So LGT and others have made lightsaber “cores” popular.
Personally, I’m not sure I see why, but I like soldering… 
However, wouldn’t it be nice if you could buy a hilt from one place and pair it up with a core from a different place?
My thinking is that maybe the open-source community could create a standard for how we want our cores to work, and then maybe we can get hilt and cores made according to this standard?
Maybe, maybe not. I will say the cores that have impressed me the most as far as use and overall quality are the Sabertrio Power Cores. LGT/TXQ in my eyes is more “intro level”. After Sabertrio as far as battle-proof I’ll say the Bendu hilts rock and I do wish Andrew would offer alloy hilts like he did with Ahsoka’s.
yeah I agree, but then you need a core standard for each saber ever created and machined identically. I’m guessing it would be a monumentally herculean task in doing that.
personally I would like to have a min ID standard, and min length, if I had to guess 190mm or less. with min id being 1" (25.3mm)
You’d have to make the core adaptable to different hilt shapes. Maybe had a basic slim chassis you can clip risers on to to increase the OD? You’d also need to build with thin necks and curved hilts in mind.
I don’t think you can build a core that can work for every possible hilt, but that doesn’t mean you couldn’t make something that works most sabers.
I’m not sure why you’d need clips/risers. If the core is slim, I assume that the opening for the core would be slim as well.
I’d need a core for 1” copper plumbing pipe and 1” schd 40 pvc (3/4” ID)
My main hilt materials.
Then the choice of switch placement near the emitter for one handed grip with controls, center placement for two handed use like a katana, and lower hilt placement for top grip handling and lower grip button controls for the base hand.
But for the kind of sabers I see being produced and recommended to folks I’m not interested in building for, this is a cool idea. A standard saber ID/core combo producers could center on would be an easy recommend!
Because the core needs to be snug in the ID, especially if you’re using a pixel connector. The core would need to be smallest case, with a way to add thickness.
There’s also the issue of button placement. I suppose a standardised way of interfacing from a core to external buttons could be a solution. There’s those pads that sit on the chassis and button housing which people have started using.
As you say, LGT have already got fairly close to this as many of their hilts share common cores and those cores come in various versions (Xenopixel, Proffie etc.).
I’m not sure about firms like TXQ (indeed I’ve never fully got my head round the different Chinese manufacturers, and I have a hunch there is a lot of crossover) but I imagine they have done much the same.
As for making all firms sign up to a deal whereby they all make hilts and cores compatible with each others’ products, I can’t see that ever happening. And as Astro alluded to, if they ever did, you can bet that a new company would immediately start up with a whole new core design and claim their difference as a superiority. LOL!
Personally I quite like the fact that so many sabers are so different. Vive la difference, say I.
Companies will sell what people will buy.
The reception in this thread so far has been fairly lackluster, and without buyers showing up to spend the money, nobody will do anything.
Yeah I don’t like this idea.
Trying to convince people it has much merit will be difficult, and your biggest prospective companies (the Chinese ones) are well set in their ways I think.
No custom sabers are realistically going to adopt this I don’t think.
Just like you like soldering, people take significant pride in chassis design, and there’s a lot more art in it than science. Hilts are so varied that that’s almost a necessity anyways, and I would hate to see hilts standardized for the sake of making electronics easy.
Hilts remaining unique and free to do whatever weird things they need to in order to achieve an effect is the whole fun IMO.
And actually make a living doing it.
To be honest, I do appreciate a nice custom chassis specifically tailored to the hilt. 
yeah same, no two lightsabers in universe are the same. even the components are different.
I like soldering, but it might still be useful for anyone does not want to solder. For example, it would be useful for someone who wants to build a hilt from PVC or aluminum tubes. Drilling or cutting aluminum is easy, and PVC is even easier. It would open this up for a lot of people. I think many who want a film accurate hilt will just buy it fully wired, but for someone trying to build their own, it will be useful.
The core would need to be modular with four different sections, connected something like LEGOs. Those sections would be blade connector, electronics + battery, switches, and speaker. This would allow some freedom for the location of the buttons.
*I’m reading the replies after mine and al I can think of is electronics, automotive, and bicycles. None of them can ever agree on a standard beyond x-amount-of-years before one or more decide to do their own “new and improved” thing that then wipes out any standards that were actually beneficial to the end user or place having to do repairs later on.
Just because car makers can’t do something doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea. Automotive manufacturers can’t even agree on a lightbulb socket, while the rest of the world seem to do that just fine.
I really like what Sabertrio is doing with the newest version of their Power Core. Only drawback is they are thick, and the rest of the hilt still has to have the “pre-kit” installed.
But having battery, board, Bluetooth, and hot swappable 28mm speaker pods all together in a quality Delrin chassis is really really nice. Plus I like how they flip the board so SD access is a snap and they wire the charging port as the data transfer together as 1 USB-C
I HATED 89 Sabers universal design because of the connection interface they chose, terrible SD card access, and the tiny 22mm speakers they chose so it worked in more hilts. Nothing irritated me more than seeing a huge hilt like a Graflex with a little anemic 22mm speaker… And lifting the board for SD card access should be a last resort design choice, not a standard.
The Graflex is shit enough acoustically as it is!
