For over 1,500 years, 64 tiny squares have represented a battlefield fraught with struggles, loss, victories and hard-fought draws. Ernest Levert, Jr. first encountered the game of chess in elementary school and continues to refine his strategy a lifetime later. His latest opening — founding The Royal Oak Initiative — is proving to be the winning move for youths around the nation.
Levert is the founding director of The Royal Oak Initiative, a 501(c)(3) non-profit charged with inspiring and empowering the leaders of tomorrow to master their own future of personal and economic success through the game of chess.
The ROI has a mission of teaching critical thinking skills, problem solving abilities, and teamwork by providing activities and experiences based around three pillars: citizenship, stewardship, and leadership. We do this by supporting the launch of chess clubs across the US, providing leadership training and workshops, and by hosting fun and engaging tournaments.
Levert was first introduced to additive manufacturing in college during his engineering studies, where he found a love of being around the people that thrive on getting things done.
I like knowing what’s going on in my community, especially with community growth and partnerships. The Idea Foundry makerspace in Columbus, Ohio had 3D printed chess sets and it planted the seed.
That seed continued to grow, leading Levert to IC3D to learn how additive manufacturing could help increase awareness of the ROI efforts and bring chess to more youths. IC3D partnered with Levert & the ROI to produce giant 3D printed chess pieces to help bring attention to local events and to serve as the start to a human-scaled set for public play in the Linden neighborhood of Columbus, Ohio. This grand idea was the brainchild of Xavier Pinckney, a participant with the ROI during the spring 2021 Royal Oak Chess Citizenship Academy at St. Stephen’s Community House in partnership with the New Salem Missionary Baptist Church Community of Caring Development Foundation and the City of Columbus Department of Neighborhoods.
I want The Royal Oak Initiative to spread around Ohio and the nation, to become a national network of chess clubs, personalized to each location but with the core ROI methods and drives.
I’ve watched IC3D’s involvement in the community & how they give back with the 3D Printed Toys for Tots campaign. I want to expose students to the different means of creation to help unlock their future potential and to encourage more creative expressions that can lead to possible occupations down the road.
Chess teaches more than just strategy. Just having a chess board out turns strangers into opponents, and adversaries into new friends. Chess helps build the soft skills — I like winning, but I love losing. That’s what I like about about chess – learning how to be safe in experimentation. You learn from this, you keep on moving. Wisdom comes from experience.
IC3D was tasked with manufacturing large format chess pieces in recycled or environmentally sustainable materials that could withstand Midwest winters and humid summers while remaining affordable at large scale.
The engineers at IC3D turned to Recycled PETG, a new material developed by IC3D as part of the Circular Polymer System. R-PETG was perfect for the job due to the engineered high-flow rate and excellent layer adhesion, enabling the faster production speeds needed for large format 3D printing.
I’m big on the culture of chess. The history & journey across the globe has been mimicked by evolution of the rules of the game. It’s civilizing. As you understand the rules of the game, so too can you understand your impact on the community around you.
Recycled PETG began development as part of the IC3D Circular Polymer System, an IC3D initiative to reduce the amount of thermoplastic waste that enters the global waste stream. R-PETG is produced with cleaned 3D printed prototypes and excess scrap that are chopped into fine pieces and blended with industrial waste resin to create a sustainable, high-performing 3D printing material while also lowering production costs substantially. This new recycled material is then wound on cleaned, reused plastic filament spools, further reducing the amount of waste generated by the additive manufacturing industry.
Recycled 3D printing filament should be the default material for most additive manufacturing purposes. Single use products need to be turned back into usable materials. It matters on a moral, environmental, and forward-looking scale to me.
As an engineer, I feel like I have a personal responsibility to ensure that the products I am creating are sustainable and environmentally responsible.
With the ideal material chosen, IC3D engineers began production of the giant chess pieces on the large format & custom built IC3D E-class 3D printers. Each piece took less than three days to produce, ending with a clean 3D printed part that stands nearly four feet tall. Additional regulation-sized chess pieces were produced simultaneously on the Virago 700 — a medium format industrial 3D printer — to become part of new chess sets destined to be given to new players and chess clubs around the nation. As each chess set finds a home with a new student of the game, they grow new leadership & economic skills, and preparing them to become the next generation of change agents.
