Foldable chess board and chess set

Introduction

I wanted to design a fully printable and easy-to-assemble chess board and set. After a few hours in Fusion 360 and many hours of printing, I believe I have made a very practical and simple chess board which also doubles as a storage box for pieces. I really hope you like it and if you do, please rate the print profiles and share your make in the comment section ;)

MATERIALS REQUIRED:

• ≈125 grams of colorful PLA
• ≈60 grams of white PLA
• ≈60 grams of black PLA
• Lighter
• Pliers
• Spatula
• Bambu razor

Before you print

Before printing the main two parts of the board, make sure that your plate is perfectly clean. The best way to clean any print plate is to wash it with warm water and dish soap. If your bed is not clean, you may face adhesion issues like wrapping and a bad first layer. Even minor imperfections such as fingertips grease can mess things up. I would recommend the textured PEI plate by Bambu because the adhesion is good and it also leaves an amazing grainy texture on the playing area of the board.

Custom pieces

If you don't like the pieces which I designed and you want to print your own custom set, please make sure you scale them correctly. A good reference point is a 14mm diameter of the bottom of a piece (Excluding pawns which should be smaller). I would suggest taking any piece but the pawn and then compare it next to mine. Scale your custom piece up or down until the bottoms have a similar size. Before you print an entire set which is scaled up/down, print only one piece to make sure you got the scale correctly.

Printing

The first file you should print is the two sides of the board. The print requires you to have at least 3 colors in your AMS, which are traditionally black and white, and a third color of your liking (in my case epic purple PLA NX2 by Extrudr)
After you have printed the board you can move onto the locking ring and rod. The locking ring serves as a little piece which can be used to "lock" the two sides in place and move the box around. The rod is a crucial part for the hinge and in order for it to be more precise, I've set the layer height to 0.12mm. Finally, you can print the pieces once in black and once in white
 

Assembly

The Assembly is pretty straightforward. The first step is to take the supports off the 2 halves of the board/box. Taking them off is pretty easy and I would recommend using a flush cutter, but it could also be done with fingers. Then, remove the brim from the rod. The best way to achieve good roundness of the rod is to remove it with the included Bambu razor. Be careful as it is extremely sharp and cutting yourself is a pretty unpleasant experience.

Assembling the hinge

1. Align the two sides and close the box. Slide the rod through the hole and leave around 2mm sticking out

2. With a lighter, carefully heat the part which is sticking out.

3. While holding the other side of the rod in place, press the heated side until a "mushroom" forms there. This mushroom prevents the rod from escaping the hinge

Here is the “Mushroom”:

4. Chop off some of the surplus material on the other side and again leave around 2mm sticking out.

5. Repeat steps 2 and 3.

If everything has been done correctly, the two sides of the chess board should be hinged. If you run into an issue while assembling the hinge, you could just remove the locking ring from 2nd file and print the only the rod again.

Ready to play

After you have printed and assembled the box, you are now ready to play! Lay the board down and place all of the pieces on the correct positions. When you want to pack the board up, put all the pieces inside the two sides of the box and close it. Then, take the locking ring and align the two pins sticking out of it with the two cutouts in the locking piece, created by closing the board. Once the ring is in place, twist clockwise and give it a gentle push. When you cannot twist it anymore, you have successfully locked the box. To unlock, spin the ring counterclockwise and gently lift up.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask in the comments and I will try my best to respond in a timely manner.