Imperator Chess Board (Patreon)

Howdy, wonderful people!

A fancy chess set needs a fancy board!  It will come as no surprise that we've ended up in the land of tessellation, because tessellation is great and really does lend itself to making a form that's as large as a full-sized chess board turns out to be!

The primary consideration here was a board style that looked as ornate and snazzy as the Imperator Chess Pieces.  Coming up with a tessellating grid that looked stylish was trickier than I'd expected, but the secret to matching the pieces was to make things pointy.  Yep, those little points that stick out on either side of the connecting tab (which is also pointy) made all the difference, and they also add a little more structural integrity.

The main board is comprised of a single, repeated piece!  The border, should you choose to print one, adds another three pieces. 

Print Description and Assembly

While the pieces were designed for vase mode printing the board is intended for regular mode printing.  I did experiment with vase mode for the board but given that the first few layers get printed regardless there wasn't a lot to be gained in terms of time or material in going that direction.

Note that the fit between the pieces is pretty tight, intentionally so!  I would recommend printing two main board pieces to begin with and just testing the fit with your filament and print settings before printing 64 of them.

interestingly enough, there are two ways to assemble the 64 main tiles, and the two results will be mirror images of each other.  This is largely academic until you add the border pieces, since the corners bits have a particular orientation.  Take a look at which way the corners go before you start assembling things or you'll have to dismantle and reassemble it all (or mirror the corners in the slicer and reprint, of course!)

Print Dimensions

The main tile is 77mm x 54mm on the print bed and 7mm tall.

Supports Needed?

Not at all!  Designed for straightforward printing!

Scalability

The fit of the board pieces will change if the pieces are scaled, so you'll want to consider using your slicer to offset the outer profile if you're scaling things.

Print Orientation

The pieces all print base-down, like so:

File Location

You'll find this one at at 625 Imperator Chess Board

Link to dropbox post: https://www.patreon.com/posts/31697592

Filaments in the Photos

The glorious gold and purple filaments here are by my good friends at Protopasta - What Karat? Smooth Gold and Bobbi's Purple Iris respectively.

 The black is Polymaker Polyterra and there are at least three different white filaments in play because I was running low and a chess board takes up rather a lot.

Further Thoughts

For bonus style points, consider a filament swap after the inside flat part is finished, to get a nice contrast between the base and the top! 

If you're not inclined to print a huge chess board with big chunky tiles there's also a "thin" version supplied, which will print much more quickly!  It's also much easier to disassemble for storage :)

Happy printing!

xoxo

Sven.