The Grand Master's
Workshop
Combining resin and FDM printing to craft a complete chess set worthy of a grandmaster's table — with pro-level post-processing to rival hand-carved wood.
Why Combine Resin & FDM?
A chess set is one of the most demanding objects you can 3D print — not because any single piece is technically complex, but because the set demands two contradictory virtues: bulk and precision. You need thirty-two pieces, many of them structurally simple but volumetrically large, and yet the finest details — the knight's mane, the queen's crown filigree, the bishop's mitre — must be crisp enough to make the pieces feel crafted rather than manufactured.
Neither technology alone delivers both. FDM (Fused Deposition Modeling) is the workhorse: fast, cheap, structurally robust, and perfectly adequate for the base-heavy pieces where detail is secondary. Resin (MSLA/SLA) is the jeweller: achingly precise, capable of sub-0.05mm detail, but slow, messy, and expensive per gram. The insight at the heart of this guide is elegantly simple — assign each technology to the pieces it was made for.
Where Detail Reigns
Resin excels at capturing organic complexity — the flowing curves of a queen's crown, a knight's sculpted face and mane, the delicate sphere atop a bishop. Layer heights of 0.02–0.05mm produce surfaces that rival injection moulding. The catch is cost and time per part.
Where Volume Wins
For rooks, pawns, and bases, FDM delivers in quantity. A 0.15mm layer height with a 0.4mm nozzle on a dialled-in Bambu or Prusa will produce geometrically clean pieces that, post-sanded and primed, are indistinguishable from resin to a casual eye. Twelve pawns in three hours — resin couldn't compete.
Resin handles the high-detail royalty (King, Queen, Bishop, Knight). FDM handles the high-volume rank and file (Rook, Pawn, and all bases). The result is a complete set that would have taken weeks in resin alone, completed in a weekend.
Assigning Pieces to Technology
Before you print a single gram of filament or drop of resin, map your piece designs to the technology that will serve them best. Here is the definitive assignment chart, with reasoning:
| Piece | Qty | Technology | Reason |
|---|---|---|---|
| King | 2 | Resin | Cross finial, stepped crown collar, and regal proportions reward resin's precision. The tallest piece with the most symbolic presence. |
| Queen | 2 | Resin | Crown spires and pointed coronet tips require <0.05mm detail. The most complex silhouette on the board. |
| Bishop | 4 | Resin | The mitre slash and sphere finial are notoriously difficult to achieve cleanly in FDM. Resin is non-negotiable for a clean result. |
| Knight | 4 | Resin | The knight is the centrepiece of any chess set — organic horse anatomy demands resin's fine layer resolution. A knight printed in FDM is a missed opportunity. |
| Rook | 4 | FDM | Battlements are geometric and regular. At 0.12mm layers, FDM produces crisp crenellations. No organic detail to lose. |
| Pawn | 16 | FDM | Pure volume play. Simple geometry, sixteen required — FDM prints 8 simultaneously in under 2.5 hours. Resin would require 4 costly print runs. |
Sourcing Your Models
The chess design landscape on Printables and Thingiverse is rich. For this guide's workflow, seek Staunton-pattern designs specifically — the Staunton standard was defined in 1849 and remains the global tournament form. Look for sets where the designer has already separated the body and base, which will become important when you unify finishes across both technologies.
Ideal model characteristics: manifold geometry with no open surfaces, supports oriented for resin printability, and base diameters consistent across all pieces (typically 30–36mm for a club-size set). The Staunton Pro and Zagreb 1959 adaptations on Printables have been specifically optimised for dual-technology printing.
"The knight, above all other pieces, reveals the printer's true capability. Print it well in resin and you'll find yourself reluctant to ever place it on a square."The maker's maxim
FDM Settings for Rooks & Pawns
The FDM pieces are not an afterthought. Dialled-in settings make the difference between a pawn that looks home-printed and one that looks hand-turned. The target is zero visible layer lines after post-processing — which means making those layer lines as fine as possible before the sandpaper even touches the surface.
