Mistsplitter Reforged Cosplay Sword

One of the most difficult and expensive parts of a cosplay outfit is the large accessories that come with the character's outfit, such as a sword. These accessories are hard to find and often sell for many hundreds of dollars, as they are usually made by professional cosplay workshops which sell for profit. Although it takes considerably more effort, it is 100% worth the lower cost (and fun!) of creating cosplay items yourself. These instructions will take you through the process of creating a 4-foot-long homemade version of the Mistsplitter Reforged sword from the video game Genshin Impact.

Our names are Arjun and Minjun. We built this project for our Principles of Engineering class taught by Ms. Berbawy at Irvington High School.

• A 5-meter 5V purple LED strip
• 1 pack 1/4x36in wood dowels
• 1 spool PLA, color black
• 1 spool PLA, color gold
• 1 spool Hatchbox PETG, color purple
• Soldering kit
• Electrical tape
• Duct tape
• Construction adhesive
• Poweradd EnergyCell 5000 power bank*
• 3D Printer (We used a Prusa Mini and Prusa MK3S+)

*This specific power bank is not required, any power bank will do. However, a power bank with different dimensions will require a different containment chamber in the handle of the sword. Additionally, the power bank must have a USB-A output.

The software used for this project are as follows:

• Fusion 360 (for CAD)
• Abode illustrator (to create an .svg to use as a base to start the sword)
• Prusa Slicer (for slicing the STL file once it is ready to print)

The first step to creating our sword was taking an image online to begin CAD. The complex shape and design of the sword means it is difficult to create from scratch on Fusion 360 and an online image should be imported into Fusion 360 to make the CAD easier.

The first step is to find an image on Google of the sword to use its outline, the quality of the image is not an issue but the outline should be clear enough. We found our image of the Mistsplitter on a Genshin Impact database called Honey Impact but this image alone is not enough and must be vectored before usage.

Download the image of choice and place it in Adobe Illustrator to vector the image. After vectoring, the file should be downloaded as a .svg file but if it was saved as some other file such as .png, that is not an issue as you can simply use an online file converter.

If you would like to use our .svg file, it is attached to this step.

Now go on Fusion 360 and import the .svg of the sword's outline onto a sketch and now you are ready to CAD.

The first part of the sword to design is the handle. The handle is mostly circular in shape and will be extruded with the loft tool. The shape of our handle was mostly split into 2 pieces so a line was placed in the middle and 3 sketches of ovals were made at the 3 points. The width of the oval is largely predetermined but its height will likely vary. For our handle, we had to make several adjustments to its height to ensure the power bank will fit and came to the following measurements on the three sketches.

• Bottom: 22 x 11.5 mm
• Middle: 14 x 11 mm
• Top: 19 x 9.65 mm

Connect the sketches with a loft with the bottom and the middle and the top and the middle. This will create the handle body.

After creating the handle we made the handguard and an elemental design that connects the handle with the blade. The handguard's construction involved taking the sketch of the sword and splitting the sketch in half before extruding with the revolve tool on our selected half. This creates a symmetric shape for the handguard and will be one of the last uses of the vectored outline as it lacks accuracy at more detailed areas. We also had hollow space within the handguard that had to be carved out.

To do that, we created 4 offset planes from the center of the handguard and cut out the shape with lofts. The bottom circles were smaller than the outer circles. This created the basic shape of the handguard and additional details were added by offsetting additional planes and setting them at desired angles to carve out details.

The elemental design on the sword was first made by extruding the base by 10mm at both ends then using the original image as reference, we determined a position to drop the circle for the design then drew out the negative spaces. Doing this means rather than trying to sketch out the patterns, we will sketch everything except the pattern which was easier to draw and alter dimensions than the actual pattern itself. We finally copied this pattern three times with the circular pattern tool and then extruded the sketch.

Creating the blade first needed some adjustment in the sketch to be made as the blade section was irregular in its size and not as structural as we wanted. To create our desired shape, we took the length of the blade at the base and used it to set distances across two parallel points across the blade until the curve.

At the curve, we used points referenced from the original sketch to create a new curve that more closely adhered to our adjusted shape.

Creating the blade itself was quite simple, as we extruded the blade section of the .svg file and gave it a sharp chamfer on both edges, creating the blade.

The irregular shape and angles of the sword makes it difficult to fit two dowels through the entire distance of the sword and the addition of electronic components further contributes to stability concerns. We started with a sketch on the shared face located at the bottom of start of the blade. 3 holes are drawn onto the sketch, one is for the wires that will needed in the next step but the other two holes are for the dowels.

