The Ware for November 2015 was an RS-482 interface picomotor driver of unknown make and model, but probably similar to one of these. It’s designed to drive piezo (slip stick) motors; the circuits on board generate 150V waveforms at low current to drive a linear actuator with very fine positional accuracy.

This one was apparently a stumper, as several guessed it had something to do with motor control or positioning, but nobody put that together with the high voltage rated parts (yet with no heatsinking, so driving low currents) on the board to figure that it’s meant for piezo or possibly some other electrostatic (e.g. MEMS) actuators. Better luck next month!

This month’s ware is shown below:

And below are views of the TO-220 devices which are folded over in the top-down photo:

We continue this month with the campaign to get Nava Whiteford permission to buy a SEM. Thanks again to Nava for providing another interesting ware!

The ware for October 2015 was a Lecroy LT342L. Nava notes that it was actually manufactured by Iwatsu, but the ASICs on the inside all say LeCroy. Congrats to Carl Smith for nailing it, email me for your prize and happy Thanksgiving!