Making of
Hi!
I am a Survival Artist from Hamburg, Germany who is trying to turn lemons into lemonade :)
I am not a particularly strong Chess Player but the Game has helped me a lot in Life. Now I want to help Chess find its way into the Pockets of Chess Lovers ♡♡
Playing online is fine! But to me, Chess feels more "real" when I can touch the Pieces and have a three dimensional View of the Board. I am not complaining about the Fact that I lose my Queen more often than I would like to admit when playing online, I just enjoy the Game over the Board better ;)
I knew where to start when I saw someone on YouTube 3d printing rubber Wheels for RC cars with flexible Filament (the stuff that most desktop 3d printers are fed with) So I bought my first Machine. To those who care to know: it was a Flashforge Creator Pro dual Nozzle Printer that broke after a few Months. Oh yeah, printing that flexible Filament didn't work out too. It was a Mess and incredibly slow.
I held on to the Idea and improved my 3d printing and Blender Skills. Trying to make everything work somehow...
...Until one day - I finally had a working Version. It was quite finicky and not very elegant. But it fit into the Pocket of my Suit and had a decent Playing Area of 20x20cm when set up. I was super happy!
From there, I basically refined the Idea further and further, making dozens of Prototypes and Iterations. Trying to save tenths of Millimeters wherever possible.
There really went Sweat and Tears into this Project. Just making it so the upper Lid opens without it pulling out the Steel Boards was way more complicated than I expected.
It plays way more elegantly now too. With the Case acting as a Base, the Board itself "hovers" slightly above the Surface. Making it easy to place captured Pieces underneath the Board.
Getting the Magnets right meant that everything is much more stable now. The set up Board can even be flipped upside down without any Piece falling off. Like this, the Game can be moved to another Spot in Case of Rain etc.
I mingled around with Resin printing. Even though the Surface Quality is better, the Process is much more messy and I feel like it is less scalable. The next idea is to work with Injection Molding. But that takes away the Possibility of making unique 1 of 1 Versions. It would simply be way too expensive to produce a new Injection Mold Form for every personalized Chess Board.
Getting absolutely smashed by this young Padawan! This is at the right Alster side vs. left Alster side Tournament in Hamburg. This Tournament takes place annualy since 1958 and lets People from the western Part of the city compete against People living on the eastern Side.
