Eastman-Kodak Company

Seagate Technology Incorporated

Seagate Technologies, Inc.

Robert Stuart Patterson

Jason Dewey

Ted Randal McDonald

Shawn J Mercy

An ink jet printer includes a carriage mounted on a guide. The carriage provides a transverse movement to a printhead. The carriage includes an upper carriage component adjacent to a rear support wall of the ink jet printer and a lower carriage component mounted to the upper carriage component. A slider is disposed between the upper carriage and the rear support wall. The slider includes a rigid substrate with a hole or an eyelet forming a hole. A pin secured to the carriage engages the hole and allows the slider to rotate up to 360 degrees around the pin. The slider includes a fabric with extended fibers secured to the substrate or directly to the carriage in order to resist static charge accumulations and lower friction.

Ink tubing chain slider for wide format printer

An ink drying apparatus for an ink jet printer includes an internal heating apparatus. The heating apparatus comprises gas flow restrictors for air that enters the heating apparatus. The gas flow restrictors may be formed as dual horizontal slots which are sized to maintain a higher air pressure in the heating apparatus as compared to the air pressure in a region within the ink drying apparatus that is outside of the heating apparatus.

Heat and airflow management for a printer dryer

A movable load/unload parking apparatus for a disc drive has an elongated parking member pivotally supported adjacent a data storage disc or stack of discs in the drive. The parking member is operable to move between a first position during drive shutdown and a second position during drive operation. In the first position, a pickup portion of the parking member extends over a peripheral portion of the disc to receive and carry the transducer or transducers beyond the outer diameter of the disc when the actuator rotates the actuator arm outward to a park position. At the same time a crash stop portion of the parking member is repositioned away from the actuator arm to permit the outward rotation. In the second position, the pickup portion of the parking member is positioned beyond the outer diameter of the disc and the crash stop portion is positioned to prevent movement of the actuator arm beyond the outer diameter of the disc.

Movable load ramps and crash stop for a disc drive

A suspension limiter for limiting travel of a read/write transducer gimbal in a disc drive is disclosed that positively engages or interlocks with a feature of the load beam supporting the gimbal, or vice versa, to preclude disengagement of the limiter during an abnormal external shock event. One embodiment has a hook on the load beam that fits within a hole gimbal to interlock the two together. Another embodiment has a hook on the gimbal that fits within a hole in the load beam during a shock event. Another embodiment has tabs on the gimbal that hook over a notch in side fingers extending from the end of the load beam on either side of the gimbal. Another embodiment has a hooked tab on the load beam that extends through an aperture in the gimbal to interlock the gimbal and load beam together during a shock load event. Each of the embodiments prevents catastrophic plastic deformation of the gimbal during such events.

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San Diego, CA, United States of America

Robert Stuart Patterson