Introducing Kids to Chess Through Design!

Hello! I am Joseph, a current high school sophomore and aspiring future engineer. As a first time author, I ask that you please ask questions and leave constructive comments. I welcome any ideas for improvement and ways to contribute to the Instructables community.

Chess has been played in India as early as the 6th century and around the world for hundreds of years. It continues to be a challenging game that encourages people to be strategic and thoughtful in their actions. I think that chess is a great way for younger kids and teens to grow their analytical thinking and expertise. However, many have a hard time staying motivated and involved in learning/playing the game. My Instructables project is aiming to resolve this issue by adding a personal connection to chess. The king piece in chess is what represents a player throughout the game, and you manipulate the other pieces to protect your king while trying to take down the other player. To help kids get more interested in the game of chess over quarantine, I will help them design and use a 3d printer to create custom kings pieces.

The first step is taking the dimensions of your piece. When designing a piece like this, take into account the dimensions of your chess board and original chess pieces. Accurate measurements will make sure the piece does not end up out of proportion. Keep in mind that when helping a younger person design a piece, they may have trouble understanding the dimensions, and you may have to help them at first to get the sizing correct. For me, the dimensions were as follows:

Board squares: 35mm x 35mm

Original King Piece: 61mm tall and 20mm base diameter

To make the process easy for people new to CAD (Computer-Aided Design), I chose Autodesk Tinkercad, as it is one of the most seamless, intuitive, and accessible programs. As I tinker with my 3d printer often and am used to different CAD software, I made my design slightly more advanced. However, Autodesk Tinkercad guides younger kids when they start designing, and emphasize using basic shapes.

Creating a design like this can be really challenging for young kids, and they may need lots of help to make something that can be printed effectively. With my ten year old brother, I found that asking him a general questions helped. Once I got an idea of what he wanted, I taught him to use the program which led to a really good result. If you are having trouble getting a younger maker started, try having them draw a picture of what they would like, and ask them questions as you recreate it to the best of your ability. You will be really surprised as to how involved a kid will be in designing their own king as long as you keep it engaging and fun for them. By introducing kids and teens to design early, we can inspire more people to participate in our wonderful hobby.

I have been lucky enough to experiment with a desktop 3D printer for the past few months. A 3D printer would be the most efficient way to produce the designs made in Tinkercad. If you do not have a 3D printer, many schools have a Makerspace or 3D printers available. Ask a teacher if they allow students to use their machines, and work with your teachers to get the design printed. Another option are some libraries with availability to STEM materials. If 3D printing is not an option, do not fear! There are plenty of ways to create a king. You can carve one out of wood, sculpt one out of clay, cut one out of cardboard, etc.. There are infinite options, but you may go as detailed or as basic as you may like. The point is that you make it your own and it represents you when you are finished. Each 3d printer and filament type is different, but I had success on my printer (Monoprice Select Mini V2) using these settings:

0.2 mm layer height

Supports: yes

Raft: not needed

Infill: Grid, 20%

Temp: 200 C nozzle and 60 C heated bed

Color can also be as simple or complicated as you would like. If you would like, you may choose to print 2 of each king and paint them black and white. You may also get even more adventurous, and use all different colors. Having a custom chess king makes it so you can always discern the pieces, so you may absolutely go crazy with color and have little worry about it affecting the game.

When it comes to learning to play chess, I always refer people to the internet, where there are plenty of videos on how to play the game. With chess, there are many levels of complexity that you can take at your own pace, but if you are just starting I recommend you work to truly understand the basics, so that later, different strategies become easy to understand. I would rather not have people think that I created any of these videos, so I will not link any in this Instructable, but a quick search will give you plenty of results.

Chess has been an interesting hobby for me, as it has fascinating benefits and is fun to learn. It is extremely challenging for the mind, and can have profound effects on a person’s decision making and rationalization. Seeing this, I think that it should be something that kids and teens pursue. The problem I found was the boring start, and while a professional may not choose to use a custom king piece, it may be the thing that gets a young kid into the hobby. To an experienced maker designing a chess piece may not be the biggest challenge. However, the point of this Instructable is to encourage those makers to guide kids to find a new hobby and become invested into something that will challenge their mind and have a long lasting beneficial effect on their lives. Not every young maker is going to enjoy chess, or even want to help design themselves a king. However, designing a custom king piece may motivate them to learn about a great game that has been played for centuries.