3D Chess Pieces

X-Carve Pro
1

I’m really curious to try 3D and thought chess pieces would be a great start.
Does anyone have any suggestions on where to get 3D files?
Or has anyone tried this yet?

Thanks for the help and pointing me in the right direction.

2

Because chess pieces are often round, they are often done with a lathe. For a CNC, this typically means a rotary “A” axis. Such carving is possible, but is more advanced and may require software like Vectric V-Carve.

3

So why couldn’t you carve half, flip the piece and carve the other half?
flip orientation horizontal and carve away.
I know I’m not the first person to consider this solution if you don’t have a rotary axis.

1 Like
4

You can definitely flip, but there’s a couple of considerations:

  1. Aligning flipped items can be hard to get perfect. Not impossible, but at the least tricky.
  2. A rotary provides access to the piece in a different way than a top-down cutter.

Imagine, for example, cutting in the crown of a queen. On a rotary, you can turn the piece, and cut each line of the crown from the same orientation. On a top-down cut, you can cut the middle line correctly, but there’s almost no way to cut the side lines.

Basically this means that you have to be prepared to be creative. One option might be to put the piece in a square machining chuck and repeat the cuts on all 4 sides for consistency.

Note: I haven’t done anything like this, but it’s a very interesting idea and has me thinking.

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I have already setup and carved a complete set of Chess pieces. They are on the large size. But they are carved in 2 pieces and then glued together. Obviously some sanding. I used 4 pieces of a 1x4 for each piece, two of the pieces of wood were glued together prior to carving. There is a problem when carving that is caused by the size of mine, not impossible to overcome. I haven’t tried carving one side then flipping the block of wood.
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If you want ant information send me a email DaveDL1001@gmail.com
The chess set pieces where also in the 3D carving debut online session.

Dave

The Chess Board is still in the design stages

6

davidLitz; brilliant!! I hadn’t thought of carving in two pieces and then assembling (simplest solution is usually the best - and most overlooked). I’ll be emailing you at your listed email (if you are okay with that). Joe

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