HeroTech’s Impossible Lightsaber with Retractable Hilt Could Pass for an Actual Movie Prop

Most Star Wars fans have probably held various lightsabers over the yaers, whether they be the plastic toys that hum like dying bees, or the $300 aluminum tubes that light up like airport runways. None of those ever seem to just vanish into thin air… until now. HeroTech’s third generation of retractable lightsabers – or should we just call this one the “Impossible” – has finally cracked the code on something that every prop maker, Disney Imagineer and crafty inventor has been trying to pull off for decades: to make one that lives inside a perfectly accurate Graflex hilt, snaps out to full length quick as a wink, glows like a star and then without warning sucks itself back in with a mechanical whirl.

The key to the whole operation is starting with the iconic Graflex 3-Cell flash handle – the exact same model that Luke Skywalker got to borrow back in 1977. HeroTech didn’t feel the need to fudge it, didn’t stretch the dimensions out, didn’t just slap a 3D printed extension on either. No – they managed to stuff an entire arsenal of robotics into a tube that’s 1.2 inches wide and 10.5 inches long. Inside that metal skin you’ll find: two 18650 LiPo packs (3.7 volts for the control system, 14.8 volts for the motors) a Proffieboard sound/lighting brain, a 22 watt COB LED strip (the kind you find in all the cheap floodlights that ruin your eyes), four brushed DC motors (two for spinning the hilt round, one for retracting it, one for making the whole thing “push-and-twist”), a tiny 5W speaker that still manages to yelp very loudly “vwoom”, and that rather unsung hero of the whole operation – a simple reed switch which we’ll get to shortly.

Now, take a classic magician’s stick – a thin strip of Mylar that’s coiled so tightly it can be hidden in a fist. Give it an identical make over in crystal-clear PETG. Run a single 10 mm-wide COB strip down the centre. Job done? No way – without the spinning action the whole thing just looks like a glow-stick having a fit. But turn the speed up to 3600 RPMs and the whole of the chassis becomes one massive, spinning cannon of persistence-of-vision light. The strip blurs into a perfect cylinder of light with pulsing instability lines that you’d swear was straight off the original ILM rotoscope. A bit of gyroscopic preload helps fix it all in place & then there’s the spin tension and centrifugal force which work together to keep the coil segments stiff as a board and pointing straight as an arrow. Try swinging it with some enthusiasm and you’ll be treated to that lovely feeling of 400 grams of angular momentum trying to rip your wrist off – which, if I’m honest, is probably what the EU novels promised all along.



Press the activation plate (a reed switch triggered by a sliding external magnet), and a micro-solenoid pulls the clutch plate back 3mm. The pre-loaded spring (compressed inside the spool) launches 92cm of cane in 0.18 seconds. Want variable length? Feather the clutch with PWM code and the Proffieboard gives you exactly 42cm of mid-clash drama.


HeroTech’s custom prop file has 42 swing fonts, 12 clash samples and a retraction “sproing” they recorded from the actual cane. Blade flicker is tied to RPM via hall-effect feedback—slow the spin and the glow destabilizes like a dying kyber crystal. One Easter egg: hold the magnet 2cm left of the clamp for 3 seconds and you unlock “training mode”—half-speed spin, 30% brightness, perfect for TikTok duels without decapitating the cat.
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