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It’s time for our weekly Top 10 list and this week our editors bring you the “Top 10 Strangest (or Coolest…) Lego Creations”. Leave us a comment with your own favorites. [PCMag]

10. Lego iPod Case

This interesting BrixPod Classic iPod Shuffle case gives your Shuffle the appearance of a full-sized iPod made of Lego bricks. [MacBlog]

9. Han Solo Frozen in Carbonite

Nathan Sawaya used over 10,000 Lego pieces and spent 3 months making this “Han Solo in Carbonite” masterpiece. [NathanBrickArtist]

8. Lego Volvo XC90

Built by Lego Master Model Builders, this Volvo XC90 is the official car of Legoland California. [car.kak.net]

7. Lego NES Case

If Nintendo came out with a Lego NES case, this would be it. Everything is 100% Lego - power/reset buttons, controller ports, LED light cover, and even the vents up top. One more picture here. [RetroNintendo]

6. Lego Harpsichord

This Harpsichord was constructed entirely from Lego parts (over 100,000!), including keyboard, jacks, jack rack, jack rail, plectra, soundboard, bridge, hitch pins, tuning pins, wrestplank, nut, case, legs, lid, lid stick, and music stand. It has a range of 61 notes and weighs 150 lb. [OddMusic]

5. Lego Pinhole Camera

This person took a Polaroid 95a, stripped it down, and than reassembled the camera with all Lego parts. Like a real mechanical 35mm camera, it includes a manual crank which takes 23 clicks to advance one frame. [FoundPhotography]

4. Lego Knitting Machine

Rarely do we come accross something so interesting yet odd, take a look at this fully functional knitting machine made entirely out of Lego pieces. [TRFJ]

3. Lego Difference Engine

One of the most imaginative Lego creations ever. Made by Andy Carroll, this difference engine is able to solve mathematical problems (2nd/3rd-order polynomials) and calculate the answers to 3 or 4 digits. [Gizmodo]

2. Lego Air Conditioner

Behold, a functional Lego replica of Carrier’s latest air conditioner, complete with valves, compressor, and working fan. [Make]

1. Lego Pinball Machine

Created by Lego fanatics Gerrit Bronsveld and Martijn Boogaarts of the Netherlands, this fully functional pinball machine was made using over 20,000 of these colorful blocks. The Lego Pinball Machine features an operational coin slot, rotation bumpers, auto kickback, 5-digit mechanical display (for points), 13 RCX Mindstorms computers, and even a ramp. [PinballNews]

Honorable Mention - Lego gMac 475

If you liked the Lego PC, check out this Lego gMac 475 (constructed from a Macintosh LC 475 ), an oldie but goodie. (Thanks, Jeff)

Honorable Mention - Lego Brick USB Drive

Lego blocks can be used to build just about anything these days, including this USB drive. Its even got clear backing so you can view the innards. Instructions on how to build your own can be found here. [Brickshelf]

Keywords: lego products, lego electronics, things made out of lego, strangest legos, electronics with blocks, tiles, masty tech blog, lego usb driver, lego PC, funny pc, strangest invention, amazing inventions

To show colleagues how a design for an accelerator component works, designer Gene Anzalone can now carry a lightweight plastic model to meetings. More tangible than a set of design drawings, and more totable than a 35-pound metal model, the working 3-D plastic model of a collimator took about five days to make with SLAC Mechanical Design Department’s new rapid prototyping machine, also called a 3-D printer.

Since the Dimension Elite printer arrived in early January, its tea-box-sized printing head has been on the move day and night, whirring and clicking like a home inkjet printer while it automatically builds up models by depositing thin layers of melted plastic, layer by layer. Once engineer Kurt Vaillancourt sets up the printer, which takes very little time, he lets it work unattended, saving money on machinist costs and material costs.

“It’s a service for engineers and designers across the lab to study the form, fit and function of their design before cutting them in metal,” Vaillancourt said.

The SLAC arm of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) Accelerator Research Program has eagerly taken advantage of the printer—which looks like a snack vending machine—to build models of a rotatable collimator that could be part of the upgrades to the LHC. Collimators block stray particles inside a beam pipe.

“The model is accurate enough to gain an understanding of how well the parts fit together into a working assemblage, and it gives us tangible results at an early phase of the project,” said engineer Steve Lundgren.

The group can test and refine its designs before sending them to the Machine Shop to build parts from quality, expensive metals.

Anzalone and Lundgren electronically sent their CAD (computer-aided design) data to the printer. Several days later, they sandwiched ball bearings between two printer-made plastic rings, and screwed the rings together to form a functional bearing at the end of the prototype collimator. Very quickly, they determined that this design for the ball bearing race worked well. Eventually, when the LHC beam accidentally strikes and damages the collimator, operators will simply rotate it to present a fresh piece of metal without interrupting collider operations.

