World's first Real Retractable Metal-Cutting Star Wars Lightsaber

A popular YouTuber has created the first working lightsaber that uses propane gas burning at around 4,000 degrees Celsius to generate a retractable plasma beam. Canadian James Hobson, known as "Hacksmith," has 10 million users and is dedicated to bringing science fiction to life.

Invention of a retractable and Star Wars lightsaber

Inspired by his love for Star Wars, he has created a variety of lightsabers, but he wants to create "the world's first retractable plasma" version.

To do so, the Internet-famous engineer used liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), a fuel hidden in many sheds and often used to power barbecues.

Housed in a custom-made backpack and piped to the device, they are more like early "primitive sabers" than the weapons used by Luke Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Hobson said that these backpack-less designs are currently outside the scope of our technology because they require D-cell batteries that can consume more power than a nuclear power plant.

Mr. Hobson, whose video has been viewed nearly 10 million times, asked, "How do you make a plasma lightsaber?

"The problem is generating enough of an electromagnetic field to hold the blade in place, but the lightsaber would actually have to be built entirely inside a box coated with electromagnets, so it's useless as a science project."

Organizing Fluids with Laminar Flow Laminar flow is a physical phenomenon in which certain types of fluids (gases and liquids) flow smoothly or regularly.

Such nozzles already exist in specialized industries like glass blowing, saving you the expense and hassle of building a nozzle from scratch.

While the steampunk aesthetics and housing were designed and manufactured in-house, off-the-shelf nozzles were purchased for the hefty price of $4,000.

After some tweaking and careful testing, a plasma jet of the same diameter and length as the iconic lightsaber beam was produced from LPG.

And unlike previous attempts to create a real-life lightsaber, which typically has a metal rod as its core, the latter is fully retractable and can cut through hard materials like steel plates.

This is a version of a popular school experiment to burn solid metal salts.

For example, adding sodium chloride (table salt) turns the beam yellow, similar to the color of the beam used by Rey in Star Wars: Rise of the Planeteers.

Adding boric acid turns the beam into Yoda's famous green color. Strontium chloride makes the beam red, as does Darth Maul and Darth Sidious of the Sith Lords. Calcium chloride, on the other hand, causes the beam to turn amber.

It's the dream of millions of Star Wars fans around the world, and now it's come true. An inventor has created the first retractable lightsaber that is even capable of cutting metal.

James Hobson has been working on this project for years, and now he's shared a video on his YouTube channel showing the result of his work.

The blade of the sabre is achieved by channelling liquid propane gas through a laminar flow nozzle

By adding different chemical compounds to the base, the batten can have different color, as in the films. Thus, green is achieved with boric acid and red with calcium chloride.

A programmed circuit controls the valves to ensure that the batten 'blade' reaches the desired length and can be retracted. This is why the sabre is not independent: it is connected to a kind of rucksack, which Hobson has designed in inspiration of the steampunk movement.

Hobson and his team have created an 18-minute video that shows the process of making the sabre, but does not show the sabre test in action. That's why you have to be a sponsor of the project. However, the next 14 minutes will show the complete video of how the sabre is able to cut metal.