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:
Oct. 08, 2002
Filed:
Feb. 22, 2000
Srinivas Tadepalli, Oklahoma City, OK (US);
Seagate Technology LLC, Scotts Valley, CA (US);
Abstract
A method and apparatus is described for reducing flutter and windage losses in disc drives. In one embodiment, a ribbed shroud is provided at the circumference of the disc assembly. One such disc-drive system includes a disc-drive housing, at least one disc mounted within the housing which rotates, a transducer having a read head positionable to read data from the disc, and a shroud structure near an outer circumference of the disc that reduces flutter and windage losses. In some embodiments, the shroud structure is ribbed. Also presented is a first method for reducing flutter and windage losses in a disc drive, including spacing a first shroud at each one of at least two different spacings from an outer-diameter edge of one or more discs within the disc drive, measuring a performance characteristic of the disc drive at each one of the at least two different spacings, and selecting one of the shroud spacings based on the measuring step.