The printer is available for SLAC use, and can support pieces up to 8 inches square by 12 inches high, in layers as thin as 0.007 inches. Pieces can be glued together, and several parts can be fabricated in one run. The printer can also automatically enlarge or reduce parts.

Keywords: model printer, 3 dimensional printer, 3dimensional printer, 3d color printer, print 3d pictures, print animating pictures, new printers technology, pc printer, new inventions

Two in vivo camera robots used by the Aquanauts during the NEEMO mission. Image credit: Rentschler, et al. ©IEEE 2008.

By attaching a millimeter-sized camera robot to a tether, scientists have designed a way to allow individuals with non-medical backgrounds to perform minimally invasive surgery in almost any location. Unlike room-size and expensive surgical robots, mini in vivo robots are inexpensive and mobile enough to support emergency surgeries almost anywhere, from the battlefield to outer space.
The University of Nebraska researchers hope that the inexpensive version of the da Vinci surgical robot system will make the advantages of robotic-assisted surgery more widely available, and open the doors for telesurgeries that were previously impossible. In a recent study, the team evaluated the ease of use and time required to perform simple abdominal surgeries with the in vivo camera robots. Their results are published in a recent issue of IEEE Transactions on Information Technology in Biomedicine.

“A new area of surgical robotics focuses on placing robots entirely inside the patient,” wrote Mark Rentschler et al. in their study. “In vivo robots are small, inexpensive, and easily transported, making it more likely that this technology can be more widely adopted. . . . The use of these robots can potentially reduce patient trauma in traditional medical centers, while the size of the robots makes them ideal for transportation to and use in remote or harsh environments.”

The researchers tested the mini robots on three NASA astronauts and one surgeon who were undergoing long-term training in an underwater habitat called the NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations (NEEMO), located 20 meters underwater off the coast of Key Largo, Florida. The four “Aquanauts” received brief training on how to perform two surgeries – bowel inspection and stretch-and-dissect – and were also evaluated on how well they could perform another surgery – an appendectomy – for which they received no training.

In the test, the Aquanauts performed the surgeries on synthetic materials inside an abdominal cavity simulator, and were telementored via videoconferencing by the University of Nebraska team in Omaha. The crew used two robots: one was 20 mm in diameter and 110 mm in length, and the other was 15 mm in diameter and 60 mm in length. Both robots were equipped with a CMOS camera and inserted into the abdominal cavity (which measures 20 x 15 x 8 cm when artificially inflated) through a trocar port. Controlling the robots with either a joystick or a switch, the crew members could see various angles and adjust the focus of the images, receiving feedback at 30 frames per second.

The crew members also performed the same surgeries using a standard laparoscope – a tube that’s inserted into the body in which a camera can be used. The results showed that the crew members achieved about equal levels of accuracy with both systems, but the camera robots enabled the crew members to work significantly faster at all three surgeries. Performing surgeries quicker could minimize patient trauma and the risk of infection.

Another notable result was that the crew members were able to successfully perform the appendectomy, even though they had not been trained on that procedure. This success demonstrates that telementoring can be used to enable individuals trained on basic skills to build upon their skills to complete more complex procedures.

“The telementoring results demonstrated that nonsurgeons having been trained with a specified skill set can be telementored to build on that skill set and perform a more complex laparoscopic procedure using in vivo robots,” the researcher concluded. “The combined results of these tests suggest that the use of miniature surgical robots could be used in place of standard laparoscopic surgical equipment without loss of performance.”

In the future, the team hopes to add further developments to the mini in vivo robot system, such as task assistance (where the robot can be used to manipulate tissue), telecontrol (where the robot is controlled remotely) and some autonomy (where the robot can make some decisions on its own). Thanks to these tiny robots, emergency surgery may one day be performed in extreme environments, and save lives where it would otherwise be impossible.

More information: Rentschler, Mark E., Platt, Stephen R., Berg, Kyle, Dumpert, Jason, Oleynikov, Dmitry, and Farritor, Shane M. “Miniature in vivo Robots for Remote and Harsh Environments.” IEEE Transactions on Information Technology in Biomedicine, Vol. 12, No. 1, January 2008.

Copyright 2008 PhysOrg.com.

