The aluminum is stronger, and fits better, both with the booster section, and the graflex clamp.

I cut the groove for the inside tab of the clamp with my dremel, and it fits it very well. When I rotate the clamp into place, it has a satisfying snap.

I was also able to make sure my pommel was correctly oriented when tightened down, which is an improvement over my previous battery casing. This is me machining the threaded rod that holds the pommel to the casing.

As you can see, the batteries are a snug fit, there's a double layer of electrical tape on the bottom, and I will line the top as well to keep any shorts from happening.

I cut two notches with the dremel out and around the speaker, so that I'd have a place to run my wires. But unfortunately, Shorts happen!

Everything went together great, solid, clean, etc. Then, Calamity strikes! I tested the charger on the batteries with the alligator clips that came with the charger, and it worked fine. I soldered in the port for the charger, and made a plug to fit, tested it, and it didn't.
I don't know if I had my wires crossed, or if there was a short, but about 15 seconds after I plugged it in, smoke started pouring out of the saber, and I quickly disconnected everything and dumped the batteries out.
Luckily, the soundboard is fine, LEDs are fine, but it just melted some wiring and ruptured a couple batteries.
I have no idea what went wrong here, but after about 30 minutes of being discouraged, I think I'll go ahead and order another speaker, and a set of batteries and try again. As far as I can tell I think I had a short against the recharge port, or worse, completely had my wires crossed.


Well, I put in an order for a new speaker and new batteries, and while I wait on that, will attempt to perfect my wiring, as I think that was my problem. As far as I can tell, I had an exposed wire that grounded out when I plugged in the charger, and it went kaput.
So now, I am going to attempt to harden my wiring job, so that there's no chance of short, make it efficient and clean and try and get it right in hopes of things running smoothly when I get my fresh battery pack built.

Before, I had two or three different plugs, different plug styles, and a confusing array of wires going through the graflex clamp. Here I have a round PCB from radio shack, (more on that later) that I am passing all my connections through. The stock plug from the Force FX Soundboard had removeable internal tabs, so I lifted those out and soldered them to my header pins on the back of my round PCB.

Here the connections are soldered and heatshrink applied. (not shrunk yet) This will isolate each connection and make sure there's no shorting.

Here you can see the plug for the LED string, once plugged in, I coil these wires up and fit them further down into the grenade.
I also wrapped the edges of the Force FX board with electrical tape to insulate them from the steel grenade, and provide a snugger fit.
Also underneath the FX Board, you can see my fourth rechargeable AAA battery. I pass its connections through the round PCB so that I can connect it up with the main battery pack.

The wires for the switch loop through the hole in the FX board, around the main power lines to keep them snug and to one side to leave room for the battery, and then the switch wires go back out the same hole, and over to the PCB header.

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