Choosing Chess - Designing Chess Pieces for Printing

November 18, 2019

OK so this project is perfect for me, I have had a beautiful (if I may brag a little) chess board that I made years ago for my cabinetmaking training at SAIT but I have never had any chess pieces to use with it so I am planning to print a full set at some point :D

The chess board that I made is comprised of a few different kinds of veneer and solid wood, including hickory, soire, a black stained reclaimed veneer as well as solid cherry and walnut. Because there are so many patterns and colours already in place on the board I wanted to keep the design simple-ish or at least geometric to balance the multiple wood grains.

Below is the chess board/ storage:

So from our peer-to-peer discussions the idea that seemed the most compelling was the geometric models that included some negative space that could be filled with another material. The ideas that seem to have the most opportunity for the material are a tinted resin that can fade to nearly transparent as you go down in ranks of chess pieces or an insert of another coloured plastic. For the models I have included an insert because while I think the resin would be cool I would like to create on object that is made of only 3D printed or laser cut parts.

(The only other design that seemed compelling in the peer review was the idea of doing shot-glass chess! I think it would be pretty funny to make chess into a drinking game but it might be limiting to use a design that would a) need to be a vessel, but also and probably more practically b) be cleanable...so no really funky shapes)

Below are my sketches:

So the design I wanted work with was a set of geometric shapes that vaguely represented the traditional chess pieces but all of which incorporated negative space and a diagonal inset surface onto the face that would work to tie all the pieces together.