As I noted when posting the ware, I actually don’t know what its original function was — it’s just a gizmo I picked out of a junk bin in Akihabara.

Personally, I could not figure out the grabby motion until I actuated the central plunger manually:

So, I was impressed that Ian Mason could infer this was a grabby thing by just looking at it; so I’ll say he’s the winner. Congrats, email me for your prize!

The plunger in the middle is, as far as I can tell, just a passive element on a spring with an optical interrupter on the other side. It probably serves to ensure that both a thing was picked up, and that the thing stays put inside the grabbers. As others had noted in the comment thread, the entire assembly can be moved up and down through a limited range of motion via the motor on the side. The “floating” optical interrupter just next to the side-motor indicates to me that this entire assembly probably was mounted on another axis that moved laterally – possibly at a fairly high speed, since the grabbed object was held in place during transport. A final clue, which was not obvious from the photos, is that there is an outline of a dark ring on the inside surface of the grabbers, but there’s virtually no other wear marks of note.

The logo on the assembly is for the Tosoh corporation, a Japanese company that produces…chemicals, but like many Japanese corporations, is vertically integrated; it would not surprise me if they had an entire in-house automation group devoted to building custom assembly lines with gear that bears their logo.

My guess is that this was actually part of a production or packing line for a Tosoh product: it picked up something small and ring-like (about the diameter of an 18650 battery) from a feeder off to the side of a production line and placed it onto an assembly or into a box. It was in a bin with a number of other similar-sized actuators, no two the same, so I’m guessing a production line was retired, and the various custom heads used to grip parts and pieces from the assembly line found its way to the junk shop.

The Ware for January 2024 is shown below.

I picked up this little gizmo at a junk shop in Akihabara. I actually have no idea what the original purpose was, so I’m curious to see if anyone can convince me as to what this thing did, presumably for many years and millions of times. I got it mostly because it was a great price for a linear guide plus associated optical interrupters and motors (although I think the central motor’s bearing is busted, hence its junk shop fate). Fortunately the mounting patterns for these kinds of mechanical parts are almost, but not quite, standardized.

The Ware from December 2023 is a 20-watt laser diode used for engraving. It’s used in products like the ATOMSTACK Laser Engraver (link without affiliate code), and the module itself is produced by Shenzhen Xinghan Laser Technology Co, Ltd.. I don’t have an exact part number for it, but it is a blue-wavelength (so presumably 450nm), quad-laser diode module with a net power output of around 20 watts. I recently saw a LaserPecker (sans affiliate) in action and it’s impressive how solid state lasers have transformed engraving/cutting technology — my first laser cutter from 20 years ago was the size of a desk, cost over 10x as much, and was a lot harder to use.

As for a winner, it’s pretty tough to pick one since a I found several comments quite insightful. The main thing I personally wanted to figure out was the structure of the picture above: why was there a smaller device stacked on top of a larger device? I originally thought the gray-ish lower substrate was the laser, and the small part on top was a protection diode; but after reading the comments I’m now of the opinion that it’s probably a CVD diamond heat spreader, and the laser is the very small black-ish bar on top.

I found another image I had in my collection of the device lasing, and indeed the small bar was the part that was emitting light. It’s also the case that the lasers are at stepped heights. If memory serves correctly, the beam shape of these laser diodes tends to be rectangular, so by “stacking” the beams next to each other you can get a more square profile to the net output pattern. I was also surprised not to find any sort of optical feedback mechanism for power monitoring, or obvious protection diodes — but maybe the control circuitry and fabrication process is just so dialed in now that it’s not necessary? Or perhaps something else very clever is going on that’s not discernible in these photographs.

It’s a tough call, but I’ll give the prize to FETguy — for convincing me that the lower chips are probably CVD diamond, and noticing the stair-step structure. Congrats, email me for your prize!

As a brief postscript, looking at all the progress in high power laser diodes made me wonder if cheap HDI PCBs are around the corner (I have a blog post that goes more in-depth into HDI PCB construction, in case you’re interested). The biggest capital cost barrier has traditionally been the huge laser CNC machines needed to cut the vias, compounded with the fact that these expensive CNC machines can only drill a single board at once (as opposed to the mechanical drills that can penetrate a stack of ten or more PCBs in a single drill hit).

Unfortunately, it looks like we’re still an order of magnitude away in terms of the peak power and beam profile necessary to drill a good, clean hole in an HDI substrate, but it also looks like there’s plenty of manufacturers with their eye on this niche. A cursory review of the literature also seems to indicate that whatever is being used to drill the holes probably has to retain at least one mechanical axis (with perhaps a single galvo plus a parabolic reflector) because a two-galvanometer solution will have problems with the laser spot impinging at an angle toward the edges, which is undesirable for a PCB via.

The Ware for December 2023 is shown below.

Thanks to Cedric Honnet for contributing this ware! Unfortunately this image does have an exact hit on Google images, as it is already in Cedric’s social media feed — but I think the ware itself is functionally interesting, yet simple enough to guess without having to rely on image searches.

Thus answers will be judged in part based on their insight into the reasoning behind the construction of this ware — for example, what’s going on in the zoomed in view of the ware? What are some of the considerations in building a module of this nature?

Happy new year! Name that ware will be wrapping up its 18th year soon

The Ware for November 2023 is a Lucira at home Covid test. Congrats to Jon Neal for nailing it, email me for your prize!

Here’s some more images of the ware for your enjoyment.