Skip Navigation
3DPrinting @lemmy.world
Chemical Wonka @discuss.tchncs.de

Recreate old chess pieces

I have pieces from an old chess game that I played a lot during my adolescence and so I have a special affection for it.

This game is missing some pieces that unfortunately have been lost over the years. I don't have 3D modeling skills and I would like to know if there is any way or service for me to recreate these lost parts to be printed on a 3D printer.

All help is welcome and thank you all!

20 comments

  • You got a lot of replies on the modeling side of things. It's not clear if you have a printer, so let me quickly hit on that.

    There are a bunch of different 3D printing services you can use to print things, including local (at your library potentially or a maker space) as well as commercial.

    3D printera fall into big buckets:

    • melt the material as you go. The most common version is FDM. FDM printers can make somewhat fine detailed prints, but their forte is making larger things with larger details
    • deposit a layer of material and fuse it via light. This can be done with a powered material and a laser (SLS) or a liquid resin and a light source (SLA). This method produces much higher detailed prints, but has a bigger barrier to entry. SLS printers are expensive, but can produce large and very durable prints. SLA printers have affordable home versions, but their build volume is somewhat small, their parts will require post processing to finish (rinsing, during), and you will have to deal with responsible disposal of the used resins and solvents. Resin prints are hard, but can be a bit brittle

    If you're going to be purchasing the prints, I would go SLS. You'll get fine details and the parts can be nylon (or even metal) so they'll be durable.

    If you're printing at home, SLA is probably the way to go.

  • No better time than the present to learn a new skill! Especially with the amount of resources available nowadays.

    Personally I'd take picture of each piece from at least 3 sides (top, left, front) all with an object of known size (like a ruler) in frame. Then pick your software (Blender is AWESOME) and faff about and stumble through and learn.

    It's hard at first but the level of satisfaction that comes from learning a new skill is immense.

  • I don't have any specific recommendations for software or services, but I do have a couple general thoughts on this problem

    How many pieces are missing and how ornate is the set?

    If you have at least one of every piece the easiest course of action is probably to 3d scan them. A scanner is probably a bit pricey to buy just for this one project, but if you ask around you can probably find a hobbyist or makerspace that will let you use theirs.

    If you can't find a scanner, as long as your set isn't too ornate, most chest sets are probably pretty easy to model for the most part. Except for the knights which are of course horses which are a weird irregular shape, most chess pieces are essentially cylinders and cones of various sizes stacked on top of each other. With a little quality time taking measurements with some calipers and some youtube how-to videos, you could probably learn enough to make a pretty decent model pretty quickly.

    You might even be able to carefully trace your pieces onto a piece of paper or maybe use a contour gauge to do the same, scan that tracing into your computer, and create a 3d model from that profile. Heck, you might even be able to just take a picture of the pieces then trace them on your computer.

    It's been a long time since I've done any 3d modeling personally, but something like that is a feature in a lot of software I've used.

    Then you'd just need to add some details- a slot cut into the bishops hat, some crenulations at the top of the rook, a cross on top of the king, etc. which should all also be pretty straightforward to model

    Again, if you ask around at makerspaces and such you can probably find someone willing to take up the challenge or help you figure out how to do that.

    Of course if your set has a lot of textures and details you wouldn't be able to capture them that way, like if your pieces have a face or otherwise aren't rotationally symmetrical, or the rook has a brick pattern, etc.

    And if you need to model the knight, that's going to take some more advanced modeling skills unless it's a really simple and kind of abstract horse.

    If you are missing pieces entirely, unless you can track down another set to use as a reference, you're going to have to recreate them from scratch. You can take some styling cues from the other pieces- like the bases are probably all pretty much the same, but beyond that you'd kind of have to work off of memory and eyeballing them.

    EDIT: When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. I was thinking about good ways to recreate your missing pieces by 3D printing so I kind of forgot to consider other techniques

    Again, assuming you have at least one of each of the pieces you need, make a mold and cast new ones out of epoxy or something.

    Also, again assuming no detailed textures, except for the knights, most chess pieces are almost perfect lathe projects. There's some really cheap tiny lathes to be had on Amazon that would probably be up to the task of turning a chunk of plastic into a chess piece.

20 comments