Printed Some Wobbly Chess Bases

I made it back to the Makerspace after a few weeks off.  Tonight, I took a spool of white PLA filament and printed five (5) bases for the wobbly chess pieces.  This took about 2.5 hours and was all the time I had tonight.

I'll take the pieces home and glue them to the top pieces that I printed before.  I need to figure out a good weight to put in the base to make them stand up.  The Thingiverse instructions says to put in five pennies.  I'm going to try lead from Pinewood Derby cars.

Wobbly chess piece printing

I stopped off at the Makerspace this morning to pick up the Wobbly chess pieces I started printing yesternight.  Four of the pieces finished printing but the King, Queen, and two Bishops did not.

The spool of filament had fallen off the rack and the wood dowel slid out. I suppose that means that the filament was stuck on the spool and got pulled off the rack.  That's a lot of force pulling on the filament.

The Makerspace got the PLA filament for free from some company that makes filament. Maybe that sticky rolls is why they donated it. Actually, it's not that bad as long as I keep loosening the filament on the spool every few minutes. I tried loosening as much of the spool as I could before I left last night but I guess it was not enough to last the entire print.

Oh well. The description on Thingiverse said that printing all of the pieces is a challenge.  I'll have to print only a few pieces at a time.

Printed Prototype Wobbly Chess Piece

I would like to print the wobbly chess set I found on Thingiverse.  The author says it will take 60 hours to print everything so it will be a challenge.  I only have about four hours per week to print stuff on the Makerbot Replicator at the Milwaukee Makerspace.  At that rate, it would take almost four months to print everything.

Just for fun, I printed one piece and one square of the board.  If I wanted a permanent piece, I would use different colors for the top and bottom.

The piece has some trouble standing on its own.  I sanded the bottom a bit flatter and I can get it to stand by itself if I am careful.  However, the wobbly nature of the piece might make it annoying to play with.  Maybe I need more weight in the bottom than the nut I used.