Stacking Chess Pieces Printed via SLA

Stacking Chess Pieces Printed via SLA

A few months ago I designed a display stand for cabochons (aka cabs, gem rocks cut and polished, generally for pendants) to let you display a cab on a shelf. I printed a few with my FDM printer (fused deposition modeling -a thermoplastic filament is fed into a hot nozzle and layered onto the print, I use 1/4 mm layers). The print is functional but low resolution and not visually appealing. SLA (stereolithography - a liquid resin is cured in layers by UV laser, with 1/10 mm or thinner layers) is readily available as a service, so I tried printing the stands at ArtLab ( www.artlab3dprinting.com ). The results were beautiful - far better than my FDM prints, well suited to displaying cabs.

I tried an inexpensive LCD resin printer (similar to SLA but uses an LCD to mask UV light which cures the resin). The results were good - not quite as good as ArtLab's SLA prints. But the procedure is a nightmare. You need to wear gloves and a mask when handling the resin, after the print is finished it must be transferred to an alcohol wash and then needs additional UV curing. You need a lab with a hood to use these printers. So back to ArtLab.

Next, I tried a project for fun. I designed a set of chess pieces that stack for compact storage. This has been done before, but to me, they haven't captured the essence of traditional chess pieces. The initial design took a couple of days. But it became interesting enough to spend some time detailing the pieces. I made some changes to better reflect the traditional shapes and I modified them so that the rook, bishop, knight, pawns could be stacked in any order. Due to the height of the king and queen, they can only stack on top of the other pieces and not on each other.

The results are shown here, travel size (6 cm king), but easily printed at any reasonable size.    

The stacking of pieces suggests an interesting chess variation - a piece that takes another can stack on top of it and assume its movement options. This would likely need some limitations - let's say rook, bishop, and knight can assume movement options from a rook, bishop, or knight (only from the top piece of a stacked piece). So if a rook captures a bishop, optionally, it becomes a queen. If that same piece then captures a knight, it may become a super-queen. This has some interesting implications for trades.

The problem with SLA via service is the price. The complete set with 6 cm king costs over $100. Growing it by 25% (3 inch king), over $150;

If you are interested in getting a set, contact me (see www.ravitz.us for my phone, email). I am going to work on reducing the cost. See www.chess.ravitz.us for an STL file for printing these pieces.