My 10yo has been designing his own chess pieces on paper. Last night we started putting them into cad to 3d print them. I’m doing the driving at this point, but he’s soaking it all in.
Most shapes are basic revolves. By the time we get to the end, I’m betting he’ll be clicking all the buttons.
That looks like fun. I’ve tried to get the kids interested in CAD and it is like pulling teeth.
I’ve tried before. I think it really just depended more on the project.
He originally approached me about making them out of wood, but I think he’d lose interest before we got them all made. This will be easier.
I just had a friend come over with her son for some printing last weekend. He has been making transformers with tinkerCAD. He showed up with a bed full of robot parts with ball and socket snap together joints. Blew me away.
Might want to look at tinkerCAD he seemed to love it, but if you already started on something more advanced, stick to that.
If we had affordable CAD when I was a kid I would have given up lego a lot earlier.
Awesome!
My nephew got a 3d printer for Christmas last year. It’s one of the really small, kid oriented, ones, but he’s been enjoying it. He’s been using it a lot on some of his science projects this year. The first was he had to make a molecule. He 3d printed all the little beads and sticks to glue everything together. Then, more recently, he 3d printed a solar system.
I had offered to give him my older 3d printer after I finished the MP3DPv4, but my sister didn’t want it. Even with me helping him set it up.
no, you just would have had WAY cooler Lego
I am a HUGE advocate for getting kids involved in various shop projects. Its quality time with them, and life skills they can use the rest of their life. Not to mention the critical thinking and multitsking etc. I have been blessed/cursed (depending on the moment) with three daughters. Thats no excuse. They still learn how to make and fix things.
That’s such a fun little bonding thing man. It’s like once the kids brain gets that lightbulb moment they can just run with it. Just getting them to that point can be a task lol.
The tinker cad is very fun and they do cool things like last week. Was build a wooden gravity car like in scouts. Then they race them digitally. They have some motion stuff as well.
Balloon cars would be a fun one to get a bunch of kiddos on.
While some of us still use TinkerCAD as their daily driver… (He points his hand shamefully in the air)
Whatever tool gets the job done is the right tool. (Don’t tell my Dad I said that!! (a screwdriver is not a chisel boy!))
But it is a pry bar. 
Only if we had 3D printing to go with it.
For my son, I used TinkerCAD to build up something he’d done in Minecraft, then 3D printed it… then he needed a 3D printer…
Tonight, I did the knight (the head is weird).
Then my son did the queen, rook, and bishop.
I walked him through the queen, but left him to his own devices on the others.
I helped him do the scallops on the top of the rook and the mouth in the top of the bishop.
He did have some issues with the bishop not revolving correctly. We traced it down to a circle not being centered on the axis screwing things up.
I’ll post a picture of the pieces tomorrow. I was busy in the shop playing with the mill while he was working on this.
And here’s the rendering of his chess pieces. Now I need to go get the MP3DPv4 printing again so we can print them.
So somewhere i saw where they printed a board like a puzzle it just snapped together. Make that with a frame and have your childs name in the pieces!!! What a keepsake! Congrats to you both!
We’re going to make a board out of wood like a cutting board. Need to pick up some contrasting colored woods.
We had to go back and modify some of the pieces. We found out that the board pieces are supposed to be tallest to shortest… King->Queen->Bishop->Knight->Rook->pawn.
I played chess for a short while, guess i never noticed that!
I hope you found that before all were printed.
Care to share? My boy plays chess and we are missing a few pieces from his current set. These look really good.
