Western Digital Technologies, Inc.

Yoshinobu Noguchi

Hiroyasu Tsuchida

Haruhide Takahashi

Takeji Sumiya

Tzong-Shii Pan

Shinobu Hagiya

Takuma Muraki

Tsuyoshi Matsumoto

Haruki Nitta

Eiji Soga

Tomoyuki Sasaki

A suspension assembly for a magnetic storage device. The suspension assembly includes a base plate, a load beam, and a flexure. A hinge of the load beam is configured to flex so that a distal end portion of the load beam moves relative to the base plate. The flexure includes a hinge portion and fixed portions adjacent the hinge portion. Each one of the fixed portions of the flexure includes a first layer and a second layer. The first layer is interposed between the second layer and the load beam. The hinge portion of the flexure includes the second layer but does not include the first layer. A thickness of the second layer of the hinge portion of the flexure is less than a thickness of the second layers of the fixed portions of the flexure.

Multi-layer load beam flexure for magnetic storage device

A hard disk drive comprises a carriage assembly that comprises a carriage-arm tip with a swaging hole centered about a swaging axis. A first head-gimbal assembly comprises a tension baseplate on a first side of the carriage-arm tip with a tension swage boss located within the swaging hole. A second head-gimbal assembly comprises a compression baseplate on a second side of the carriage-arm tip with a compression swage boss located with the swaging hole. The tension swage boss comprises an uppercut that extends radially outward, away from the swaging axis, from a first backbore diameter to a second backbore diameter and a tension-boss undercut that extends radially outward, away from the swaging axis, from a tension-boss outer diameter to a first undercut diameter. The compression swage boss comprises a compression-boss undercut that extends radially outward, away from the swaging axis, from a compression-boss outer diameter to a second undercut diameter.

Carriage assembly with asymmetrical swage bosses and associated methods

A head gimbal assembly (HGA) for a hard disk drive includes a primary dimple having a secondary structure protruding from the primary dimple, where a flexure is movably coupled with a load beam via the primary dimple, and where the secondary structure is configured to restrict the point of contact between the load beam and the flexure. Such an arrangement avoids any shift in the axis of rotation of the flexure, and the attached slider, due to any undesirable protrusion from the primary dimple which may arise in the manufacturing process. Examples of secondary structures include a micro-dimple, a ridge, and an embedded mass of material.

Restriction of suspension dimple contact point

An approach to a piezoelectric (PZT) device, such as a hard disk drive microactuator, includes one or more layers of poled PZT material, with top and bottom surfaces coupled with respective electrode layers coupled with a power source to drive the active PZT layer(s). The electrode layers have different thicknesses, where the particular thicknesses may be configured to mitigate the variation of out-of-plane motion or bending associated with operational variations in the z-height between a corresponding actuator arm and recording medium and, likewise, the phase variation of flexure vibration.

Piezoelectric-based microactuator arrangement for mitigating out-of-plane force and phase variation of flexure vibration

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Yokohama, Japan

Yoshinobu Noguchi