Material Selection
For chess pieces, PLA+ (eSUN, Polymaker Polyterra, or Bambu's own PLA Matte) is the optimal starting material. It sands beautifully, accepts filler primer, and has virtually no warping. PETG produces a tougher piece but is more difficult to sand to a smooth finish. ABS (or ASA) is only worth considering if you're printing in a heated chamber and want maximum solvent-smoothing potential via acetone.
Avoid PLA Silk or metallic filaments for chess pieces intended for post-processing. Their additive pigments create uneven sanding resistance and often cause primer adhesion failures. A matte or standard PLA will finish more cleanly every time.
Rook — Print Settings
Pawn — Print Settings
Enable Arachne perimeter mode (available in PrusaSlicer 2.5+ and Bambu Studio). It intelligently varies perimeter width to fill thin features cleanly — particularly valuable for the rook's battlement gaps, which can otherwise show under-extrusion at the inner corners.
Avoiding Ghosting on Tall Pieces
Pawns, despite their simple geometry, are tall and narrow — prone to vibration ringing artefacts (ghosting) on faster machines. Reduce print speed to 40 mm/s for the final 30% of the pawn's height, or enable Input Shaping/Pressure Advance calibration on Klipper-based printers. On Bambu machines, set the model speed to "Normal" even if you typically use High Speed — the artefact avoidance is worth the extra 12 minutes per plate.
Resin Settings for Royalty
The resin pieces are where this set earns its reputation. The goal is prints that emerge from the vat with no layer lines visible to the naked eye, no suction-cup failures, and internal geometry that is fully cured without brittleness. Achieving all three requires precise exposure calibration before a single piece is committed to print.
Resin Selection
For chess pieces that will be handled constantly, standard grey or white ABS-like resin (Elegoo ABS-Like Pro 2, Anycubic Plant-Based, or Siraya Tech Blu) outperforms brittle standard resins. The ABS-like formulations add just enough flex to survive being knocked off a board without shattering. Avoid water-washable resins for this project — they absorb ambient humidity and can cause surface blooming under topcoat.
Knight & Queen — Resin Settings
King & Bishop — Resin Settings
Orientation and Support Strategy
How you orient a resin chess piece determines 70% of the final surface quality. The goal is to angle every piece between 30° and 45° relative to the build plate. This converts wide horizontal cross-sections — which create suction forces that cause layer delamination — into manageable gradual transitions. It also ensures that support marks land on the underside of the base, not on the visible body of the piece.
For the knight specifically, orient so that the horse's nose is the lowest point and the back of the neck is highest. Place light-touch supports (0.3–0.4mm tip diameter) only on the underbelly and ear tips. Every support scar on a knight's face is a sanding task you've given yourself — minimise them at the source.
Uncured resin is a skin sensitiser and potential allergen. Always wear nitrile gloves, safety glasses, and ensure adequate ventilation when handling liquid resin or IPA wash stations. Never pour uncured resin down the drain — cure it solid under UV before disposal.
Calibration: The Ameralabs Town Test
Before committing any piece to a full print, run the Ameralabs Town calibration print on your specific resin-machine combination. It tests fine towers, thin walls, hole roundness, and small text simultaneously. Target: text readable at 1.5mm height, towers standing without cracks, round holes without elephant's foot. Adjust exposure in 0.1s increments until all criteria pass. Print quality per piece is too high-value to leave to chance.
Post-Processing for a Perfect Finish
Post-processing is where 3D-printed chess pieces cross the threshold from "obviously printed" to "genuinely beautiful." This phase accounts for more time than the printing itself — budget 3–4 hours of active work for a full set. But the compound payoff is extraordinary: a finished set that rewards close inspection rather than apologising for it.
The Dual-Technology Finishing Goal
Your aim is to make FDM and resin pieces visually indistinguishable once painted and sealed. This means raising the FDM surface quality to meet the resin, not lowering resin quality to match FDM. The pipeline below achieves this methodically.
