3D Printing Adventure Stories: Better Chess Pieces

3D Printing Adventure Stories: Better Chess Pieces

The students like to play chess. So, we naturally figured 3D printing some in case of emergencies would be a good idea.

There are 6 unique pieces on the board and millions of possible chess combinations. Several people play chess online and in person. Maybe the movie sparked interest. Chess became a daily activity and challenge. One problem we had changed the way we designed our models.

3D printing involves laying a material layer by layer. This presented a constraint for some chess pieces because pieces cannot hang without support. Including supports for pieces is a simple process, but removing them can take delicate precision. We decided to make sure our pieces did not hang over the build plate. This led us to design our pieces at upward angles rather than 90 degree angles with the build plate.

Overall, the pieces were to scale and able to be used on a real chess board. One student broke one of the pieces and tried to glue them together. That’s high school students for you.

Here’s a video of the 3D printing process:

If you are interested in learning how to design using CAD modeling, go to our shop and see what we offer. If you have a request for what we should 3D print, please put your request in down below.