A DESIGN OF HIGH-PERFORMANCE IN-LINE HEAD ASSEMBLY FOR HIGH-SPEED ACCESS

We developed a high-performance inline head assembly that supports head sliders stably during high-speed access. This paper clarifies the causes of the large spacing fluctuation in conventional inline head assemblies during access and discusses the required inline head assembly characteristics. It introduces the design of our new inline head assembly, which has a truss-bridge shaped load beam and a flexure supported at both ends by the load beam. Experiments confirmed that the resonant frequency of the new inline head assembly in the access direction is 8 kHz, which is about twice that of the conventional inline head assembly. Spacing fluctuation is about 50 % that of the conventional inline head assembly. © 1990 IEEE