International Business Machines Corporation

Ramamurthy Nagarajan

Stephen Arnold Olson

Gwendolyn Jones Chung

Robert Bruce Prime

Hoa-Binh Thi Tu

Dennis Frederick Ramos

An etched, lubricated swage ball for use in swaging a head gimbal assembly to an actuator arm in a magnetic disk drive, and a method for making the same. The present invention discloses a lubricating system for swage balls used in a disk drive system which is free from transferrable aluminum oxide, other hard materials or excess solid lubricant which could be deposited on the clean disk surface during operation. The swage balls are first pretreated by cleaning and then etching to remove residual alumina from the surface of the swage balls. The cleaned, etched swage balls are then lubricated in a fluorocarbon lubricating system, thereby producing an etched, lubricated swage ball which is cleaner than that found in the prior art.

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San Jose, CA, United States of America

Ramamurthy Nagarajan