Chess Board and Pieces

I believe that engineering can and should be beautiful. In this group project to build a chess set, I led the creation of the board. I used traditional woodworking to make the walnut base and acrylic with an LED strip for a modern flair. The individually addressable LEDs were controlled with an Arduino and had a button to rotate through light settings. The board itself was made up of three magnetically connected sections: a piece storage frame, a compartment for the LED strip, and the playing surface. The group used a CNC lathe with post-processing on a mill to make the aluminum chess pieces, anodizing one set black.