Spartan Chess Set

Synopsis:
How do I minimize the cost of a chess set?

Reference Links:
Spartan King
Jacant's Chess Set
Jacant's King

Background:
I have a chess set under development for a chess variant called Spartan Chess. The first piece, the Spartan King (3 ½ inches tall), has been modeled and uploaded to Shapeways and I have a price quote of $ 45.45 (€ 31.37) for the single piece.

This price quote for the Spartan King exceeds my expectation. My expectation was based a price of $ 105.04 (€ 72.50) for an entire chess set of 16 pieces. Other set I looked at carry a similar price. Jacant's King is only $ 10.90 (€ 7.52).

The Spartan King has a price of $45.45 and Jacant's King is 10.90. The Spartan King is 4 times as expensive as Jacant's.

Question:
What is causing my piece to be so much more expensive than Jacant's?

a) Is it because my piece is solid and his is hollow and I used much more in the way of materials?
b) Is it that my piece is much larger?
c) Is there some design subtlety that is causing the problem?
d) Is it something else?

Help sought:
Any help you can offer to help me minimize the cost of a chess set is most welcome.

Thanks!

since pricing is by volume i'd guess it's because yours is solid.

The answer is 1 & 2.

Yours is

Height 4.1 cm
Width 4.1 cm
Depth 8.1 cm

His is:

Height 2.0 cm
Width 2.0 cm
Depth 7.6 cm


Solid makes the biges difference though. Hollow it out to 1mm thick walls then drill a 0.1mm hole through the bottom. This will result with almost the same mass but the center will not be sintered and therefore cost less. I estimate 1/4 to 1/5 the price.

Also grouping all the pieces in 1 file will save you $1.50 per piece.

Hi streetman.sd

I must agree with the advice given so far.

I uploaded a revised version of my own Classic Chess Set yesterday in an attempt to bring the cost of the set down. The original upload had a King piece that stood over 7cm tall, with the pawns at around 4cm tall. I hollowed the set out with a wall thickness of roughly 1.5 - 2.5mm, but the set was prohibitively expensive (I had my heart set on a stainless steel / antique bronze glossy set, but this would have cost in excess of $1500 - and the walls were too thin for stainless steel!)

I decided the only alternative was to scale the set down, but found this left less room for hollowing the pieces out - so they'd have to be solid. The King now stands at just over 5cm tall and the pawns are a little under 3cm. It's much smaller than I would have liked, but even though the pieces are now solid (apart from a recess in the base that will house a set of base plugs I have yet to design), the set is considerably cheaper - under $800 for the aforementioned SS/ABG set. This is still far too expensive for me to afford right now - and I can get a stunning chess set elsewhere for less than half that, which doesn't bode well for my sales figures.

What materials do you intend to print your set in? Do you intend to sell the set in your shapeways shop, or are you willing to do some post production yourself?

Spartan chess is an unusual chess variant pitting 2 unequal armies against each other. White represents the Persians and uses a traditional chess army. Black represents the Spartans with pieces and pawns that move differently from white. The Spartans even have 2 Kings (historical). For more details see: Spartan Chess. Hence I will only be printing the black or Spartan side.

I am mulling over just what material to use to print this chess set in. I think I need to use a less expensive although strong material that is black or dark grey. Any suggestions? And what should the thickness of my walls be when I hollow out the pieces?

I do intend to sell the set through the Shapeways shop. The interest should be small. What sort of post production work did you have in mind? Injection molding?

Looks like an interesting chess variant.

Post production would depend on the materials used and if you follow the suggestion that you model thin walls and fill (With resin or something similar, I presume?) If you wanted to do something like this you wouldn't be able to sell the items on shapeways, unless you provided instructions for you customers to carry out the post production.

I'd suggest you decide on a material and take it from there - the material you choose can affect how you model the piece (different minimum wall thicknesses and other material specific considerations apply) I'm not really qualified to suggest a material having only purchased items in metal, but I recon if you want black or grey you should look into: BSF, GR, BD, A, FCS, HGB (these are the codes used in your product inventory). I would think BSF or BD would be ideal, or if you're not too worried about detail, GR might be a good alternative.

It looks at this time I will be using BSF for my first set of Spartans. Now I have never done any 3D modeling before, so I have a lot yet to learn.

I am thinking about creating this King with these characteristics:
a) 2.0 mm walls (min recommended is 0.7 mm)
b) Solid crest on helmet
c) A solid lambda (the letter looking like this: ^ ) of 2.0 mm standing out on stem of piece
d) Hollow inside the 2.0 mm walls
e) Open base on bottom
f) Height of about 3 inches – 77 mm or so

My questions are these:
1) Will this, using the BSF material, product a strong enough piece?
2) Is the "hollow portion" of the pieces filled with some inexpensive material that needs to be removed in finishing? Or is it just hollow?
3) In general what finishing operations can I expect?

Hi
I think 'mctrivia' has answered all of your questions. You just have to keep your model hollow, and as small as resonably possible for a chess set.
My original designs are all hollow, but they are still too expensive, it was impossible to group them as a set because there was too much detail on them , which added up to over 1,000,000 triangles.
I redesigned them with less detail, and a thinner wall, thus being able to upload them as a set and of course saving on each individual start up cost.
I will be uploading the revised pieces as individual items for anyone who is interested, which will be somewhat less in cm3
than the original.

Maybe I can help you shell the pieces?

When I first read this I thought you were offering to SELL the pieces

What sort of piece "shelling help" do you have to offer?

To answer your questions
1) Strong yes, heavy dense object no. If you want the feel of injection molded plastic go with detail material.
2) Unless things have changed again, you have to leave an escape hole for any WSF based material large enough for the remaining power to flow out, and for detail large enough to be able to remove support material. They will be hollow when you get them. Unless the rules have changed where you can trap build material in which WSF based will be full of powder, and detail will be full of build material. Remember that you have to have a hole regardless, shapeways software will remove any enclosed geometry that isn't connected to the outside face.
3) WSF based materials have a powdery feel well because it's pretty much fused together powder. Detail materials will have some stepping as it's built layer by layer with extruded plastic.

Other options, you could go with polished WSF and dye the pieces yourself. These will be all purdy and smooth. You could go with FD or FUD and paint them yourself. You can go with thinner walls, maybe that would be another option for you, go thin walled, and fill with a heavy material to give it some density. FD and FUD will have a nice smooth look for you. They are pretty backed up on them right now, but maybe when you have the models ready to order, they'll be caught up. I think the goal is to be caught up within the next 4 weeks.

if you make them as I suggest out of WSF (And die it black with RIT die) or BSF it will be filled with powdered WSF. This does not need to be removed and will add to the mass of the piece without adding to the cost.

WSF can be died very easily if you can buy RIT die in your area. Check out https://www.dicecollector.com/THE_DICE_THEME_SHAPEWAYS.html he dies all of his dice himself. Saves him a fortune.

What I meant was, When you have a solid model which you want to have a wall thickness, to reduce its cm3. The term used is known as shell which means you give the model a wall thickness and remove one or more faces to make it hollow.

Thanks JACANT, mctrivia, Youknowwho4eva, and goebat for all the fine help!

I have reduced the size of my pieces a bit and I am in the process of hollowing them out. I should be able to print out my first version of the Spartan Kings shortly and move on from there to the rest of the set, the Warlord, General, Colonel, Lieutenant and hoplite.