

The combinations are endless as to which lightsaber can be created with the files made available by Le FabShop. Whether you would like to 3D print a Crossguard Lightsaber, which will be shown in the new The Force Awakens film when released on December 18, 2015, or if you would prefer a more vintage look, such as the lightsabers shown in other past films, the possibilities are really endless.

All parts of the weapon can be 3D printed on an FFF/FDM desktop 3D printer, and Le FabShop recommends printing them using PLA with a layer resolution of 0.2mm. In the package of files on Thingiverse, which includes over 40 different STL files, you will find the following:

• A long telescopic laser, printed all at once
• A short telescopic laser, exclusively for the crossguard
• 6 different saber 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

The assembly of the lightsaber is very simple, and the complete instructions can be found on Instructables.

What do you think? Have you created your own custom lightsaber based on this design? Discuss in the 3D printed lightsaber forum thread on 3DPB.com.  Check out the video of the assembly below.