Sony Corporation

Toshiro Ota

Yoshikazu Ishimatsu

Takuji Shimoda

Ryo Soga

Takashi Yamazaki

Masakatsu Hosoya

To perform ejection of a disk cartridge and head loading (landing) and/or unloading (takeoff) with a single driving source and prevent damage to a disk upon head landing and takeoff. A cam protrusion which is an outputting section of a geared motor is moved at a low speed and acts upon a head lifting mechanism by which, by rotation of the geared motor in one direction (CW direction), ejection of a cartridge is performed, but by rotation in the other direction (CCW direction), landing of magnetic heads is performed for head loading of the magnetic heads.

Disk drive apparatus

In a disk drive apparatus for driving a CD or CD-ROM having a disk tray with a recess, the recess is provided with a plurality of pawls that keep the disk stable when it is loaded in the recess and the apparatus is vertical. In this way, unexpected contact of the outer circumference of the disk with the outer circumference of the recess is avoided. The recess is moreover provided with insulators that fully allow deformation or displacement of a base unit in one direction, but minimize it in other directions. External vibrations acting on the apparatus when it is vertical are therefore effectively damped, and rotation of the disk in the apparatus is steady.

Disk drive apparatus with insulators to minimize external vibrations

Coil springs 96 and 97 are incorporated in a driving-side transmission mechanism 61 so as to absorb backlashes between a rack 55 and a drive gear 59a. Since the respective backlashes between the drive gear 59a and the rack 55 are absorbed by way of the coil springs 96 and 97, phase matching at the sole driving-side transmission mechanism 61 is required as phase matching work of toothed portions of gears during assembly, thereby simplifying the assembling task and shortening the amount of assembling hours. Additionally, since a coil spring is not included in the rack 55, the rack can be designed to be small-sized in its width direction, thereby minimizing the moment of a force about the meshed engagement point, acting on an optical head carriage 53, and reducing transfer loss in the head.

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Kanagawa, Japan

Toshiro Ota