IPD: Chessboard
The penultimate project of my Integrated Computer-Aided Design course was to design and fabricate a complete chess set, all in a tight timeframe of about two weeks.
While no constraints were put on the design of the board, the assignment was designed to require the use of a CNC turning machine (Haas TL-1) to make the chess pieces.
Material resources for this project were limited, with only one chance to order materials. Additionally, machining time was limited as there was only one CNC turning machine available to be shared between several groups all trying to complete the project on time.
Due to the limited build-time, I designed all pieces to require only one turning operation to achieve the curved geometry and one milling operation to add any distinguishing features, with two exceptions. The King was allowed an extra minor milling feature to further distinguish it from the rest of the pieces. Conversely, the pawns required no milling post-operations to speed up the manufacture of a relatively high volume part.
To improve ease of manufacturing, all pieces shared common curved geometries prior to milling. Since all pieces were made of the same material, 6061-T6 aluminum, this meant that turned pieces for the bishops could also be used to make knights and rooks. The same applied for the King and Queen designs. This design allowed for turned pieces to be prepared en masse efficiently by repeating the same CNC turning operation.
After sanding and polishing, half of the pieces were anodized black, while the other half was treated with a clear coat to maintain the reflective properties of polished aluminum.
The board was made primarily from walnut and butternut wood, which the team cut, sanded, and varnished ourselves at a separate wood shop. The board consisted of three layers. The bottom layer houses a secure fit piece storage tray which was 3D-printed on a Stratasys Fortus 450mc printer, the middle layer contains the board's LED lighting and the Arduino Uno used to control the lighting patterns, and the top layer creates the checkered playing surface inlayed between sandblasted acrylic, which diffuses the light from the LEDs.
