Marco Jonsson Final Project: Mixed Techniques

 Process

This was my hardest project by far. I have long wanted to build a chess set from scratch, but finally have access to the tools necessary to make something pretty sweet. First, I worked on the board, which was no small challenge.

Since I had no wood pieces large enough, I had to stitch together a flat piece out of 3 scraps of plywood. I used a biscuit joiner to get them to hold together, as well as a lot of wood glue. Clamping these together was tricky, but I used a set of 6 clamps to counter tension each side. Unfortunately, I didn't grab a picture of this step. I ended up with 3 almost perfectly even sheets of wood, but I had to use the pad sander to try to refine some of the seams and get rid of the bumpy edge.

Here is a picture of the pre-sanded surface.

 

After finishing the sanding process, I used the DXF file I had from my board layout on fusion to laser cut and shade the squares. This required manual filling in of the shading pattern, but the end result was pretty sweet!

 

Next came the pieces design. This part was a total nightmare but I am thrilled with how well it turned out. I made a common base plate for all the pieces, and then a spiral structure of different heights to accomodate the different piece types. Pictures of the base plate and spiral structure are below. The structure was achieved using an extrude in the form workspace, followed by a profile aligned thicken, and then a circular pattern to create the columns. Then by rotating around a sketchpoint in the center axis, I was able to twist the shape I wanted, while still preserving the properties of the Fusion Body (rather than a mesh or surface).

Now that I had those components designed, I created modular head pieces for the pieces and then worked on assembling them one by one. I was interested in giving each  piece a unique look, while still preserving the theme. The knight was the hardest, as I had to arduously mold the knight face and also consider center of mass location to prevent tipping. The designs for the pieces are found below.  Quite a lot of math went into making the shapes look correct and mold seamlessly with one another.

 

 

Lastly was queueing up the prints, setting the supports correctly etc. Total print time for the full set was over 30 hours (apologies if the full printed set isn't pictured). I created separate files for the bishops since they had the most time consuming internal support structures, but printed the rest in a group. I picked bright orange for the "light" pieces and dark red for the "dark" pieces.

Result

I was thrilled with the aesthetic look and finish of the pieces, as well as the look and feel of the board. Unfortunately, the very small seam in the board prevented a perfectly clear shading. The board may have benefited from some finishing oil but I didn't have any at my disposal.

Below is a picture of one of the complete pieces. I made the files available for download on my personal website as well, continuing to grow my collection of personal project files for public access! I was also really impressed with myself in terms of how well I have learned the very nitpicky details of Fusion, and how much cleaner my model timelines have gotten over time!

 

 

Reflection

This year was a pretty challenging one! I think this was one of the classes that required the largest time commitments, despite being an elective, and I am really happy I took it. I feel confident in my abilities on the laser cutter, 3D printer, in the woodshop, and generally designing and putting together my project over its entire lifecycle.

Big thanks to everyone who helped out this year!