Sony Corporation

Souichi Murakami

Masahiro Saito

Junichi Suzuki

Kiyoshi Toyota

Norio Fukasawa

Mitsuo Nishikawa

Minoru Kubo

Disclosed is an optical head in which position adjustment of a photodetector light receiving surface or component parts may be simplified, production costs may be reduced and operational reliability may be improved. The optical head includes a light source, radiating light of a preset wavelength, an objective lensfor condensing the outgoing light from the light sourceon an optical discand for condensing the return light from the optical disc, a beam splitterfor branching the optical path of the return light reflected by the optical disc, and for collimating the branched return light so as to be parallel to the outgoing light from the light source, a composite optical component including a splitting prismarranged on a site of incidence of the branched return light for spatially splitting the return light, and a light receiving unit for receiving plural return light beams spatially split by the splitting prismfor producing focusing error signals.

Optical head and recording and/or reproducing apparatus employing same

A disc spindle motor of the axial air-gap type includes a record disc chucking portion having a center boss with a disc support surface formed around the center boss. A magnet is arranged adjacent and beneath the disc support surface to hold a magnetic central core of the record disc against the support surface. The rotor of the spindle motor has a rotor magnet affixed to a rotor yoke and facing the stator coils. The center boss and disc support of the disc chucking portion and the rotor yoke of the rotor are all integrally formed in one piece by molding a resin, such as nylon-6, with a magnetic powder, such as iron powder.

Disc drive with integral spindle yoke

Growing community of inventors

Chiba, Japan

Souichi Murakami