Poser Chess Set

A Wall-Mounted Chess Set

Poser Chess Set — hero shot

Sebastian Esteva — ME 227, Winter 2026

Team
Solo project
Materials
3D-printed PLA + magnets
Size
~20" × 20"
Status
Fully functional

A wall-mounted chess set where every piece poses itself — sliding out from a flat magnetic backing into a fully three-dimensional chess piece. The set is functional to actually play with, but also designed to be displayed proudly on a wall between games.

The biggest design challenge was scale: the full board needed to be roughly 20 inches by 20 inches, which was too large for a single print bed. That meant breaking the entire board and every piece into printable sections, then reassembling them with 96 embedded magnets to keep everything correctly oriented and connected.

The Journey

Ideation → Prototyping → Execution

I

Prototyping

Testing every connector, hinge, and mechanism individually before committing to a full print run — a single point of failure at this scale would be costly to redo.

Chess set prototyping — testing mechanisms and connectors
2

Execute

All 46 individual pieces were tracked and printed, then assembled using 96 embedded magnets to keep every piece correctly oriented when posed out from the wall.

Poser Chess Set — finished pieces on the board
← Back to Selected Work