My first idea was to make a wood sign that could light up with multiple lairs, then as I kept thinking I decided that I wanted to stick with the Star Wars theme from my last project and make light saber. As I thought this idea out I wasn't sure if I could round the saber enough to make it feel round and smooth. As I looked at pictures of what I wanted to make I found a picture of the Darksaber, it's more square and would be much easier to cut out on the CNC.

Next, I took the picture of the saber and moved it into Illustrator I traced it at made two layers: one for the outline and one for the details. I decided that I would use the CNC to cut the saber out and then I could paint it and use the laser to etch in the details.

I then took my outline and moved it to Fusion, my first idea was to make it out of three layers, the top and bottom would be pieces of wood and the middle would be hollow. By doing this I could put a battery in the hilt and light up the blade. The problem was for the blad to be the right size the battery pack wouldn't fit.

So I moved to my next idea, this was two half's that had a spot to put the blade but no where for the battery. This meant that it wouldn't light up but I decided that was a fine trade for it to feel right. I then made cut paths and and using a 1/8th inch bit cut out the hilt.

I used this machine to cut the blade out of acrylic making it fit exactly to the right dimensions I wanted.

I used the laser cutter to cut a design into the hilt over the paint.  It was hard to line the pieces up and make the cut work how I wanted it to. The way I did it was cutting the outline out of scrap card bored and the using that to have a corner to cut from. This worked well but not perfectly, there were still spots where the laser cut over the sides but over all it looked how I wanted it.