We used the extrude tool on the two outer circles and set it to remove in two directions independently. The two dowels will not be the same length and one dowel will be significantly longer and run through most of the sword, we extruded this dowel by itself again to ensure it reached the maximum possible distance. The most important aspect is to ensure that both the dowels are connected to the starting body of the blade.

Another small dowel (12.5 cm length) should be placed between the handle top and bottom to boost its stability as the other dowels struggle to reach this area.

The battery CAD is focused on the electric components of the sword from the battery in the handle to the wires that stretch to the LED tape at the end. The following objects were measured: the battery, dimensions of the USB end, and the wire thickness. The battery and the hole to contain it were located at the bottom of the handle and the top part of the handle has a rectangular compartment to fit the USB and a long nonlinear path capable of fitting the wires.

It is advised to not make the wire paths curve too much and to make holes with a rather large tolerance for ease of assembly later on.

The irregular shapes of the handle at the top section meant a 3D printer could not easily print this piece without outrageous amounts of support material in inconvenient places. This meant we had to split up the top handle in half, bringing the total part count in the handle to 3.

There was also a small space left at the end where a small dowel (12.5 cm length) was placed to strengthen the connection between the multipart handle.

Now we focus on the wire which stretches through the sword until the LED is reached. Since the rest of the sword is straight, extruding from the central circle in the earlier dowel sketch is all that is needed for the remaining wire hole.

The meet up point between the wiring and LED needed a moderate sized rectangular compartment that was dug out to make fitting the wires much easier and create the connection point from wire to LED.

The blade to generate space for the LED was first created with an inward offset sketch and then extruded inwards. This generates space to fit the LED and ensures it will not protrude out of the sword but it exposes the dowels and splits the blade into several extra pieces. This issue was especially prevalent during assembly.

The end of the blade also had a small rectangular hole cut out so that the LED tape can roll around the entire sword.

When printing the sword, there are several features of notice to pay special attention to. The part with the elemental design will need additional support materials via support enforcers to print reliably and we advise printing the spine of the blade face down on their backs to ensure proper printing.

When printing the blade part with the meetup points between wire and LED, support material will be generated in hard to remove areas such as inside the dowels. A combination of pliers and forcing the wires and dowels through the holes numerous times was enough to deal with this issue.

Other features of notice include the handguard which needs to be printed at an angle such that the dowel holes point straight up on the build plate.

All handle parts should be printed at a .20 mm layer height to ensure extra strength. Avoid using rafts on the handle parts, as the removal will be painstakingly difficult.

The first parts that should be glued are the blade parts as they take the longest to glue and can only be done in small parts. The parts lack holes and only have grooves for the dowel to run along therefore parts must be held in place until the construction adhesive sets (which normally took around 24 hours per part). To keep the part in place, apply duct tape on the entire part to hold it together as it sets. This also means the blades can only be done one side at a time. When attaching the bottom piece of the blade, slide the wires through the holes as inserting it later will be much more difficult.

Once the glue has set, assemble the rest of the parts which will be much easier and less duct tape will be needed. Do not fully glue everything in the handle as electronic components and wires must be soldered before it is glued shut.

Solder the LED strips with the wires to a USB cable. Cut the USB cable with a wire cutter and only pay attention to the red and black wires (the green and white wires are unnecessary becuase they are used for data not power and can be cut off entirely). Before soldering, test the connections by placing the exposed parts of the wires on each other while connected by the power bank. Once confirmed, solder the USB cable to the wire and plug it in to the power bank. At this step, make sure that your wires and LED strips are all the correct length and that there is not a bunch of slack that will crowd the inside of your sword.

At the other end of the LED strip solder the wires by placing the exposed end of the red wire with the positive copper section on the LED tape and the negative black wire with the negative copper section. Once soldered, test the connection again. If everything works, glue the handle, feed the LED strip through the hole, run it down the opposite side of the blade, and fasten it down.

For finishing touches, we mostly cleaned up excess construction adhesive that was lying around the sword and placed some black tape on the handle to add grip and texture. We recommend using black electrical tape or tennis racket tape for this addition.

Other quality of life improvements include a small battery stopper in the form of a cylinder with a small hook at the end to fill the extra space left in the bottom handle for easy battery removal and potentially painting the exposed dowel on the blade to match the overall color scheme of the sword.

We connected the two pieces with duct tape because it provides a means to keep the battery in the handle (the battery would have been loosely connected via the USB otherwise).

We covered our LEDs and blade dowel with purple electrical tape.

Other improvements that could be made on the project include painting over the dowels.