Resin Pieces — Post-Processing Pipeline
IPA Wash
Transfer pieces to an IPA (isopropyl alcohol) station — ideally a purpose-built unit like the Elegoo Mercury Plus or equivalent. Two-stage wash: 30 seconds agitation in dirty IPA, then 60 seconds in clean IPA. Shake gently, don't scrub. Over-washing dissolves fine surface detail and leaves a white haze. Remove supports with flush cutters at this stage while the resin is still slightly flexible — post-cure support removal risks micro-cracking.
UV Post-Cure
Post-cure for 2–3 minutes per side in a dedicated UV curing station. Do not over-cure — yellowing and brittleness increase exponentially past the optimal cure window. ABS-like resins are optimally cured when the surface transitions from tacky to firm but retains a very slight flex in thin sections. A shore hardness tester is overkill for home use — simply verify that the thinnest detail (a knight's ear) doesn't flex when lightly pressed.
Wet Sanding
Wet-sand support scars and any layer stepping on curved surfaces. Start at 400-grit on visible scar tissue, then move to 600 → 800 → 1000 for final smoothing. Use a small sanding stick (wrapped dowel) to reach concave areas. On intricate pieces like the knight, a folded piece of 600-grit works into tight areas better than a sanding block. The goal is not perfect smoothness at this stage — that comes with primer. The goal is removing any height variation above 0.1mm.
Filler Primer
Spray Rust-Oleum Filler Primer or equivalent in thin, even coats. The "filler" formulation fills micro-scratches and residual layer lines simultaneously. Two thin coats are always better than one thick coat — the latter causes sagging in recesses and obscures fine detail. Allow full cure between coats (30 minutes at minimum; overnight is ideal). Light-sand the primed surface with 1000-grit wet paper once fully cured. The reveal after this step is consistently the most gratifying moment in the finishing process.
FDM Pieces — Post-Processing Pipeline
Layer Line Elimination
FDM pieces require more aggressive abrasion to match resin quality. Begin with 220-grit sandpaper on the broad curved surfaces of pawns and rook barrels. Work in circular motions with consistent pressure. The goal here is to physically remove the ridge-valley texture of FDM layers. Move through 320 → 400 → 600. A rotary tool with a small drum sanding attachment dramatically accelerates the inner crenellations of rook battlements — but proceed carefully, as you can remove material you didn't intend to.
XTC-3D Epoxy Coating
For FDM pieces where the geometry makes sanding difficult — particularly the curved shoulder of a pawn — XTC-3D brush-on epoxy is transformative. Mixed in a 2:1 ratio, brush a thin coat over the piece and allow it to self-level for 5 minutes before the piece starts rotating in a warm space. The epoxy fills layer lines chemically rather than mechanically. One coat is sufficient; it adds approximately 0.3mm to surfaces and slightly softens edge sharpness — account for this on the rook battlements by applying only to curved sections.
Filler Primer (same product, same method)
Importantly, use the identical filler primer on FDM and resin pieces. Colour and surface response must be identical going into the paint stage so that the final result is visually unified. Apply in the same two-coat sequence. At this stage, if an FDM piece still shows visible layer stepping after priming, sand back with 600-grit and apply one additional coat rather than proceeding — the primer will amplify any remaining texture under paint.
Painting & Sealing
The colour scheme of a chess set is as personal as the design. The classics — black and white, walnut and boxwood, ebony and bone — endure because they maximise contrast and allow the piece forms to be read instantly at any angle. But the medium opens other possibilities: bronze and silver, crimson and ivory, obsidian and gold.
Painting Approaches
There are two schools for painted 3D-printed chess pieces. The spray-and-seal approach prioritises consistency and is ideal if painting is not your forte. The brush-and-wash approach creates depth and heirloom character but requires patience and miniature painting skill.
Spray-and-Seal (Recommended for Sets of 32)
Spray all "white" pieces with Rust-Oleum Satin White or Montana Gold Ivory. Spray all "dark" pieces with Montana Black Matte or Rust-Oleum 2X Matte Black. Once dried (1 hour), apply a light dusting of Tamiya TS-80 Flat Clear as a sealer — this gives the pieces the silky-matte feel of well-aged wood without a plastic sheen.
