Just imagine....You design your hilt furniture digitally then transmit the files to a 3-D printer at a foundry. The foundry then makes a mold from the "print" and casts your hilt.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/07/technology/...ref=slogin

:) Now that looks like a nice piece of technology.

Imagine the email from your custom cutler.. "Here's a ready to print smaller model of your sword. Please let me know if you want any changes before I start...". And it could really help creating a custom hilt for a production sword. This would create a lot on new possibilities indeed.

Sweet, sounds like my school's Rapid Prototype Machine (RPM). The RPM takes a 3d computer generated part and builds it layer by layer from polycarbonate. Some guy in the mechanical engineering department created a small scale fully assembled car engine with it. Sadly, they don't let mere undergrads mess with it.

I was toying around with the idea of making sword fitting waxes with it, but this makes that unneccisary, doesn't it? Making a mold would be as easy as creating your guard/pommel/etc in a 3d modeling program, and then subtracting that model from the inside of a block. How come I never come up with good ideas like that? :\

This was only a matter of time. Potential benefits - less handwork, tighter tolerances, better overall quality of castings, and eventually lower cost. On the other hand, less handwork will also mean more loss of those artisan skills that are already rare, and less 'personality' in production pieces.