3D Printed Handy Chess Set

Real 3D Printed Chess Set

 

Digital 3D render of the chess set

Last night, I 3D printed six pieces from my Handy Chess Set. I made a post earlier this week with various renders of this model , which I designed using Rhino and Meshmixer. 

One of the render images is included on the left.

I liked the background colours in the render so I chose to recreate them using LED lights and coloured paper at home. In the photo I took of the print, the fingers look less defined than in the render because my front lighting was strong and it washed out the detail. But when you look at them in real life, the printed fingers have a similar definition to the rendered ones.

Before doing this project, I had never 3D printed anything on my own. I felt nervous about the outcome because I had never used supports, and I wasn't sure how hard they would be to remove. Fortunately, the process was a lot simpler than I had made it out to be. The custom supports were surprisingly easy to add in Prusa Slicer and easy to remove in real life. I twisted them off easily with pliers. 

Here is a picture of the hands with the brims and supports still attached:

 

I printed the hands and arms separately because I needed to use different colours of PLA plastic. I also printed the arms and hands at the same time on three different printers to save time. Luckily, no one was using the printers last night so I was able to complete all my prints in 4 hours.

Here are two pictures of the chess pieces being printed:

I feel encouraged to continue this project and print the other pieces from this set. I'm excited to see the all-black version of the pieces.

Thanks for checking out my Handy Chess Set!

Until my next blogpost :)