Magnetic Chess

Welcome to my Magnetic Chess Board Project! My name is Vincent Paulines and am a 1st year Mechanical engineering student in San Jose State University. Typically in order to focus on school work, I play a chess game here or there to get my brain going. Sometimes while playing with my sister or whoever, a piece would fall under the bed or couch and were incredibly annoying to get back. Thus, for my project I wanted to find a way to have chess pieces stay on a board without falling out. After sometime I figured an idea of using magnets attached to the pieces and the board.

Supplies

3D printed parts

1/8th in. by 1/8th in. rod magnets

Fusion360

Step 1: Chess Piece Designs

First, I designed the pawn, knight, bishop, rook, queen, and king pieces. They all increase in height by 5 mm from piece to piece. Thus, the pawn had a height of 35 mm and the king had a height of 70 mm. When it came to the pieces' bases, they all have the same basic shape, but with differing diameters from the pawn having a diameter of 24 to the king having a diameter of 30 mm.

In order to model the exact shapes of the pieces I used my own chess pieces for reference along with some pictures of pieces online as well. Finally, I added holes at which the magnets be attached into. With all the piece designs done, I could move on to designing the board.

Step 2: Board Square Design

For the board design, I first designed the individual squares so I could print ones of different colors. For the square sizes, I followed the FIDE International Chess Federation rules of having the king base diameter be 75-80% of the square size. Thus, I chose my squares to be of 40 by 40 mm dimensions. Additionally, I added a hole on the top at where the magnets be attached. After this, I would move on to the board support.

Step 3: Board Support Design

The purpose of the board is to hold all the squares together. As it is too big to print on its own, pieces were made that can attach to each other like a puzzle. Initially, I wanted to add a storage function to it for the pieces, however this would have taken up too much filament to print due to pure size. Thus in the end, I had only the board.

Step 4: Printing and Assembly

Finally, after modeling all the pieces, I had all the parts be 3D printed. For the colors, since one test piece were printed in orange already and looked good, I used that color and the color blue for the other color. Following the printing, I assembled all the pieces together and then added the magnets into the holes by glue.

Step 5: Future Plans

As previously stated, I would like a storage system added on to it as the chessboard could be used on bumpy car rides due to its magnetic function and having storage would be useful while not in use. Furthermore, I would redesign my knight piece as it looks more like a dog than a horse.