This LEGO Mechanical Heart Beats Just Like A Real Heart Would

Posted on 30/04/2024 by Sarang Sheth

A real heart beats at roughly anywhere between 60bpm or 100bpm on average… LEGO builder Anatomical_Brick’s ‘Motorized Beating Heart’ outputs 55bpm, providing a near-perfect replication of what an actual beating heart looks like. The coolest part, the entire thing is made from LEGO bricks and is powered by a set of replaceable batteries.

Designer: Anatomical_Brick

At the heart of the model lies a LEGO Technic frame equipped with two interlocking slider mechanisms and a scissor element. This ingenious design allows for dynamic adjustments to the width and height of the central structure. A flexible outer shell, crafted from interconnected segments joined by rubber bands, envelops the core frame. This construction creates a captivating illusion of movement as the structure expands and contracts. The entire model is roughly 3x in scale (to make sure the heart moves effortlessly), and is powered by a motor linked to a battery pack, bringing it to life.

“I initially wanted to make a heart for Brickvention due to my fascination in the organ and had never seen it done using LEGO pieces. When telling others about this project, the reoccurring feedback was that it should move. They were absolutely right! After many months of trial and error, I’m finally happy with the results and so were the people at Brickvention,” said Anatomical_Brick.

The final result is a marvel of technology as well as biology. Sure, LEGO bricks only get you so much realistic detail, but watching the heart beating feels nothing short of captivating, The auricles and ventricles of the heart expand and contract, simulating the effect of blood being pumped through the organ. The red part of the heart indicates where oxygenated blood passes through the organ, whereas the blue part shows the passage of deoxygenated blood.

Currently a submission on the LEGO Ideas forum, Anatomical_Brick’s MOC (My Own Creation) is gathering support from the broader LEGO community. With more than 700 votes under their belt, the submission is en-route to the coveted 10,000 vote mark, following which LEGO’s internal team will review it before turning it into a buyable box set!

The post This LEGO Mechanical Heart Beats Just Like A Real Heart Would first appeared on Yanko Design.

This striking cyberpunk watch concept is ironically analog at heart

Posted on 25/10/2022 by JC Torres

Thanks to a certain video game and its recent animated Netflix tie-in, the cyberpunk style has become trendy again. Industrial designs mixed with glowing neon colors portray a vision of the future that is a little too bleak for comfort but almost realistic in its probability. As a genre, cyberpunk is set in a dystopian future where technology has advanced significantly but has left human morality and evolution behind in its dust. Many product designs and concepts today that tap into that style try to convey the spirit of this age through various gimmicks, many of them as advanced as the technologies they try to represent. This watch, inspired by the Cyberpunk 2077 game, however, bucks the trend and embraces one of the oldest yet most sophisticated ways to tell the time.

Designers: Michael Szczególski, Bartosz Wyżykowski, Piotr Blicharski, and Jacek Morawski

If you were to design a cyberpunk-themed watch, you would most likely try to implement it through digital and electronic components, perhaps even as a smartwatch. After all, it’s so much easier to style screens, implement advanced features, and even emit sounds using modern components. In stark contrast, this Cyberpunk 2077 watch concept doesn’t have anything digital, an ironic idea yet almost perfectly fitting considering the confusing mix of old and new that cyberpunk is famous for.

Instead of an LCD display, the watch works pretty much like an analog watch, except it trades typical hands for rotating discs that have marks for seconds, minutes, and hours. Its beating heart is a real-world 9015 Miyota automatic caliber, whose ruby movement is used to represent the cybernetic eye of an emblem on its back. The watch wraps around your wrists using silicone straps that, while mundane, are more faithful to the fictional world of Cyberpunk 2077 than more “advanced” materials.

Since the watch is pretty much a mechanical one dressed up in a cyberpunk style, its personalization options are limited. Instead of changing watch faces as you would on a smartwatch, you can only swap out interchangeable fronts and backs to match different characters from the fictional franchise. That still leaves the door open for plenty of customization, especially when you consider these parts can be 3D printed easily.

Unfortunately for Cyberpunk 2077 fans, this watch remains a concept, even if it was designed with the game’s creators’ input. It’s definitely an attractive and unique twist to the typical cyberpunk-themed timepiece, one that could potentially satisfy even lovers of mechanical watches. It does show that just because it looks cyberpunk doesn’t mean it has to be complicated, though the beautiful simplicity of this watch’s design is itself almost contradictory to the usual mess of the genre.

