Disk drive having an i.d. ramp loading system employing multiple-function spacer structure

Abstract

Disk spacers in multiple disk drives are shaped to provide a reliable mechanism for loading and unloading magnetic recording heads and a reliable latch when the heads are unloaded. The head load/unload system operates between a stack of latch-profiled spacer ramps sandwiching magnetic hard disks and a stack of lifting arms with contoured tips attached to head/suspension assemblies. The lifting arms and their contoured tips are built as part of the one-piece of the suspension load beams at their inner diameter side perpendicular to the load beam axis, or at their front along the axis. The spacer ramps are precisely machined to a latch profile with a desired rounded edge merging with the disk surface, an inclined slope, a round hump and a rounded recess, so that the contoured tip of a lifting arm can slide onto the slope first, over the hump and then into the recess where the tip is latched. The spacer ramps also serve either in a couple as the separator of any two adjacent disks, or individually as the separator between the top disk clamp and the top surface of the top disk and between the bottom base and the bottom disk. The spacer ramps are self-calibrated vertically with the disk stack. Both coated with diamond like carbon or other hard coatings, the profiled spacer ramps, also coated with lubricants after a hard coating, and contoured tips are reliable in ramp wear control. A single sided limiter from the suspension load beam reduces the torsion to the head flexure tang generated by the lifting force at an inner side lifting arm when the head is unloaded from the disk.