Patent · US Expired

Wobble motor microactuator for fine positioning and disk drive incorporating the microactuator

US5805375A · kind A · utility

35Cited by
10References
5Claims
0Family size

Assignee

Inventors

Key dates

Filing dateAug 22, 1996
Grant dateSep 8, 1998
Priority date
Expiry dateAug 22, 2016

Classification

  • Technology area (CPC H)Electricity
  • CPC primaryH02N1/004
  • WIPO fieldAudio-visual technology
  • WIPO sectorElectrical engineering

Abstract

A microfabricated wobble motor with a positioning arm attached to the wobble motor rotor acts as a fine positioner with bidirectional movement. The primary application is a rotary actuator for the read/write head in a very small magnetic recording disk drive. An integrated head-arm assembly is attached at one end to the rotor of the wobble motor. The other end of the head-arm assembly has a head carrier that is maintained in contact with the disk. Head position error information is read from the disk and used to provide control signals to each of the stator elements. The stator elements are sequentially addressed by applying a voltage from a driver circuit. This causes the rotor to be electrostatically attracted to the activated stators, so that the rotor is movable bidirectionally. The read/write head can thus be moved bidirectionally to any of the data tracks on the disk and maintained on a desired data track for reading or writing data. The fine positioner also includes a digital control system where each of the stator elements is represented by an address, and the movement of the rotor is controlled by incrementing or decrementing the stator address in an address register.

Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.