The board
Magnet array below the surface
Underneath: coils, wiring and enough current to make the switching circuit explosive.
Mechatronics / electromagnets / 1997
BEng Chess Board
Final-year Mechatronics project at Leeds. A chess board that moved pieces itself, using an array of hand-wound electromagnets under the playing surface.
The scans here are from the final report. Old paper, old CAD, proper 1990s desktop screenshots.
- Project
- Robotic chessboard final-year BEng project.
- Degree
- BEng Mechatronics, University of Leeds.
- Actuation
- Electromagnets below the board, with steel-cored coils wound by hand.
- Electronics
- Coil switching, flyback protection, logic-level control and position detection.
- Mechanical work
- Board base, magnet cores, supports and a fair amount of drilling in a straight line.
- Status
- Archived from report scans and a surviving photograph. The original project was long ago.
What it was trying to do
Move chess pieces without a visible mechanism on top of the board. The report breaks the problem into control software, the movement sequence, coil drivers and the physical board.
Why it belongs here
It's awesome, and those coils store a lot of energy, if you don't have the flyback diode the MOSFET explodes on switch off.
Report appendix
Photos from the final report
The report photos show the board, the electronics board and the row of magnets under the playing surface. Not high-resolution, but enough to remember how much copper was involved.
The parts
Cores, base and holes
Base plate, core dimensions, hole positions.
The control
Old CAD, old software
Report includes CAD screenshots (from CIMCAD) and movement diagrams. All very 1997.
