I was inspired by those who have done chess pieces as impossible passthrough objects, and thought surely someone has done the same thing for checkers! Well I couldn't find any, so I decided it would be fun to come up with my own concept for checkers pieces.
Each piece starts with the open end of the inner piece pointed up, so it looks like prongs sticking up. This is a normal piece. The inside of the piece is big enough for most fingers to be able to grab the piece and keep the passthrough parts together as you move it.
When your piece becomes a king, you can remove the inner part and flip it 180 degrees. The bottom part of it is flat and has an imprint of a crown on the inside. Since the prongs stick up a little bit in the original orientation, the crown flat part will stick up over the outer shell as well, making it easy to see which is a king and which is not. There is a thicker bottom part that serves to help orient the base of the model.
I tested on a couple of printers and these tolerances should work well for most people. You can print everything without supports. The crown imprint should print fine if your printer is good with small bridges, as the ones I tested did, but you can add supports there if you need to for yours. On one of the printers I tested with, the temperature for my filament was a little off and the piece would get stuck and need a slight nudge to get through, because some of the prongs were a little warped/had some squished layers. If you have something similar happen with these tolerances, you may need to double check temperature and leveling so that the edges are smooth.
I hope everyone enjoys my take on a classic game piece!
The author marked this model as their own original creation.