Tag: Totally DIY Chess Set

Time? What time do you think we have?

The hours grow short until Botacon Zero.

I am determined to have a fully printed chess set before Botacon so that I can play12 at least one game.  I’ve been tracking my heat/speed/etc settings in PLA but it is a time consuming process.  It just holds its heat so long that small lower layers stay molten and gooey too long.  The only reasonable option that I can foresee is dialing in my settings for PLA so that it prints at slightly cooler temperatures and far more slowly than I am printing right now.  However, between work, blogging, holidays, and other sundry obligations I don’t think I’m going to have time to fully dial in my MakerBot for printing small parts in PLA.

I spent most of my free time this weekend cranking out parts.  I printed up two more key fobs, all the non-pawn pieces for the second half of the chess set, and a really large number of experiments/tests/proofs of concept/nascent ideas.

PLA, and I can’t believe I’m actually saying this, has been a lot of fun.  I get to run a robot making things, mostly toys or toy components, that smells like cotton candy, without warping.  The downside, as I’ve mentioned above, is that it doesn’t work nearly as well for small parts.  Last night I printed the tallest objects I’ve ever attempted – a 10cm cylinder and another 10cm model. 3

This is the long way of saying…  I’m bringing a printed chess set to Botacon.  The clear PLA side may be droopy and melty looking, but by god you’ll see it there.  I’ve actually got way more than enough melty looking pawns to call this set done. 4  I’ll probably just come back and print the clear pieces again once I get PLA dialed in. 5

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  1. And, by play, I mean lose graciously. [↩]
  2. And, by graciously, I mean to say that upon not winning I will smash every piece to bits and yell something along the lines of “I MADE YOU!!!  WHY WILL YOU NOT DO MY BIDDING AND STRIKE HIM DOWN!?!” [↩]
  3. I’ll upload it shortly. [↩]
  4. So, maybe I am? [↩]
  5. If that happens [↩]

Has anyone ever finished a printed chess set?

I’ve seen multiple chess pieces on Thingiverse, but I’ve never seen a full black and white (or any two-toned, for that matter) printed chess set.  Do you know if anyone has ever done this already?

I’ve got all 16 pieces in black ABS, but have been struggling with PLA.  Then, as I am wont to do, I’ve gotten distracted with this or that project.  I’m determined to print out all of the pieces in time for Botacon.  I’d really like to play a fellow MakerBot/RepRap operator with a totally printed set.  I’m less concerned the type of board we’re playing on – it could be a piece of fabric for all I care.

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Chess set: 1/4 complete

I’ve been working on printing a chess set today.

Yesterday I was troubleshooting my automated build platform.  I could use it reasonably well as a heated build platform, but the automated part was not working so well.  The main issues I was having were the thermistor only registered 255, the automated build platform only ran backwards1 , and the extrusion would not stick to the conveyor belt.

Believe me, some of these issues were incredibly dumb.  No worries, I’ll fill you in on the extent of my ignorance soon enough.  It’s not like I’ve got a finite supply, right?

I took out the automated build platform conveyor belt – and lost one of the little plastic bushings in the process.  I’m pretty sure I can rig a serviceable facsimile, but my printer has been down so much lately that I just want to actually PRINT things.  I’ll work on fixing up the automated build platform and troubleshooting it later.

So far I have, in black ABS, 8x pawns, 2x knights, 2x rooks, and am in the process of printing a bishop right now.  (I know that’s more than 1/4 of the way done – but I was 1/4 of the way when I started this post).

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  1. WTF? [↩]

Dragging my feet on PLA

I’ve been a total slacker about getting started printing in PLA.  Part of the reason is I’ve seen others have a lot of problems printing with it – ruining extruders, oozing out of barriers, too hot, too cold, too just right, the heat is uneven, the barrel jams, etc, etc.  However, since I’ve been printing larger and larger objects I’m finding that warpage is become more of an issue.  This means I need to either buy/make a heated platform for the ABS or I need to switch to PLA.

There’s a few things I’d like to build that are big and flat.  I’d like to print up a modular chess board (already have it designed in my head, I just need to export it to Sketchup) and crank out a few Mendel or Mini Mendel pieces.

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