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Designing things meant to be swung with force is … well, it’s not like designing cosplay apparel – or even something like furniture! Making a product that is meant to move about and hit things leaves you with several weak points to balance and take into account. Choice of materials can definitely help, but making prototypes out of weaker materials has its uses since it more easily and quickly reveals flaws in your design.

PLA isn’t the most durable material out there, but it is by far the least expensive material for 3D-printing, as well as being a breeze to get to print well. 3D printing also introduces problems of its own - objects won’t be massive, but rather layers upon layers that can be more or less prone to separating. On my first prototype, shown above, I for some reason decided to print with 80 % infill (how massive/hollow the insides of the print is) rather than 100 %, and fill up the cavities with acrylic sealant to add weight. Well, the quilllons on my current prototype with 100 % infill have held up to the beatings much better and is still in great condition even after a couple of bouts of sparring!

The final products will have quillons made of flexible rubber, so this won’t end up being any kind of problem. The biggest design issue with making practice swords like this is the base of the blade - this holds true for metal swords as well, and such swords designed with a thinned out ricasso like you see on many rapier blades in particular can easily become the point of breakage.

The layers separating is what ultimately turned out to be the demise of the holder for the blade on this prototype. That said, making holes for inserting a screw to better hold the blade in place was probably not the best of ideas. With the correct adjustments, it could still work - but it will still strain the surrounding material more over time. There’s also a risk of the end user screwing the screw too tight, introducing additional strain on the part.

The possible good things with this is that it’s better for a blade to break at the base for sparring safety - something breaking in the midpoint can turn out to be a dangerously sharp, splintered thing that might get too close to your sparring partner, while even a sharply broken of base of the blade would be further away and thus more easily controlled.

I’m looking forward to moving on to prototyping the final design in the actual material to be used. I’ts just so sad that I’ll need to destroy it to find out how well it holds up. But I find solace in that you can’t actually make swords unbreakable - that would be an impossible goal. Perfect is, as they say, the enemy of good!