Elephantine Micro Chess Set

I've been working on a pet project as a gift to my nieces. The one niece has been learning to play chess. The other niece is, I've been told, really into elephants at the moment. So...I decided to render some very, very small elephant chess pieces.

These are all rendered in Sketchup -- the official freeware of the untrained, amateur CAD artist.

I've just ordered some test prints today, and I'm anxious about how they will print. I mainly use Shapeways to print custom building toy accessories, so I'm used to the small scale...but there are a lot of little details that are pushing the envelop this time. I'm anticipating there will be quite a bit of "fusing" on some of the finer gaps.

Pawn:


I mostly recycled the basic pawn parts for the rest of the set.

The Rook is supposed to be a Roller Derby elephant.



The bishop...obviously.



The queen:



(Female African elephants have tusks!)

The knight:


(What you can't see so well is the rocket strapped to his back, which lets him "jump" over the other elephants.)

I also added square bases that name the piece (and gave me a way to sprue the figurines together without affecting the figures themselves).

These are all very tiny...around 15mm...so I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

How fun, woohoo!

Please be sure to let us know how they come out.

Shel M
NH, USA

The roller one looks like will fall!

@Shel -- Thanks! Will do!

@numarul7 -- Oh, it definitely would not stand on its own. I added a little square base to each figure that included the name of the chess piece they are supposed to represent.

Hey, gang,

I received my test prints of the Elephant micro-chess set (just in time for International Tabletop day), and here's a group shot with one of every type of piece:



Here's the knight, front and back so as to showcase his hardware:



The rook:



The pawn:



And here's the bishop, with a penny for scale:


Please ignore the ugly sprue remnants jutting out of the bases...I'm considering buying a cheap dremel so I can sand those things down more effectively. I tend to sprue a lot of my test parts together, but the new guidelines to use 2mm sprues makes it harder to just clip them off with my utility scissors.

Thanks for looking!

Now you need to do the Black part ones!

Actually, since this set is for both of my nieces, the other half of the board is based on her favorite thing...which is not elephants...

Ah!

I guess you will paint them with details!

You will find this useful https://www.shapeways.com/forum/index.php?t=msg&th=19949 &start=0& if you plan to paint them out.

For painting I guess you know that acrylics do well , but you must do the coating if not they will pass through surface