I'd like to get my forge on. I understand that some combination of forges, foundries, and casting equipment is being worked on, but I'm not sure who is working on it or where in the process things are. Who should I be talking to if I want to get involved in this?

I just got some water soluble PVA plastic filament for the MakerBot 3D object printer. I figured I would use it to print some objects, and then create a cast around it, and then dissolve out the PVA with some hot water, and try casting something in some metal to see how that turns out.

It's been a while since I did anything like this. I figured I would try casting pewter. Where is a good source of pewter? I was talking to a guy running a shop at the Renaissance Festival and he said that he just used a toaster oven to melt the pewter.

Wiki answers: Pewter melts at 300 degrees Celsius and 572 degrees Fahrenheit.

I've got a small-ish charcoal fired foundry project collecting dust on a shelf, at the shop.
It is easily capable of melting aluminum, possibly brass or bronze.

As for casting 3d printed parts, when the Makerbot people were visiting, they had some parts
that were cast in bronze. They simply buried the printed part in sand, with appropriate sprues & whatnot,
and then pouring the molten metal. The hot metal burned away the plastic and filled the resulting cavity.
It produced a decent looking cast part.

My other thought was to 3d print parts and use them as forms to do regular green sand casting.

Hey, this is of timely interest to me as well.

A manager at work, aware of my workshop involvement, wants me to produce a statue to commemorate our project. I see this as a 6 to 12 inch figure on a platform. The figure would be human form in some kind of heroic pose, gazing upward, arm extended up and out, holding an object.

I'd like to have something in about a week.

I'll be at the H.F. tonight and would like some help with this... if anybody can point me to a 3D model that is close to this and can be translated to a 3D print, that would be awesome. Also, I'd like to hear any suggestions on other ways to produce a statue like this, hopefully with the possibility of producing subsequent reproductions.