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:
Feb. 28, 2006
Filed:
Jan. 09, 2002
John Stuart Wright, Minneapolis, MN (US);
James Morgan Murphy, Boulder, CO (US);
John Stuart Wright, Minneapolis, MN (US);
James Morgan Murphy, Boulder, CO (US);
Seagate Technology LLC, Scotts Valley, CA (US);
Abstract
Tapered elements fabricated from a substrate of a size many times that of a single element are disclosed. Such tapered elements may be used as piezoelectric microactuators such as in-plane piezoelectric bimorph microactuators. A unique method of fabricating such tapered elements is provided. According to the method, cutting directions are first defined, the substrate is then cut a plurality of times in each cutting direction with adjacent cuts in each cutting direction indexed by proper indexing distances which are determined based on the dimensions of the final tapered elements. In one embodiment of the method, a plurality of optically detectable marks are used to define the cutting directions and cutting means is accordingly optically aligned with the cutting directions.