Designing a Chess Set - Part 1

it's been in the back of my mind for a number of years to one day make my own Tri-Dimensional Star Trek style Chess set. I've always wanted to make my own set and I'm also a big Star Trek fan, so with both 3D Printers and laser cutters available, I decided that now is the time to actually do it.

The first step was to do research. Firstly into the Star Trek style tri-dimensional Chess and then to real world Chess. There are standards for the game, for both tournament purposes and normal consumer. The tournament sizes are larger -- larger squares and pieces -- so for this project I went with the slightly smaller consumer size. The Chess board itself will be much larger than a traditional Chess board. Don't want to make something too big or I really won't have the space to display it.

The battle plan will be to 3D print the Chess pieces and laser cut the boards. The pieces themselves will be designed to hold a magnet to keep them secured to the board. The pieces will also be hollow to reduce the amount of plastic and also reduce the time to print.

3D Chess, or also called Tri-Dimensional Chess, has three playing levels and two smaller "battle" boards. In the Star Trek TV shows the main levels are supported by a single arm, curved and graceful looking. Being that I will mostly use laser cutting to cut the boards and the supporting arm, the material I'll use will be acrylic. Acrylic is easily available to me and I can cut large sizes, so I'll use that. 

Each level will be populated with the black/white square tiles. The center of each tile will have a magnet for the game piece and at each corner another magnet for securing the battle (or confrontation) level.

Test assembly showing more levels than it actually will have. Testing the height between each level.

Pawn:
​Being the smallest piece, the pawn is a good test model. I think I'll go with this look for the rest of the pieces. When my family lived in Singapore, my father bought a Chess set and I always liked the way the pawns looked. So my pawns are inspired from that set.

Cut-away view, you can see the magnet area in the base. Curved shapes for distributing stress, and the top is a little thicker.

Exploded view where you can see that the magnet will fit into the bottom cover of the base.

Concerning the color, the Chess pieces might remain the traditional black/white, but I am unsure at the moment if they will be painted some other color. In various Star Trek series the Chess pieces are either silver/gold, or black/white. So what I think I'll do is print a few pawns and paint them with different colors. I'll include progress pictures in the upcoming blogs.