Left: The Spikesman, student-designed chess piece. Right: Angelheart, student-designed chess piece.

Meera Ramanathan

In 2022, I received a grant from the VAPA (Visual and Performing Arts) Foundationʼs VAPA Enhancement Program (VEP) to purchase a 3D printer for my art room. I had seen posts from teachers on social media about the 3D-printing lessons they were implementing, and I was excited about the different possibilities for my own students. After researching printers, I decided on the Flashforge Finder 3 and twelve filaments in various colors. I couldn’t wait to start using it with my fifth-graders!

I am pleased to share with you a 3D-printing lesson I implemented involving chess pieces.

The Essential Question
This was our first-ever 3D printing lesson, and I wanted students to come up with a creative solution to a problem. I gave them the following prompt: “If you could change one piece in a chess game, what would it look like, what would its name be, and how would it move?”

In Preparation
I created a slideshow presentation for students that explained the game and included samples of chess pieces that I designed.

This was our first-ever 3D printing lesson, and I wanted students to come up with a creative solution to a problem.

During our first class, we studied images of chess pieces and discussed how every piece has a different name, function, and position in the game. I brought my chess set from home and demonstrated the placement of the pieces, their names, and how they move on the board. For example, the queen can move any number of spaces in any direction, while the king can move only one space in any direction.

Think-Pair-Share
Students worked in pairs to develop a new chess piece. Each pair had to come up with a name for their piece, sketch what it would look like, and determine where it would be placed and how it would move.

Gauntlet Trophy, student designed-chess piece and planning worksheet.

I showed students the shapes and forms that would be available to them on the Tinkercad website to ensure that their paper worksheet design would transfer seamlessly. I gave each pair a limit of four shapes and forms to stack; they needed to ask for permission if they wanted to challenge themselves by using more.

Over the course of an eighty-minute class, students collaborated on their worksheet to design their chess piece.

Designing with Tinkercad
During our next class, I introduced students to the Tinkercad website. We practiced logging on and using the different tools for twenty to twenty-five minutes, dragging shapes and forms on the work plane, stacking them, changing the height and size, and zooming in and out.

After reviewing their worksheet designs from the previous class, students arranged, combined, and stacked the forms to create their piece.

A group shot of studentsʼ 3D-printed chess pieces.

Assessment
I walked around the room, assisting students as they created their piece. I also had students walk around to see each pair’s worksheet and digital design. At the end of class, I collected the worksheets and checked that I could view the designs uploaded to Tinkercad.

Conclusion
Over the next three months, I exported each design as an .STL file, sliced the file, downloaded it to a .GX file, and 3D-printed a piece for every student. After 250-plus hours of printing 120-plus pieces, students were happy to take their chess pieces home.

Meera Ramanathan is a project resource teacher at Zamorano Fine Arts Academy in San Diego, California. mramanathan@sandi.net
Redesigning Chess