Hitachi-lg Data Storage, Inc.

Hitachi, Ltd.

Hitachi Consumer Electronics Co., Ltd.

Hitachi-lg Storage, Inc.

Shinya Tsubota

Yoshiaki Yamauchi

Sojiro Kirihara

Makoto Ibe

Kuniyuki Kimura

Mitsutaka Shizuya

Yoshiyuki Tanaka

Hideyuki Onuma

Seiji Hamaie

Hiroshi Yamagishi

Tatsumi Uchigiri

Shinya Asano

Ikuo Nishida

Seiichi Katou

Manabu Ochi

Hisahiro Miki

Hiroyuki Toyoda

Nozomu Harada

Takayuki Fujimoto

Yoshihiro Fukagawa

Keiji Sasao

Mitsukata Shizuya

A disc drive apparatus comprises: a spindle motorfor hold a discand for rotate it; an optical headfor conducting either one of recording or reproducing of information onto/from the disc; a driver unit for moving the optical head in a radial direction of the disc; and a unit mechanism chassisfor supporting those thereon, fixedly, wherein the spindle motor is constructed with a rotational drive means made of a magnetic circuit, a rotor portion and a rotation shaft, which define a rotation body, and a spindle motor attachment plate to hold those thereon, and the spindle motor attachment plate has a semi-circular shaped plate configuration in a part thereof, nearly fitting to an outer diameter the rotor portion, in a direction where the optical head is provided, and has a step-like structure in thickness direction of the plate thereof, within a semi-circular shaped region with respect to a line connecting between corner portions on both ends of that semi-circular shape, and also bridging over that line.

Spindle motor attachment structure for a disc drive apparatus

There is provided a disc drive by which the fluid loss of a disc is reduced and the electric power consumption of a spindle motor can be decreased. In the disc drive according to the present invention, a rotation load reducing member is provided between a top cover and the disc. The rotation load reducing member is movably supported by a clearance adjustment member. While the disc is rotating, the rotation load reducing member is moved in the direction approaching the disc. Thereby, the thickness of an air layer on the upper surface of the disc is decreased.

Disc drive with clearance adjustment member

The present invention provides a thin optical disc drive whose impact resistance performance is improved. An under coveris provided with a collision evasion holeat a position corresponding to an end of an optical head housing. Moreover, a bottom coveris provided with an impact force buffering memberat a position corresponding to the collision evasion hole. When an impact force acts on an optical disc drive, the impact force to the optical head housingis buffered by the structure. Consequently, it is possible to prevent the optical headfrom being damaged, and it is possible to improve the reliability of the optical disc drive

Optical disc drive having impact absorbing mechanism

An optical disc apparatus for enabling reduction of fluid noises accompanying with disc rotation, effectively, comprises a trayprovided to be able to comes in/out into/from said housing freely, a unit mechanismprovided together with the tray, in one body, a turntableprovided on the unit mechanism and configured to support a disc thereon, to be rotatable freely, a plural number of wall portionstoformed on the tray surrounding the disc supported on the turntable from an outer periphery thereof, each of which has configuration like an arc around a rotation center of the turntable, a pickupfor doing straight-line motion within along a radius direction of a disc, and an opening, which is provided on the wall portionlocating at the position on the moving track of the pickup, for maintaining movement of the pickup, wherein the wall portionis moved or stepped back to a side of an outer periphery of the turntable comparing to other wall portions.

Optical disc apparatus

An optical disc drive is fitted with a pickup, a non-contacting cooling plate, and a resinous movable spacer. The cooling plate adjacently faces and is fixed to the under, right, or left side of the pickup. The movable spacer is fitted to one of the facing sides of the pickup and cooling plate and prevents direct contact between the pickup and the plate. This drive structure prevents pickup movement interference due to collision between the pickup and the cooling plate, contamination production, needless electric conduction, etc., so that the clearance between the facing sides of the metallic pickup and metallic non-contacting cooling plate is narrow. The narrow clearance results in an improved heat conduction and radiation characteristic, improving the cooling of the whole pickup.

Optical disk device with pickup cooling plate

A disk drive device has a configuration in which one of stepped parts defined by a circular recess for guiding a disc, formed in a disc tray is substantially flush with the bottom surface of the circular recess even in an area beyond the outer peripheral part of a disc so that no air cavity part facing the outer peripheral side surface of the disc is induced around the disc. Thereby, it is possible to aim at lowering cavity noise caused by the air cavity during high speed rotation and fluid noise caused by turbulence.

Disk drive device having air stream restrictive device

The heat dissipation of a pickup is improved in an optical disc apparatus of a slot-in type. A unit coveron a disc-facing side of a unit mechanismincludes a circumferential plate, a lever supporting plate, a disc guiding plate, a flexible printed circuit board holding plate, a reinforcing plate, a driving part covering plate, ventilating openings near sub guiding shaft, an extended notch near sub guiding shaft, an outer extended notch, and an extended notch near main guiding shaft. With this configuration, plenty of air flow induced by the rotation of a disccan be introduced to a pickupalso through the unit cover, greatly improving heat dissipation capability.

