High quality 3D printed chess sets for sale

Hello everyone, some of you may remember a few years ago when I posted pictures of my wood-filament 3D printed Dubrovnik chess set. Well I have since upgraded to a resin 3D printer and have been designing some new sets, both for resin and filament printers. Here are my new sets.

This set was inspired by the Latvian style set that appeared in the final episode of the Queen's Gambit show. I really like the simple rooks with no crenelations. The black pieces are printed in resin and painted black with satin varnish, the white pieces are printed in wood-filament PLA.

Based on the 1849 original Staunton design, but with a few changes to make them easier to 3D print. Here both black and white pieces are printed in resin, and painted to look like ebony and ivory.

These Zagreb pieces are printed in red-copper and bamboo PLA filament. I think they go well with this Dal Rossi Palisander & Maple board.

This set is my own original design, presented here in jade and bamboo finishes (translucent resin painted green, and bamboo PLA filament).

One of the nice things about resin printers is that they can also print transparent pieces.

I'm selling the files to print these on Kickstarter at the moment here.

However I know most of you don't have access to a printer to print sets yourself and would probably like to buy an already printed set. So I've set up a website where you can do this. At 3dprintedchess.com you will be able to select a commercial partner who is licensed to sell prints of my designs. I'm currently selling these commercial licenses in the Kickstarter campaign, so once that ends (in 20 days) you will be able to buy sets from these vendors.

I've also made a few videos showing how these pieces are made.

Here's how I painted the resin pieces:

This is how I add the weights and felts to the bases:

And for any of you who'd like to try making your own 3D printed pieces, here's the process of sculpting one of the knights:

Very impressive work!  Great designs, too - it all starts with the design.

These look really cool! Would you consider adding an alternate king to the Zagreb set - one without the cross on the top, like this set: https://www.houseofstaunton.com/the-zagreb-59-series-chess-pieces-3-875-king.html?

I don't know much about 3D printing - approximately how much will it cost to get a set printed from one of your licensed vendors?

Do you have any suggestions for how to weight the pieces?

That alternate Zagreb king's finial is very nice, it should be easy to add it to the set.

At the moment getting a chess set printed is still quite expensive, around US$300 or more - because professional print studios are catering to engineering and manufacturing and charge high prices for their time and materials. It is currently cheaper to buy a 3D printer and print the set yourself than to have a set printed at a professional print bureau. However I'm hoping amateur and hobby printers will purchase commercial licenses and begin to offer my chess sets at affordable prices, around $200 and sell them on Etsy and eBay.

See the video posted above for a guide on adding weights and felt to the bases.

Wow! These look really cool!

It's my hope that by creating a marketplace where people can compare prices and buy sets that are reasonably priced it will bring down the cost of 3D printed chess sets.

You can buy a 3D printer for $200 and print complete sets for around $20 each, if you just count the materials cost.

Not if one understands that a print of the 3D design of a chess set is actually a chess set.  Perhaps the meaning of the word print in the context of a 3D printer is confusing? 

Actually reading the last two paragraphs of post #1 seemed to make it clear enough (to me).

GrandPatzerDave - thanks for explaining it!

Intriguing idea and impressive designs.  Our local library makes 3D printers available for no charge, so this is a real possibility.  Are the pieces available in only one size or are they scalable?

Slightly off topic, though, is the idea of using 3D printers to produce replacement pieces for incomplete sets.  How difficult would this be?  Perhaps this should be a separate thread?  If so, I apologize.

I never thought of this! Turns out my local library has one too. They charge for printing by the gram. How many grams would one set at 100% size be (approximate is fine, just looking for a ballpark estimate)?

They can be scaled to any size. I provide them at 'tournament scale' meaning they look good on a board with around 5cm squares, but they work fine scaled up or down.

Replacement pieces is an excellent use of 3D printing. So long as you have good reference photos of the missing piece it's easy enough to recreate in 3D. Also, if you have a partial or broken piece you can scan it with a technique called photogrammetry to make a 3D model and you could then 'repair' the 3D scan and print that. There are plenty of free photogrammetry apps for mobile phones that can make a 3D scan of a small object like a chess piece.

I weighed some pieces - it's 330g for a complete set (black and white pieces with 2 extra queens).

However if your library is charging by weight then they're charging for the filament. You'd be better off buying and bringing your own filament because they probably won't have nice colors. Buy a roll of wood filament and copper for your white and black pieces and bring those. They'll probably offer a large reduction in price if you're supplying the filament yourself. Filament comes in 1Kg rolls for about $20 to $30 a roll.

Replacement pieces is an excellent use of 3D printing. So long as you have good reference photos of the missing piece it's easy enough to recreate in 3D. Also, if you have a partial or broken piece you can scan it with a technique called photogrammetry to make a 3D model and you could then 'repair' the 3D scan and print that. There are plenty of free photogrammetry apps for mobile phones that can make a 3D scan of a small object like a chess piece.

Thank you.  This is very helpful.

I purchased your Latvian files to 3D print myself. What type of filament did you use to print your pieces? Did you use a PLA or ABS or other type? I saw from your earlier thread that the wood type used a PLA with a bamboo filler. I watched your videos on the painting and weighting and they will be very helpful for me when I get to that stage. Thank you ahead of time for your help.

The big question is, how long would it take for you to print a set with a $200 printer? The last time I checked, it would be about 24 hours a piece. 

I always use PLA filament. "Wood filament" is actually about 70% PLA filament with 30% sawdust, either from bamboo or some other light wood. There are many brands with slightly different colors and different printing temperatures. I recommend you try a few to see which you like. With the Latvian set it's important to slow down your print speed for the last few layers so the thin finials on the King and Queen look smooth.

Pawns printed in PLA take about 45 minutes. A king takes about 120 minutes. I always print PLA pieces one-at-a-time to ensure they are smooth.

Resin printing is different, adding more pieces doesn't increase the print time, only the tallest piece effects the final time. So you can print a king in resin in about 6 hours, but you can also print 2 kings and 2 queens all at once in 6 hours. Larger resin printers allow you to print more pieces in the same time.

I'm very happy to announce that I now have a US vendor for my sets. You can buy 3D printed sets in resin from Hirschi's Sweet Creations here.

Here are some examples of their resin 3D printed sets:

As you can see they offer a wide variety of colors including translucent resins. You can select the colors when you order and they can even combine a chess board with your order. Please check out their store here.