The HP LaserJet M2727 series of mono laser multifunctions is geared for small offices, with features such as an Ethernet connector, built-in duplexer, fax capability, and an automatic document feeder. You have your choice between two models: the M2727nf is the base model, and the M2727nfs adds on an extra paper tray and built-in stapler; we tested the M2727nf. Although the M2727nf is fast and produces great prints (its scans need improvement, however), it’s expensive at $600. (The M2727nfs costs $700.) On our tests, less expensive mono laser multifunctions like the Lexmark X342n ($400) were nearly as fast. Comparably priced color laser multifunctions like the Lexmark X502n ($700) were faster than the M2727nf and had similar print quality. We found nothing inherently wrong with the HP LaserJet M2727nf, but you can get more for your money elsewhere–or the same features and performance for less.

Design
The design of the LaserJet M2727 series multifunction is all business. The putty-and-gray body of the M2727nf stands 19.7 inches wide, 16 inches deep, and 18 inches tall, and weighs almost 38 pounds (the M2727nfs is taller and heavier due to an extra paper tray). The flatbed scanner lid is topped by a 50-page automatic document feeder.

The control panel is divided by task. In the center are a backlit, two-line text LCD; menu navigation buttons; and an alphanumeric keypad. The fax area includes one-touch dial buttons, redial, phone book, volume, and resolution buttons. The copy area includes buttons for reducing/enlarging, making copies lighter or darker, changing paper size, and changing the number of copies, as well as buttons for turning on two-sided copies, collating, and a tray-select button. The scan area contains just a Scan To button. All three task areas have their own dedicated start buttons as well.

The paper handling is simple on the M2727 series. The M2727nf model offers a single 250-page paper cassette and a 50-page multipurpose input tray that folds out from the printer’s front panel. Outputted pages exit in the well between the printer body and the scanner head unit. The M2727nfs offers a second paper cassette for increased input capacity, as well as a built-in stapler.

The LaserJet M2727 multifunction comes with the standard 3,000-page toner cartridge, which you can replace with the same or with the high-capacity version, which is good for about 7,000 pages. The former costs $81 to replace, while the latter costs $148. Using the larger version for best value, this works out to a per-page print cost of approximately 2.1 cents, a reasonable cost. The monthly duty cycle is 15,000 prints, which makes this suitable for small to medium offices.

Features
The price and feature set of the LaserJet M2727 series makes it better suited for small offices, but busy home offices can benefit as well. The M2727 multifunctions come network-ready with an Ethernet port, but you can also connect to a single PC via a USB port. It’s compatible with both Mac and Windows operating systems. It comes with 64MB of non-upgradeable memory.

The copy features are standard for an office machine. You can make up to 99 copies at once, and reduce or enlarge through preset values (fit to size) or custom values between 25 percent and 400 percent. You can also instruct the copier to do 2-to-1 and 4-to-1 copies, as well as autoduplex copies, from either double-sided or single-sided originals.

Scan To options include scan to file and scan to e-mail (the options even discern between scanning images and documents). Once the scan is complete, the Save To box is launched on your PC, allowing you to choose where to save the file. Format options include JPEG, TIFF, bitmap, GIF, and PDF. The Scan To button comes preprogrammed to offer scan to file and scan to e-mail options, but you can reprogram the button to include scan to program options. If you want to scan using optical character recognition, you’ll need to install the Readiris Pro program, which comes on a separate CD from the printer’s drivers.

For faxing, you can save up to 120 entries in the MF2727’s phone book, including both individuals and groups. The first 16 entries also correspond to the eight one-touch dial buttons on the control panel (the Shift key lets you associate two numbers to a single button). Pressing the Phone Book button calls up the listings on the control panel’s text LCD, so you can browse through them to choose a person or group. If you subscribe to caller ID, you can turn on junk-fax blocking. The MF2727 also allows you to send a delayed fax, forward faxes, and receive faxes in secure mode. The latter option stores incoming faxes in memory and prints them out only when you enter a password.

Performance
We haven’t reviewed any mono multifunctions in this price range, so we compared it to comparably priced color laser multifunctions and slightly less expensive mono machines. The comparisons don’t do the HP LaserJet M2727nf many favors, as several of the less expensive monos and the similarly priced color multifunctions keep up or even outpace the HP model. The M2727nf scored 19.01 pages per minute (ppm) for black text, behind the 19.71ppm scored by the Lexmark X502n (color). When printing grayscale graphics, the HP scored 18.68ppm, just behind the mono Lexmark X342n and more than 1ppm slower than the Lexmark X502n. With both color and grayscale scans, the HP M2727 was slow–the slowest by far at grayscale with a score of 2.46ppm and second slowest at color scans with a score of 2.50ppm. It did keep up with the pack on copying via ADF, though, scoring 14.96ppm. The bottom line is this: you can save about $200 on a mono laser multifunction and get just slightly slower print speeds, or you can spend the same $600 to $700 on a color multifunction with the same speeds (or slightly slower) and get the added bonus of color printing.