3D printed Piecepack

The piecepack is a generic set of boardgame parts designed by James Kyle and released under public domain. Hundreds of games for the piecepack are available on the internet, both on the official site and on the piecepack wiki.

3d_printed_piecepack/sample-tmb.jpg

Piecepack sets are available for sale from a number of small scale producers in the US [1], which is not very helpful if you live in EU and don't want to spend more in postage than in the actual product; when I've heard about the piecepack years ago I tried the DIY option, but my woodworking skills aren't that great, and the printable options aren't that good to actually play most games.

It's when I had access to a 3D printer that I finally had a chance to own a playable piecepack set, and since there were no models available on the internet I used it as a way to learn about OpenSCAD and designed this set.

[1]Since the time when I originally wrote this page the Infinite Board Game book + piecepack set has been released and it has been easily available from mainline stores (at least online).

The Pieces

Since I don't have access to a printer with multiple extruders I designed the pieces to have a recessed area for the graphics and painted it with acrylics; I've been toying with the idea of filling it with some transparent plastic to get a nice flat surface, but I haven't actively looked for the right material yet (possibly some kind of clear, air curing silicone?).

I've designed the set to have the basic piecepack pieces (tiles, coins, pawns, dice), plus accessories such as saucers. I've also added a suites die, since it was extremely easy to adapt from the standard dice.

After playing a few games, I've noticed that the suggested size for dices was quite small and could disappear in a busy gaming table, so I've added a second, bigger size as an alternative.

There are also piecepack pyramids, but the original design was too detailed to be printable at small sizes, so they are extremely simplified with just a big(ish) suite symbol on one of the sides.

Since quite a few games require more than one piecepack I've decided to add also the two main expansions: playing cards and seasons.

I was worried that PLA in light colours could be too transparent and show the back of pieces, so I decided to print the pieces in black (and paint the black suite(s) in white).

Downloads and Instructions

OpenSCAD source code for the set is available on my git repository; stl files are available for download from this page for convenience.

Please notice that releases are tagged in the repository, but only the latest version of each STL package is available for download from this site.

Instructions for printing and finishing are in the README file in the git repository.

2D

I've also used the SVGs from the 3D printed version to make a few 2D items; they are available as SVG sources in the repository above and PDFs are downloadable here for convenience.

  • mini piecepack: half-size travel version of the piecepack; includes the base and cards suites.
  • duodecimal cards: a deck of cards based on the piecepack suites and duodecimal digits.

License

OpenSCAD code and SVG artwork Copyright 2013-2017 Elena Grandi

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/.

Send a comment: unless requested otherwise I may add it, or some extract, to this page.

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