Storage Technology Corporation Partners II

Edward M White

Kenneth L Manes

Zahirudeen Premji

John W Woods

Paul Kummli

A protective cartridge assembly for protecting the sensitive recording surface of an information recording disk, said assembly being comprised of a cartridge housing having a pair of cartridge stand-offs attached to the inner upper surface of the cartridge housing, a cartridge tray for supporting the disk placed therein, and a disk spacer ring attached to the disk. The cartridge housing has an opening in its side in which the cartridge insert tray is slidably mounted. The cartridge housing has a protruding lip which cooperates with a recess in the exterior portion of the cartridge tray to sealably close the cartridge assembly thereby preventing contamination from entering the cartridge interior. The cartridge housing stand-offs and the disk spacer rings cooperate to prevent the disk recording surface from contacting the interior surface of the cartridge housing. Therefore, the cartridge assembly prevents exterior contamination from entering the cartridge thereby damaging the disk as well as preventing the disk from being damaged by inadvertent contact with the interior wall of the cartridge housing.

Information recording disk cartridge protective structure

An apparatus for clamping and unclamping an optical disk in an information storage and retrieval device having removabe media. The apparatus has rotating and a non-rotating disk support assemblies, the non-rotating disk support assembly being attached to an elevator which reciprocatively raises and lowers the rotating and non-rotating disk support assemblies. The rotating disk support assembly is magnetically clamped to the non-rotating disk support assembly by an electromagnet during the loading and centering operation. The rotating disc support assembly has a centering stem which cooperates with a hole in the device spindle to center the rotating disk support assembly relative to the device spindle. In the preferred embodiment, the disk has a flexure and a tapered disk centering hub which cooperates with a taper on the hole in the device spindle to center the disk relative to the device spindle. After the disk is centered relative to the device spindle, a shunt plate on the mating face of the device spindle cooperates with a set of permanent magnets in the rotating disk support assembly to magnetically clamp the disk to be rotated between the device spindle and the rotating disk support means. To unload, the above described procedures are reversed.

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Boulder County, CO, United States of America

Edward M White