Hitachi Global Storage Technologies Netherlands B.v.

Parul Agrawal

Charles Chung Lee

Christopher Ramm

Ullal Vasant Nayak

Robert Nolan Payne

Hang Fai Ngo

Bob Clyde Robinson

Stephen Arnold Olson

Bradley Frederick Baumgartner

Li-Chung Lee

Norman Chu

Tony Mello

An air bearing burnish slider burnishes very small asperities and cleans the loose particles that adhere to the magnetic recording media. The slider applies a controllable contact force to effectively burnish disk asperities or partially attached particles. In addition, the slider cleans the loose particles effectively while flying in a stable fashion. In a low pitch design, diagonal rails push particles away from the disk surface and trailing edge pads contact the disk at lower linear velocities. Rail pads retain loose contamination and debris in their pockets and burnish asperities. Another design provides a milder burnish force and flies in a high pitch configuration. The trailing edge pads provide stable contacts and the rails help in sweeping away debris. In both designs, the contact forces can be controlled by adjusting linear velocities. A step taper at the leading edge provides a pitch-producing lift force.

Apparatus for burnishing small asperities and cleaning loose particles from magnetic recording media

An in-situ technique for the acoustic emission monitoring of burnish heads while they are cleaning or burnishing magnetic media is described. The burnishing process is monitored and controlled to identify interaction or contact between the head and media due to, for example, burnish head damage, substrate curvature problems, and lube pick-up problems. A piezoelectric sensor is mounted on the burnish arm that holds the burnish heads. When head-disk interaction occurs, stress waves travel through the head to the sensor and an amplified signal is gathered in a tester database as an acoustic emission. Abnormal conditions will trigger an unusual emission that is detected to trigger an alert.

System, method, and apparatus for in-situ acoustic emission monitoring of burnish heads in production during magnetic media cleaning or burnish process

Growing community of inventors

Saratoga, CA, United States of America

Parul Agrawal