Chess Pieces 3D Printed Designed With Fusion 360

I was asked by a good friend if I could possibly have a go at making a chess set, the remit would be not for a full size chess board, more a travel set and preferably magnetic.

My wood-working skills would not lend themselves to making such pieces nor would my lathe skills, so I had a look online and there are numerous said chess sets for very little money, £2.95 or around $4 for a Magnetic travel chess set, how do they do it? so I ordered one, and give that as a gift, it would literally take me hours to make anything, but in the meantime I thought I would at least have a go at designing the pieces with Fusion 360 and 3D print the pieces and see how that works out.

Lets see what happens:

Fusion 360

3D Printer

1.75 Pla Black

In Fusion 360 we always start by creating a component then create sketch, in this instance we are selecting the front plane.

The next process is have a look online at some front view images of chess pieces and opt for an image which has good clarity and is totally flat that is not on any angle most are slightly off-set but its only a guide anyway.

Save the Image to a place where you can easily find it, and then using the Insert tab in Fusion 360, select canvas and highlight the plane, get the image to a size where you can easily see the edges of the pieces, and set the opacity to around 65%.

If you right click on the Canvas Tab and select Calibrate, you can click on a point, say a top of any Piece and then click the bottom and input a size you would like your pieces to be, the King and Queen being Taller so these would be a good option for calibration, I will make the king 50mm in height, this should be fine, the other pieces will match as they are on the image from a perspective point of view.

So we start a new sketch and choosing the line tab, sketch a continuous line along the entire length of the bottom of the chess pieces, this will give us a guide line to work from.

For the Knight sketch a line starting at the bottom up to the top of the plinth, and then sketch a line along to the right to the edge of the plinth, we are only sketching half of the plinth, we will use the revolve function to complete the plinth, to achieve the line down the edge of the plinth, I swop between the spline tool and 3 point Arc tool the spline tool is used to follow the curves of the pieces and the Arc tool is used for the bezels.

Use the scroll wheel on the mouse to zoom in closer, the image gets blurred but makes using the spline tool easier when following rounded corners etc, just click the left button in smaller increments to achieve the desired result, you can see on the screenshots by how many points there are, especially on the mane of the Knight.

Follow the shape using these tools and when it meets the line along the bottom, the sketch will turn blue if all points are connected.

So once we are happy with the sketch of the Knights plinth, we go to the solids section and click on revolve and if it hasn't already highlighted, then click on it to highlight it, for the axis we click on the vertical centre line, the plinth will then turn into a solid.

To get the head of the Knight we select the front plane again, and using the spline tool we start the sketch from just below the top of the plinth on the left hand side, zoom into the canvas and same again using the spline and 3 point arc tools just follow the curves all around the edges of the canvas till we get to the bottom of the right hand side, then using the line tool connect the left and right lines, this will now turn into a sketch we can extrude.

Clicking on the extrude tab click on the direction Tab and select Symmetric and extrude 2mm so we will have a 4mm in depth Knight, the next process was just to add a few fillets is in the screen shots, if the increment is too much the software will warn you, just lessen the increment of fillet until it works, its only to smooth the edges a bit.

The same principle applies to the rest of the pieces, sketch half the piece and use revolve to turn the sketch into a solid.

To achieve the slot in the mitre of the bishop, we start a new sketch and select the front/Mid plane just create a centre rectangle and once happy with the dimensions, right click and select move to put a slight angle on the rectangle, then select extrude, direction symmetric, and extrude through the piece, click ok that's the bishop sorted.

For the queen, I chose a plane at an angle, same plane as the bishop but angled to suit the contour of the crown, and did the same centre rectangle, when happy with the dimensions and position, extrude, in my case it was a symmetric extrude as the plane was in the middle of the contour of the crown, to finish off I just filleted the bottom inner sides of the extruded rectangle and this rounded off nicely, using the circular pattern tool I selected the faces of the extrusion and created 6 in total using the dome of the crown as the axis.

For the Rook, we select either the Top face and create, a circle to in this case 12mm and extrude to 5mm, then using the same face, we can create the cut out for the turret, extrude to -4 then using the circular pattern function create another 3 to make 4 all together to form the turret, I went through the side but this way is easier.

For the cross on the King, its much the same as the knight process, sketch needs to start below the surface, then follow the lines of the cross on one side, use a centre line and mirror that side using the centre line as your axis.

Onto the assumptions:

I thought I better make some sort of chess board if only for display purposes for this Instructable, something quick and cheap, the first idea which came into my head was to 3D print a Template, the first attempt was on standard print paper, the 2nd attempt photo paper, non of these were any good, then I remembered I had some A4 Adhesive backed sheets so I Printed the chess template onto the sheet, I had some A4 MDF 3mm sheets as well which was good I had to trim both the A4 adhesive sheet and and the MDF sheet to fit, then peeled the backing off and stuck itdown onto the MDF, and this worked out fine, I think for a more permanent chess board, I would cut this in 2 and hinge it, also cut a Perspex sheet to fit to the top of the the board, and add some edges to the bottom of the board creating a box for the pieces when closed.

The base of the King and Queens are slightly larger than the chess squares but this is ok.

Well I ended up with what I wanted to achieve, some Fusion 360 designed 3D Printed Chess Pieces which look the part, it would be fairly easy to extrude some holes in the bottom of the pieces at the design stage to accept Magnets to accept magnets and make a board, say MDF and Lasered squares.

I've included the STL files if anyone would like to print them, they print as is with no support, the knight had a tiny bit of stringing under the jaw which I just cut away with flush cutters, you could always add support if necessary and the pieces could easily be re-sized in Cura as well

Its a very good exercise using quite a few of the disciplines in Fusion 360.

I hope you enjoyed this Instructable and found it helpful and thanks for looking. Checkmate!

General Chess Rules

White is always first to move and players take turns alternately moving one piece at a time. Movement is required. If a player´s turn is to move, he is not in check but has no legal moves, this situation is called “Stalemate” and it ends the game in a draw. Each type of piece has its own method of movement. A piece may be moved to another position or may capture an opponent´s piece, replacing on its square (en passant being the only exception). With the exception of the knight, a piece may not move over or through any of the other pieces. When a king is threatened with capture (but can protect himself or escape), it´s called check. If a king is in check, then the player must make a move that eliminates the threat of capture and cannot leave the king in check. Checkmate happens when a king is placed in check and there is no legal move to escape. Checkmate ends the game and the side whose king was checkmated looses.

Chess moves
The King can move exactly one square horizontally, vertically, or diagonally. At most once in every game, each king is allowed to make a special move, known as castling.

Queen can move any number of vacant squares diagonally, horizontally, or vertically.

Rook can move any number of vacant squares vertically or horizontally. It also is moved while castling.

Bishop can move any number of vacant squares in any diagonal direction.

Knight can move one square along any rank or file and then at an angle. The knight´s movement can also be viewed as an “L” or “7″ laid out at any horizontal or vertical angle.

Pawns can move forward one square, if that square is unoccupied. If it has not yet moved, the pawn has the option of moving two squares forward provided both squares in front of the pawn are unoccupied. A pawn cannot move backward. Pawns are the only pieces that capture differently from how they move. They can capture an enemy piece on either of the two spaces adjacent to the space in front of them (i.e., the two squares diagonally in front of them) but cannot move to these spaces if they are vacant. The pawn is also involved in the two special moves en passant and promotion.