Laird's SCAD Chess Set (updated) by laird

Last crawled date: 2 years, 11 months ago

I have been wanting to make this chess set for years. Now that 3D printing is becoming affordable, perhaps I can actually make a physical set. Until then, I am uploading it for others to enjoy.
The set is designed to be artistically interesting, but also to illustrate the moves of each piece, with the names labeled, to make Chess approachable for kids.
The king has the tallest 'body' and has its name printed in large type to indicate its importance. The circle represents the king's ability to move one space in any direction.
The queen is about as tall as the king, with the 'head' indicating that the Queen can move any distance in the eight directions.
The knight is shorter, with cubes arranged around a central diamond indicating the eight squares that the knight can jump to. The arrangement of the cubes on the top and the back, and the angle of the supporting head, are intended to evoke a horse's head.
The bishop and rook are the same height, with 'heads' indicating their ability to move any distance in either the diagonals or horizontal and vertical.
Finally the pawns are the shortest. The 'head' indicates the ability to move forward one square, or capture diagonally. I couldn't think of a way to indicate moving forward two spaces, or capturing en-passent.
This is a complete rebuild of http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1523 using OpenSCAD. I am now an OpenSCAD convert - it allowed me to express precisely what I wanted, rather than trying to approximate in a GUI.
Updated:
Ordered a Thing-o-matic, so refreshing this in preparation for printing it. Generated individual STL files for each piece, as the whole set won't fit into a TOM print area.