[11.1] 3D Printable Chess Set (pt.1, a WIP)

Just an update! For the 3D printable chess set, we're making 6 individual chess models (King, queen, bishop, knight, rook, and pawn) through Rhino 8 or any other 3D designing program. For this project I chose to use Rhino for making the bases and basic meshes/navigating how I wanted my pieces to fit together as multiple parts; and Nomad Sculpt (iPad) for detailing my closed meshes. Lastly using PrusaSlic3r for checking the printability of the meshes and setting up the .stl files with supports before printing in the Prusa mini.

So far, this project has been really fun!  Although with many hiccups, learning curves, and troubleshooting - I've printed 2 of 6 so far (pawn and king). The first attempt of the pawn didn't work out, having learned that colour settings in Prusa is a print colour change 😅

I'll be printing the rest through out today and will make another post with my process, prusa screenshots, HD renders, and the final prints. 

Not having any experience with Nomad Sculpt as a CAD program has been a challenge but honestly so cool. I've learned how to model with Nomad's booleans, sculpting, voxel, and why voxel and smoothing tools are different with Nomad compared to a program like Rhino. Its important to note that in Nomad, the smoothing tool can cause issues with intersecting faces in the closed meshes, unless front facing vertex is on. Because of the intersecting faces, I had to remesh my models, and delay my printing schedule. 

However having learned all of this, I feel its setting up my future use with Nomad for success as it makes transferring .obj and .stl models easier and as valid good meshes - also learning that in Rhino a bad but valid mesh is still printable but it can cause issues with shaders/rendering or later boolean operatings on the models. 

In Prusa, I've experimented with using ironing and organic support enforcers instead of the auto generated supports, this saved a lot of printing time and not having to fill in gaps or sanding the models post print.

Anyways, that's all for now! See ya in the next post! 

Unofficial sneak peek of my prints so far :)

- K.