The Home Machinist!

I've been playing with my CNC lathe making some chess pieces. The hard part was drawing the pieces in Bob Cad since I had nothing to scale them to or copy from.

Obviously one set needs to be anodized black and I still have to make the 4 knights.

Maybe someday!
Dave C.

Hi Dave,

Nice work on the chess pieces!

The knights are the hardest to draw in CAD, and at this point you might want to just work through it to know you did them all, but if you check out https://grabcad.com/library there are a fair number of chess pieces that you can download drawing of for free. You have to signup to download, but as I said, it's free and there are tons of things to search thru, not just chess stuff.

Terry

Just as a side note: I don't have a CNC mill so making the knights in 3D is not something I have the tools to do. All of the mill work on the King, Queen and the Rook were all done with a manual mill.

I did it more as a means of learning and gaining confidence in my ability to make the drawings and the code and be able to run the CNC lathe reliably.

It was a good exercise!

Dave C.

I don't have a CNC mill so making the knights in 3D is not something I have the tools to do

Well I solved that problem and completed the G0678 CNC conversion with a Centroid/Acorn controlled mill with Clearpath servos!

So I took a shot at making the knights. After 32 revisions of the drawings, trying to get it just right, I finally stopped messing with the Fusion 360 Cam and just ran the part. Drawing the part wasn't the hard part for me, it was getting the back side chamfer to run the same as the front side. I never did get it perfect (depth wise) but it'll do.

Some day I'll anodize one set black (or not)

Anyway, it only took 18 months from start to finish but I had to stop and build a CNC mill in order to finish the set. Well, there never was any real urgency to complete the set and I never thought I could really make the nights when I started.

I kind of did though!
Dave C.

This is why I did not build a CNC lathe first. Nice job on the set. I'd probably have to resort to gross abstract representation...

Nice!
Very, very nice!

Once you're set up, anodizing isn't a difficult objective. I anodized and dyed black all of the face plates for the low voltage control lighting system I installed in our house. The outcome was quite acceptable. I'd encourage you to pursue the option to black anodize that beautiful chess set.

H

Nice!
Very, very nice!

Harold, thanks for the kind words!

My wife was looking at the set and she ask me "Do you realize all the skills that you had to acquire before you could make that set?" And then we started going over how it all came to be, realizing that most of the know how was obtained from Masters like yourself, and many others on this forum, who were willing to take the time to answer questions when I didn't know what I was doing.

So really, the Chess set is a testament to our forum and the people who make it all work! I learned how to do this from all of you.....

10 years ago I had never owned or operated a lathe or a mill. I'm glad I got into the "hobby" as it is very fulfilling for me even at my age to be able to have an idea and then be able to turn it into reality.

Now I'm laughing at myself as it take a lifetime to learn things and by the time you get it mastered, you're to tired to do anything with it.

Dave C.

Harold_V wrote: ↑Fri Jul 27, 2018 4:09 pm Nice!
Very, very nice!

Once you're set up, anodizing isn't a difficult objective. I anodized and dyed black all of the face plates for the low voltage control lighting system I installed in our house. The outcome was quite acceptable. I'd encourage you to pursue the option to black anodize that beautiful chess set.

H

Well....half of it at least.

DeanQ wrote: ↑Sat Jul 28, 2018 10:08 am

Harold_V wrote: ↑Fri Jul 27, 2018 4:09 pm Nice!
Very, very nice!

Once you're set up, anodizing isn't a difficult objective. I anodized and dyed black all of the face plates for the low voltage control lighting system I installed in our house. The outcome was quite acceptable. I'd encourage you to pursue the option to black anodize that beautiful chess set.

H

Well....half of it at least.

Yeah! Don't know what I was thinking!

I'd anodize all, but dye only one half.

H