The post This striking cyberpunk watch concept is ironically analog at heart first appeared on Yanko Design.

The Ghosts Give Chase in this LEGO Pac-Man Automaton

Posted on 23/08/2021 by Paul Strauss

Wakka Wakka Wakka, Everything is Awesome! It’s LEGO Pac-Man time! Do you love retro arcade games and LEGO bricks? Well, then, you’ll love this LEGO Pac-Man display that moves when you turn its crank.

The 1603-piece set was designed by LiteBricks and submitted to LEGO Ideas. Its modular design lets you rearrange its pieces so Pac-Man can be chased by ghosts, gobble dots, chase blue ghosts, or make a hasty escape as their eyeballs scurry home to regenerate. Or any combination thereof. The set features a mini Pac-Maze on its side, made up of 1×1 round LEGO bricks.

If you’d like to see this set go into production, you can show your support by casting a vote on LEGO Ideas. If it gets at least 10,000 votes, it’ll go to the LEGO Ideas internal committee for consideration. I’d love to see more LEGO sets inspired by classic arcade games. The plastic bricks gave us pixel art before pixel art was a thing, so it’s a natural fit.

This self-charging smartwatch turns your wrist’s motions into an endless supply of power

Posted on 23/06/2021 by Sarang Sheth

Sitting at the intersection between smartwatches and mechanical watches, the Sequent Titanium Elektron offers the best of both worlds – the activity/fitness tracking features of a smartwatch or fitness band, and the accurate time-telling and everlasting power supply of a Swiss-made mechanical watch.

The Titanium Elektron eliminates the one major compromise with most smartwatches – the fact that you have to routinely charge them. It does so by refining and upgrading a technology that has existed in mechanical watches for years but hasn’t really seen mass adoption by tech companies, that have wholly embraced the lithium-ion battery movement. You see, lithium-ion batteries have their obvious merits… they can store and deliver enough power to operate computers and processors, but they need repetitive charging. Moreover, they degrade over time and eventually die, playing right into a tech company’s strategy of planned obsolescence. Watchmakers, on the other hand, design products for life. A good Swiss-made watch can last centuries, can be fixed/repaired, and can be passed down generations. It also requires less power than a smartwatch, hence the mechanical movement – although Switzerland-based company Sequent has found a unique middle-ground. The Titanium Elektron relies on an upgraded version of the traditional mechanical movement, using a moving rotor to generate electrical energy. The rotor moves based on your own wrist movements and on gravity, and harvests small bursts of energy that add up, keeping the watch charged throughout the day. This unique harvesting mechanism uses an 8-part design that works silently, and with 10x more precision than your average Swiss Chronometer. The watch has its own battery-saving mode too, and will automatically power down when not worn, conserving the battery for 12 months. As soon as you wear it, the watch automatically powers on and reflects the current time.

Designer: Sequent Ltd.

Click Here to Buy Now – $351 ~~599~~ (41% off) Only 30 HOURS left!

Aside from being a marvel of engineering and micro-energy harvesting, the Titanium Elektron is a remarkably well-designed watch too. It comes with an outer body machined from solid titanium, capped on the front as well as the back with scratch-resistant sapphire crystal. The back reveals the watch’s unique rotor design, in the center of which sits its heartbeat sensor that works 24×7, monitoring your vitals, activity, fitness, and your sleep. The Titanium Elektron’s subdial gives you a reading of your current heart rate, while all your fitness data is available on-demand on the watch’s companion app titled Oxygen. The app monitors your activity, workouts, and heart rate, while also allowing you to track sleep and fitness goals all within one comprehensive dashboard. The watch’s face sports a modern minimal design along with SuperLuminova-coated markings and hands. It automatically updates time when you’re crossing time zones (by syncing with your phone), and will even tell you the watch’s battery level by pressing down on the crown.

