Programmable manufacturing system for load/support arms for magnetic

Abstract

A manufacturing system is described for sequentially bending a plurality of planar spring elements extending from a regularly perforated bar or fret, then adjusting the resiliency of each element to provide a precise load when deflected to a particular position, and finally shearing only those elements meeting the desired deflection load criteria from the fret. A microprocessor obtains necessary processing data while controlling the several stations at which the spring elements are measured, formed (bent), thermally adjusted and sheared from the fret. A walking beam transport system also controlled by the microprocesser incremently transports the frets of spring elements between and through each station. An oven can be incorporated into the walking beam transport system between the forming and thermal adjust stations for stress relieving the spring elements before adjustment. Particular features of the system include a translating shuttle mechanism with a plurality of parallel rails for loading frets onto the walking beam transport system, linear cam actuators for moving load cells into engagement with a load arm extending from each spring element, a resilient deflecting guard mechanism protecting the sensor head of the load cells, and a precision bending mechanism in which a pair of pivotably mounted and orthogonally related linear bearing races support carriages translated by a pair of orthogonally related linear actuators for rolling a bending element around a cylindrical mandrel. The invented system and apparatus has particular utility for manufacture of the precision load arms which support flying read/write heads of disk drive data storage systems.