White Side
Dark Side
Gold (alt)
(alt dark)
(alt dark)
(alt light)
Brush-and-Wash (For Heirloom-Quality Sets)
This approach borrows directly from miniature wargaming techniques. Apply a base coat of Vallejo or Citadel paint by brush, then apply a dark wash (Nuln Oil or Citadel Shade Agrax Earthshade) into all recesses. The wash settles in crevices and dramatically defines the depth of carved details — a technique that makes the knight's mane look genuinely three-dimensional rather than flat-painted.
Once the wash is dry, dry-brush the raised surfaces with a lighter mix of the base colour — this catches raised detail and creates a natural fading effect from highlight to shadow. On white pieces, dry-brush with pure white over an off-white base. On dark pieces, dry-brush with a warm grey over black. Seal with matte varnish (Vallejo Matte Varnish or Testors Dullcote). The result is a set that genuinely looks like it has provenance.
Felt Bases
The final touch that separates serious sets from printed curiosities: self-adhesive felt circles applied to the base of every piece. 25–30mm diameter, 1.5–2mm thickness, dark green or dark red felt. This protects the board, prevents sliding, and adds the acoustic thud of a weighted piece when placed. Sources: Amazon, Hobbycraft, or any model shop carry adhesive felt pads in bulk. Cut circular discs with a leather punch or scissors with a template guide.
Weight your pieces before applying felt. Drop a small amount of BB shot or lead fishing weights mixed into two-part epoxy into the hollow base of each FDM piece during printing (pause the print at 5% height to insert weights). This gives every piece the satisfying heft of a tournament-quality Staunton set. Target weight: Pawns ~25g, Rooks ~45g, Queen ~65g, King ~75g.
The Complete Materials List
Everything you need to complete this project from cold start to finished set, organised by category.
The Weekend Workflow
The dual-technology approach makes a full set achievable in a single weekend if you run both printers in parallel. Here is the optimised workflow:
-
01
Friday Evening — Start Both Printers
Queue the resin printer with all knights (2 per colour, 4 total) oriented at 45°. Simultaneously start the FDM printer on the first pawn plate (8 pawns). Let both run overnight. Total overnight output: 8 pawns + 4 knights.
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02
Saturday Morning — Wash & Cure Knights
Wash and cure overnight resin prints. Remove supports. Start the second resin batch (Queens + Kings). Start FDM plate 2 (remaining 8 pawns). While machines run, hand-sand pawn plate 1 through to 400-grit.
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03
Saturday Afternoon — Bishops + Rooks
Wash and cure Queens/Kings. Third resin batch: Bishops (4 total). Start FDM rooks (4 total). Begin XTC-3D coating on first pawn batch if desired. Apply first filler primer coat to knights — the first batch to be ready.
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04
Saturday Evening — Primer All FDM Pieces
All FDM pieces should be complete. Wash, sand through 600-grit, and apply first filler primer coat to all 20 FDM pieces. Allow overnight cure. Wash and cure Bishops from resin.
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05
Sunday Morning — Sand Primer, Second Coat
Lightly sand all primed pieces with 1000-grit wet paper. Apply second filler primer coat to any pieces still showing surface imperfections. This is also when you assess whether any FDM pieces need a second XTC-3D pass. Apply first primer to resin pieces.
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06
Sunday Afternoon — Paint & Seal
All 32 pieces primed and ready. Divide into white and dark groups. Spray paint in two rounds (base colour, then 60-minute rest, then sealer). Apply felt bases. The set is complete. Allow 24 hours before heavy use to allow paint to fully harden.
A complete set using this workflow typically costs £40–£65 / $50–$80 in consumables (excluding printer hardware and electricity). A comparable hand-carved Staunton walnut set of equivalent quality retails for £200–£600. The economics, like the game itself, reward those who think ahead.