The Titanium Elektron series are designed and assembled in Switzerland, under the guidance of horology specialists. The collection is available across multiple variants (models with HR mentioned at the end come with the heart-rate meter on the watch-face) including one with a transparent tinted dial that lets you see the Titanium Elektron’s circuitry underneath, and a special all-white variant approved by NASA with the space agency’s monogram in red on the pure-white dial. Each Titanium Elektron timepiece is designed to be waterproof up to 50 meters and comes with a 5-year warranty. Sequent ensures its watches are sustainably made too – aside from the fact that the watches don’t come with large lithium-ion batteries that degrade over time, Sequent pledges to plant 10 trees for each watch sold.

Click Here to Buy Now – $351 ~~599~~ (41% off) Only 30 HOURS left!

This Outer Space Music Box Is Out of This World

Posted on 19/04/2021 by Paul Strauss

Do you love all things outer space? Enjoy a trip to the heavens every time you wind up this interplanetary music box, currently available from Coolthings Australia for $100. At its center is a wooden model of Saturn, surrounded by tiny space shuttles, astronauts, and satellites.

I didn’t know we had any satellites in orbit around Saturn, but hey, the aliens on the ringed planet need their DirecTV and Dish Network shows too! Each music box is handcrafted, and plays the tune Emperor (Concerto, Op 73 No. 5), which I can only imagine is a reference to Emperor Palpatine and his quest for interplanetary domination. Check it out in action in the video clip below:

That was delightful and soothing. But who’s gonna clean up all that space junk when we’re done with it?

Human Hand Sculpture Endlessly Taps Its Fingers

Posted on 11/02/2021 by hite

Art: it means different things to different people. And to Nick Ramage, it means creating these £600 (~$830) Fingers Mk III mechanical sculptures. Honestly, I don’t know if I’m more surprised that they exist at all, or that there were Mk I and Mk II Fingers that came before this.

Powered by 2 AA batteries, the disembodied hand endlessly taps its fingers on the surface it rests on until those batteries die, or someone gets scared enough to throw the hand out an open window or smack it with a hammer. Nick mentions he used his own hand as the model to cast the resin fingers, so do you think we could lift his fingerprints to plant at the scene of the crime when we steal the Mona Lisa?

Clearly, this a must-have desk accessory if you’re an evil villain operating from a secret snowy mountain base in the Urals. James Bond sitting across from you, this hand sculpture quietly tapping on your desk while you pause for a moment of suspense before mashing the big red button that drops him into the yeti pit below. Wait, did we just – somebody call Hollywood, tell them we just wrote From Russia with the Spy Who Never Loved Me for them.

[via DudeIWantThat]

This Machine Will Probably Never Finish a Full Rotation

Posted on 09/03/2020 by Paul Strauss

When it comes to telling time with an analog clock, the idea of gear reduction is a very critical piece of the puzzle. Basically, a set of multiple gears work in concert to gradually rotate at slower speeds. So a single motor can drive the seconds, minutes, and hour hands on a dial.

But rather than just reducing the speed of a gear a couple of times, engineer Daniel de Bruin decided to make what he says is the “biggest reduction gear in the universe.” Well, it may not be the largest in dimension, but it’s definitely the most complicated, with 100 gears, each gradually reducing the speed from the gear before it.

Each successive gear turns at exactly 1/10th of the speed of its predecessor. The result is a setup that would take literally eons before it would rotate its final gear.

According to the guys at Gizmodo, you’d have to turn the first gear

10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

times to move the last gear to move just one position. Man, that’s a whole lot of zeros, and I definitely can’t count that high.

The machine’s creator explains the rationale behind his build: “Today at 14:52 I will be exactly 1 billion seconds old. To celebrate I build this machine that visualizes the number googol. That’s a 1 with a hundred zeros. A number that’s bigger than the atoms in the known universe. This machine has a gear reduction of 1 to 10 a hundred times. In order to get the last gear to turn once you’ll need to spin the first one a googol amount around. Or better said you’ll need more energy than the entire universe has to do that.”

If you’ve got a full hour to kill you can watch the contraption get through the first few of layers of gears…

[via Gizmodo]

The JW-EX watch is sheer mechanical joy for the analog-lover

Posted on 05/07/2019 by Sarang Sheth

Every part of every watch of the JW-EX series was custom-designed to titillate your senses. The JW-EX watch obsesses over the magic of mechanical movements so much, that it’s literally called EX, or short for exaggeration.

