Patent Application
20090139655
The present invention relates generally to a method and a system for manufacturing and fabricating hard drive components in a manufacturing environment, and more particularly, to a sealing device for sealing a contamination evacuation hole in the cover of the hard disk drive.
In general, a hard disk drive is used in many processing and computing systems, magnetic data storage devices, such as disk drives are utilized for storing data. A typical disk drive includes a spindle motor having a rotor for rotating one or more data disks having data storage surfaces, and an actuator for moving a head carrier arm that supports transducer (read/write) heads, radially across the data disks to write data to or read data from concentric data tracks on the data disk.
In order to preserve the reliability of the hard disk drive, most hard disk drives are manufactured under “clean room” conditions to prevent the introduction of contaminants to enter the hard disk drive. Once assembled, the hard disk drive remains sealed under normal operating conditions.
Due to the sensitivity of the components of the hard disk drive, especially during the reading and writing of information, it is necessary after the initial cleaning during the manufacturing process to prevent contamination of the hard disk drive during subsequent assembly and testing processes. Upon final assembly, a base and cover for the hard disk drive are assembled and sealed to each other in order to prevent the influx of external contaminates such as dust or moisture. The cover of the hard disk drive also typically has an evacuation hole through which the sealed hard disk drive is further evacuated to remove any additional contaminates that might have entered the hard disk drive during the sealing process. After the final evacuation process, the evacuation hole is sealed with a adhesive sealing material.
In sealing the evacuation hole of a conventional hard disk drive, an operator typically peels-off the adhesive material from a sealing template having multiple sealing material with a device such as a pair of tweezers and affix the seal over the evacuation hole. Such conventional method of sealing the evacuation hole may introduce additional contaminates in the evacuated hard disk drive. In addition to the tweezing process being too time consuming, using the tweezers could also lead to the adhesive edges of the adhesive material being compromised and giving a good seal. This could also lead to further contamination of the hard disk drive.
Therefore, what is need is a flexible way of component fabrication and manufacturing that particulates and other contaminants permits to be controllably dissipated from the materials used in the construction of these components such that the potential damage from electrostatic discharge or electromagnetic interference to electric components connected to such components is reduced and an improved way of an improved process of affixing adhesive seals to the cover of the hard disk drive after the drive assembly process is completed.
In accordance with certain aspects of the present invention, there is provided a system and method for peeling off a adhesive seal for sealing a evacuation hole in the cover of a hard disk drive without damaging the seal in the fabrication and manufacture of hard disk drives.
In one embodiment, a seal peel-off device having a upper presser plate and a lower liner base plate are respectively aligned at the top and bottom of a targeted adhesive seal to be peeled-off from a seal template having a number of adhesive seals and by applying pressure to the upper presser plate of the seal peel-off device, the targeted adhesive seal is removed without any damages.
In one embodiment, the upper presser plate includes a suction hole which is designed to be larger than the size of the seals to be peeled off in order to allow for the suction hole to conveniently fit over the targeted adhesive seal without compromising the adhesive edges of the seal as the seal is removed from the seal template.
In one embodiment, the lower base liner plate has a protrusion pin which holds in place the targeted seal in order to allow the presser plate to peel off the targeted seal without leaving any contaminates on the adhesive side of the seal. The protrusion pin is designed to be smaller in size than the size of the targeted seal being peeled off.
The accompanying drawings, which are incorporated in and constitute a part of the specification, illustrate embodiments of the invention, and together with the general description given above and the detailed description given below serve to explain the teachings of the invention.
Reference will now be made in detail to the alternative embodiment(s) of the present invention. While the invention will be described in conjunction with the alternative embodiment(s), it will be understood that they are not intended to limit the invention to these embodiments. On the contrary, the invention is intended to cover alternatives, modifications and equivalents, which may be included within the spirit and scope of the invention as defined by the appended claims.
Furthermore, in the following detailed description of the present invention, numerous specific details are set forth in order to provide a thorough understanding of the present invention. However, it will be recognized by one of ordinary skill in the art that the present invention may be practiced without these specific details. In other instances, well known methods, procedures, components, and circuits have not been described in detail as not to unnecessarily obscure aspects of the present invention.
The discussion will begin with an overview of a hard disk drive and components connected therewith. The discussion will then focus on embodiments of a method and system for peeling off a adhesive sealing material during the manufacturing of the hard disk drive in a disk drive assembly environment by providing a peel-off seal device that ensures that the seal does not introduce contaminates into the disk drive and also prevents the seal from being damaged.
In general, the HDD comb (also referred to as an E-block) serves as a platform on which the suspensions (compliant members containing sliders with recording heads) are mounted. The recording heads fly at a constant height (on the order of nanometers) above the disk surface tracking pre-written servo information. An HDD carriage assembly (as shown in
With reference now to
The disks 121 are mounted to a spindle 122. The spindle 122 is attached to a spindle motor which rotates the spindle 122 and the disks 121 to provide read/write access to the various portions of the concentric tracks on the disks 121.
An actuator assembly 130 includes a positioner arm 128 and a suspension assembly 124. The suspension assembly 124 includes a slider assembly 126 at its distal end. Although only one slider assembly 126 is shown, it will be recognized by one skilled in the relevant art the disk drive 100 could have one slider assembly 126 for each positioner arm 128. The positioner arm 128 further comprises a pivot 131 around which the positioner arm 128 pivots.
The disk drive 100 further includes a amplifier chip 133. As is well known in the art, the amplifier chip 133 cooperates with the slider assembly on the slider assembly 126 to read data from or write data to the disks 121. The main function of the actuator assembly 130 is to move the positioner arm 128 around the pivot 131.
During manufacturing of the disk drive 100, particulates such as dust and other accumulate in the housing which need to be evacuated either prior to the sealing of the cover 114 to the housing or after the cover has been sealed to the housing.
With reference now to
In one embodiment, the base liner 310 includes a retaining protrusion pin 311 which holds the adhesive side of a targeted adhesive seal being peeled off from a adhesive seal material template by the peel-off sealing device 300. In one embodiment of the present invention, the sealing material source template comprises a plurality of adhesive seals utilized by the present invention to seal the evacuation hole 250 in the cover of the hard disk drive. In one embodiment the adhesive seal is designed in such a manner that one side of the seal is adhesive and the opposite side is plastic. In one embodiment, the adhesive side of the seal has a non-adhesive central portion which is attached to the protrusion pin 311 during the peeling-off process. In one embodiment, the retaining protrusion pin 311 is smaller in size than the central non-adhesive portion of the adhesive seal.
The upper presser plate 320 comprises a suction hole 321 which is placed over the targeted adhesive seal being peeled-off (at the plastic side) and when pressed downwards, the suction hole 321 peels-off the targeted seal from the seal template. In one embodiment of the present invention, the upper presser plate 320 is made of a flexible material which when a slight downward pressure is applied to it allows the suction hole 321 to peel-off the targeted seal.
As shown in
Example embodiments of the present technology are thus described. Although the subject matter has been described in a language specific to structural features and/or methodological acts, it is to be understood that the subject matter defined in the appended claims is not necessarily limited to the specific features or acts described above. Rather, the specific features and acts described above are disclosed as example forms of implementing the claims.
