The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Aug. 10, 1993
Filed:
Nov. 04, 1991
Henry E Aviles, Tucson, AZ (US);
Edwin R Childers, Tucson, AZ (US);
James L Overacker, Tucson, AZ (US);
Ronald P Stahl, Tucson, AZ (US);
International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY (US);
Abstract
An optical disk drive is disclosed in which sensing the position of a tilting prism driven by a fine tracking actuator uses the optical beam prior to its interaction with an optical disk. The optical beam emitted by a laser is redirected by the tilting prism. Most of the optical beam is reflected by the tilting prism in a direction through an objective lens for focused interaction with an optical disk. assuming a disk is mounted in the optical disk drive. The remainder of the optical beam is transmitted through the tilting prism, including any offset of the beam resulting from the refraction characteristics of the tilting prism, and received by a split far field detector. The split far field detector measures the offset of the optical beam which is a direct measure of the rotational position of the tilting prism. A relative position error signal is then generated and input to the coarse tracking actuator to coordinate its operation with that of the fine tracking actuator.