Designed out of a love of complex mechanical movements and complications, Jason Chan of Jason Watches designed the JW-EX, the ultimate homage to spinning wheels, rotating gears, actuating springs, and multiple intricately shaped and assembled metal pieces dancing together in absolute synchronicity to depict the movement of time.

Not a single part of the JW-EX is pre-made. Every single bit of the JW-EX is made bespoke, giving you a watch that is unique in every right, from its construction to even the time-telling experience, because the JW-EX reinvents that too. Using the color red to denote the time, guiding you through the process of reading it, the JW-EX splits time into its fragments. Hours, minutes, and seconds sit at different locations on the watch, unlike traditional timepieces that use the concentric dial-and-hands method. Giving minutes the priority (because that’s what you tend to focus on the most) the watch puts the minutes counter right on top. To its bottom right sits an hour gauge, while the bottom left lies a rotating seconds disc that also lets you take a peek at the watch’s tourbillion right on the front.

The JW-EX uses a specially developed movement called the JW-7100 custom developed for the watch itself. It allows the JW-EX to be as brilliantly exaggerated, eccentric, and extra as it is, allowing hours, minutes, and seconds to all work in their independent zones, while also giving you a taste of the mechanical action in the seconds window as you tell the time. The JW-7100 comes with an 80 hour power reserve, and 5 ATM of water resistance. With 21 jewels, and an incredibly precise and intricate movement (visible from both the front and exhibition back) Jason believes it’s virtually impossible to own a movement this unique and bespoke at its competitive price tag, thanks to the disruptive power of crowdfunding.

The JW-EX comes in a 46mm wide 316L Stainless Steel case, with 4 Sapphire crystals covering the three displays on the front and the exhibition window on the back. Designed to pay an homage to the pre-electronic era of mechanical glory, the watch comes in a vintage-inspired almost-steampunk design with a steam-engine style gauge, and plate-pieces that sit on top of the steel body, almost as if they were riveted in place. The crown’s shifted to the 6 o’clock position, to exaggerating the watch’s bespoke, unique design, while the 1 year international warranty stands as a testament to Chan’s commitment to building and delivering timepieces of the highest quality!

Designer: Jason Chan (Jason Watches)

Tetris Played on an Mechanical Display: FlipTris

Posted on 10/05/2019 by Conner Flynn

Most of us know Tetris from the Game Boy version and that theme song is forever stuck in our heads. But when you play the game on a mechanical display, the sound it makes also very satisfying.

A geek going by the name sinowin rigged up a small computer with a joystick and connected them to an old school elongated flip-disc display. These screens were used before LCD screens were large and affordable, mostly for signs, like arrivals and destination times at airports or train stations.

Listen and enjoy as as 210 small plastic discs flip back and forth to recreate the falling tetrominoes. It’s pretty calming, like ASMR.

This is an awesome way to play one of our favorite classic games. Who needs millions of tiny pixels that silently turn on and off every second, when you can have these things making sounds instead.

Sit back and relax to the sounds as those tetrominoes fall, but don’t get too relaxed or you won’t get the high score. They should definitely make this an hour-long video so that people can enjoy the tippity-tapping sounds for longer.

[via Boing Boing via Gizmodo]

An Incredible LEGO Recreation of the Opening of “Raiders of the Lost Ark”

Posted on 28/12/2018 by Conner Flynn

There are very few scenes in cinema history that are as cool and unique as the opening sequence from Raiders of the Lost Ark. This, in a movie that is full of iconic scenes. In the 80s, kids everywhere were pretending that they were being chased by a boulder for years. Now, this amazing scene has been recreated in LEGO.

It was built by Caleb Watson and it is full of impressive detail. It has everything that the scene on screen had: The jungle outside, the plane, the sliding stone door, the swing over the pit, skeletons, the golden idol room and more. It’s everything that a LEGO/Indy fan could want in a LEGO set. Be sure to check out Beyond the Brick’s video tour of this impressive diorama:

This scene has six different motors that animate minifigs and booby traps, as well as cycle the rolling boulder back into position. As far as I’m concerned it’s a LEGO masterpiece. I would love to see what this guy could do with Temple of Doom and am looking forward to monkey brains, mine carts and of course, a LEGO Mola Ram pulling a heart out of a chest.

[via Laughing Squid via Geekologie]

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