This article was first published in the June 2016 issue of WIRED magazine. Be the first to read WIRED's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
Michael Sng is a one-man tank factory. The Singapore-based designer hand-built the walking mecha toy Codename: Colossus from 435 3D-printed parts. "I wanted to set it apart from what people think a toy is," says Sng.
A former graphic designer, Sng previously sold Stikfas, a stick-figure toy he co-created, to Hasbro. But after the economic downturn, the toy was discontinued and Sng got a job as a teacher. Colossus started out as a way to learn new skills. "I didn't know a lot of electronics," Sng, 38, says. "I learned from scratch."
He designed the toy as a 3D CAD file, printing each part on a small UP Plus 2 printer. "It's 60cm tall, but none of the parts is larger than 12cm long," he explains. "They're put together with hundreds of screws." Sng also hand-wired the working legs, guns and lights, and hand-painted each part, including the interior and tiny characters. (The tank's shell conceals a cannon that fires table tennis balls.) The process took 18 months and cost Sng more than $3,000 (£2,070).
Colossus was part passion project, part audition: under the Machination Studioses moniker, Sng's conceived a fictional universe for the toys, set after the first world war "where air power never happened, and tanks just got bigger and bigger."
After building two Colossus tanks, HMC Boudicca and HMC Galahad, he's now working on a private commission. But the next hurdle, he says, is finding an efficient way to make more. "The biggest cost is printing," he says. An alternative could be injection moulding with 3D-printed details. But one thing's certain, he laughs: "The next one will be smaller."
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