In an optical disk apparatus for recording and/or reading information with respect to an optical disk, comprising, a chassis for containing the optical disk, and a tray being movable with respect to the chassis and adapted to support the optical disk thereon so that the optical disk is movable with respect to the chassis, the chassis has an opening for discharging an air from an inside of the chassis to an outside of the chassis through the opening.

Optical disk apparatus with openings for discharging air from therein

An optical disc apparatus includes, as a raising/lowering mechanism for moving a second base constituting a unit mechanism portion pivotally about a fulcrum so as to raise or lower the second base with respect to a first base as a base of the optical disc apparatus, a cam mechanism which is provided pivotably on the first base side within an orthographic projection area of the optical disc that is in a chucked state and which has a cam surface formed around and in the direction of a pivot shaft. In addition, a cam pin provided on the second base side is brought into engagement with the cam surface. When the optical disc inserted into the optical disc apparatus is chucked onto a turntable so as to be rotatable, the cam mechanism is pivoted about the pivot shaft by a cam drive section.

An optical disc apparatus includes position restricting component for restricting the position of a unit mechanism portion in a disc plane direction when the unit mechanism portion is in a raised state. The position restricting component includes a first portion that restricts the position of a base of the unit mechanism portion when the base is at a height position for write or read of information to or from an optical disc and a second portion that cancels the position restriction on the base of the unit mechanism portion in the disc plane direction or makes the position restriction easier than in the first portion when the base is at a height position corresponding to a chucked portion of the optical disc onto the turntable. At the height position where the optical disc is chucked the position restricting component makes the turntable displaceable in the disc plane direction so that the axis of the turntable becomes nearly coincident with the center of a center hole formed in the optical disc.

In a recording disk drive apparatus including, a chassis including a chassis body, a spindle motor fixed to the chassis body to support and rotationally drive a recording disk, and a head supported on the chassis body to be movable on the chassis body in a radial direction of the recording disk so that an information is recorded into the recording disk and/or read from the recording disk through the head, a base member on which the chassis is supported, and an elastic member through which the chassis is supported on the base member so that a vibration transmitted from the chassis is absorbed at least partially by an elasticity of the elastic member, the chassis includes a counter member elastically supported on the chassis body with a spring constant for the counter member in which spring constant the counter member is elastically movable with respect to the chassis body.

Disk drive apparatus

In an optical disk drive device, in order to reduce structural vibration noise and aerodynamic sound during high-speed revolution, a recess is formed at the deeper end. This recess is in a position axially symmetric to a hole for the movement of an optical head with respect to the axis of a spindle motor, and its size is substantially equal to that of the movement hole. This recess serves to suppress the vibration mode of a disk tray and the air flow between the disk and the disk tray. Noise is reduced even when the disk is turning at high speed.

Disk drive device

A magnetic recording and reproducing apparatus has main and sub chassis relatively movable between a first position in which a tape cassette is allowed to be mounted on and demounted from the reel bases and a second position in which magnetic tape extracted from the tape cassette is wound on the head assembly for recording or reproduction of electric signals. The apparatus has a braking mechanism designed for producing a braking effect on at least one of the reel bases when the sub chassis is in the first position. When the sub chassis is in the second position, the braking mechanism is engaged with a brake actuating mechanism on the main chassis so as to selectively brake the reel base in accordance with the state of the brake actuating mechanism operative in response to a manual input.

Brake control mechanism for magnetic recording and reproducing apparatus

A brake system for a magnetic recording and reproducing apparatus especially suited to an apparatus wherein an operation mode is provided on both sides of a stop mode. A braking of the brake system can be released in the respective modes upon both sides of the stop position, and the braking can be instantly applied at the time of transfer from the fast-foward or rewind mode to the stop mode. The brake system includes a turning arm constructed so as to be extensible and contractable and operable both for an application and release of the braking in dependence upon whether the turning arm is turned in a contracted or extended state.

Brake system for magnetic recording and reproducing apparatus

A cassette loading device comprises a motor rotatable in a normal direction and in a reverse direction, a driving mechanism for transmitting a power of the motor to a cassette holder and moving the cassette holder, and elastic member mounted on the driving mechanism for generating an elastic force against a depression of a tape cassette when the tape cassette is depressed from an initial position to a cassette-in position. A position detecting device detects that the cassette holder reaches a predetermined position in its moving path and generates a signal, with an initial position detecting device detecting an initial position of the elastic member upon initializing generating a signal. An eject signal generating device generates a signal commanding a cassette unloading, and a micro-processor controls the motor in response to output signals from the position detecting device, the initial position detecting device and the eject signal generating device. The tape cassette is forcibly unloaded irrespective of the elastic force of the elastic member.

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Mito, Japan

Shinya Tsubota